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CMLawLibraryBlog

The CM Law Library Blog seeks to inform the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law community about key legal education, research, practice, and law library news, with a particular focus on Cuyahoga County and Ohio as well as faculty research interests.

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Information Obesity?

Jan Novak, Associate Director jan.novak@law.csuohio.edu | September 14, 2007 - 11:03

information obesityNew Skills, New Learning: Legal Education & the Promise of Tomorrow, a study of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, is the latest gauntlet dropped at our feet (well, dropped in many of our mailboxes recently, as well as published on the web) claiming that law schools are not teaching many technologies and critical practice skills that beginning lawyers find essential. The study identifies new skills in the areas of knowledge generation, techno-social skills, and meta-practice.

"Knowledge generation" means sorting through information to find something useful, and then applying the information. Of particular concern to us in the library, as we support the research skills education of our students, is the assertion that “avoiding ‘information obesity’ in a world oversaturated with data may be one of the greatest challenges facing lawyers today.” (p.3) The problem for legal researchers, Professor Bob Berring used to say, is that there is “too much stuff.” Now we are recognizing that all that “stuff” will make you fat, unless you acquire and hone the skills to select wisely, and use the tools technology provides to winnow rather than amass. The article makes no specific recommendations on improving students' knowledge generation skills.

The article does recommend, in regard to techno-social skills, to assign more group projects for law students involving technologies such as wikis. Another recommendation, in regards to "meta-practice" is to use more technology in clinical programs, such as case management software and repositories of forms.


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