Critical Characteristic 3 – Engagement
For the last 3 legal research tips of 2014 I have decided to give my opinion of the 3 most critical personal characteristics for being a successful legal researcher. I think the third most important personal characteristic is engagement.
Being engaged means that you are involved in an activity, committed, interested, embedded, in gear, active, diligent. You are fully focused on the task at hand.
If you are not engaged in a legal research problem, it will be difficult to harness the creativity that is necessary to see potential paths to an answer. It will also be difficult to maintain your course on a known path to an answer. Let’s face it, there is a huge amount of information that can be detrimentally distracting if you are not engaged on finding an (or the) answer to the question you are working on.
I think engagement is a critical personal characteristic for legal research.
Next week – characteristic #2
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