Understand the Why

Today’s short legal research tip is this:

You will find better answers to questions if you know Why you are asking them in the first place.

Understanding the motivation for an answer that is hidden behind a question helps reveal biases, suppositions, assumptions and missing inputs that, if misunderstood, lead to incomplete, incorrect, and inefficiently gathered results.

I think about this whenever I momentarily worry that artificial intelligence will make librarians obsolete.