Today’s Tip is about interacting with your research world.

We are involved in an increasingly complex universe of data that has increasingly complex functionality.  In order to get the most out of what is in front of you I suggest that you engage with the data.  Mouse over text and images; set your browser status bar to visible so that you can read the URLs that hyperlinks will send you to; watch for functionality hint pop up text; in short – interact.

The print version of this is following the footnotes, index, table of contents, table of cases or statutes, …

Yesterday at Slaw, I posted about the Alberta Law Reform Institute Final Report 106 Assisted Reproduction After Death: Parentage and Implications.

Today’s Tip is a reminder to look to law commission reports when researching items that touch on public policy.  As Michel-Adrien Sheppard wrote in a 2013 Slaw post, these reports have hidden treasures:

There is always a chance that a law commission has looked at a legal issue you may be working on. Slaw.ca collaborator Ted Tjaden has a section on how to find law reform commission reports on his legal research writing website.

We live in a world where it is generally acknowledge that even though many web services that we use have terms of service, nobody reads them. Stop that bad habit right now. Especially for fee based legal research services. Do you understand what you have agreed to when you use WestlawNext Canada or LexisNexis Quicklaw?

By highlighting this as Today’s Tip I am NOT suggesting that fee based research services are inherently bad – I believe the opposite – I would not want to perform legal research for clients without a subscription to a fee based research service that delivers …

Once in a while a legislature will pass an act and then make amendments to it before it comes in to force.  Just when you think you have everything figured out….

An example of this from Alberta is referenced in CanLII as Education Act, SA 2012, c E-0.3 , [Not yet in force] along with Bill 19 the Education Amendment Act, 2015 introduced yesterday in the Alberta legislature.

Today’s Tip: IF an applicable statue is not yet in force check for amendments to it.

Once Bill 19 passes (fairly obvious for a majority government unless an election is called …

A fantastic post by Marc Lauritsen that came my way via the Attorney at Work Daily Dispatch inspired Today’s Tip. Marc’s post asked readers to think about recent decisions they helped make and whether they did a good job of choosing.

Choices are part of every aspect and many, many moments of every day. In terms of legal research, deliberate choice should be a decision point that you make with each research question, each search string, and most importantly when planning your research path.

As Marc suggests:

Be mindful when you find yourself facing a choice. Don’t just think about

A hat tip to Sandi Madvid, Supervisor of Edmonton Library Services for Parlee McLaws LLP for Today’s Tip. Sandi shared  that the Alberta Building Code 2014 and the Alberta Fire Code 2014 will be in force on May 1, 2015.  Considering my husband is a carpenter and uses the Building Code, I am surprised I didn’t known this was coming!

Some Canadian jurisdictions (including Alberta, obviously) model region specific codes on the National Building Code of Canada. Building Codes are usually only available for purchase and most (but not all) are available by subscription to an electronic version.

The Building …

This tip was inspired after answering a question from memory that I should have documented back in 2009.

As legal researchers, we find nuggets of useful information from sources that are both transparent and obscure.  Transparent because they are the logical source of the information we seek and obscure in that if we hadn’t connected with exactly the right person at the exactly right time we would not necessarily have found the information in the form or with the context that we did.

Document your sources in detail. Don’t trust that your memory will be available (or working properly) in …

I am having a wonderful time in Maui this week with my family.  Today’s Tip is inspired by my Aunt Betty who reminded me that it is important that OTHER PEOPLE know what you are asking for.

You may know that the Hawaiian language uses fewer letters than English.  I confess to being completely baffled by local pronunciation.  Betty, on the other hand has visited this beautiful part of the world several times, and has mastered the phonetic discrepancies that twist my tongue.

This is the root of it:

a is always ahhhh
e is the long A
i  is …

You spend good time and brain power creating a beautiful research work product. Then what happens?

Today’s Tip: think about where your words go.

Today’s Tip is brought to you by the office of my Outlook Junk Folder in conjunction with my Spam filter and my email rules. These offices are not hungry for YOUR content. With the extra efforts being made by organizations to comply with CASL, items are being scooped into spam quarantines that are not really spam.

This legal research tip is intended for readers as well as writers. Best of luck.…

Today’s Tip was inspired by John DiGilio who edits the Pinhawk Librarian News Digest. John noted a post at RIPS Law Librarian Blog titled The Art of Delegating. The post has great food for thought for anyone sharing work.

Let me start here: I hate the phrase ‘pushing work down’ – it does not reflect the benefit of sharing work with the delegate. The benefits of personally contributing to a team effort, cross training for broader niche expertise among a group and balancing workflows are well covered in the post.

Now to the tip part.  When delegating legal research …