Brushing up on legal research before SA Forum

[Anonymous User]

My advanced legal research professor told us that WL and LN have alerts set up on student accounts that will alert them and shut down accounts if repeated searches are found that are in areas not usually associated with academia, which is how you could get in trouble. Bloomberg law does allow you to use their services for your SA position though.

[Anonymous User]

If you know the specific areas of law you will be involved in as a SA, I recommend you previewing them a bit. A good and simple way to do so would be to read the client memo, guides or other legal insight articles from your summer firm's website. I knew which area of law I would be doing for the summer so I studied up the materials from my firm's website. The offer rate was 100% so it probably didn't make a difference, but I did find that in the first few weeks I was ahead of my fellow summers in figuring out how to finish our assignments.

So this can be helpful? I was thinking it would be a little like 0L prep before law school in that you end up working on highly specific things that aren't necessarily related to what you read. I might be working in a niche transactional field in which I'm not even yet sure what the day to day tasks are. Would you/other posters still recommend doing this?

[20160810]

If you know the specific areas of law you will be involved in as a SA, I recommend you previewing them a bit. A good and simple way to do so would be to read the client memo, guides or other legal insight articles from your summer firm's website. I knew which area of law I would be doing for the summer so I studied up the materials from my firm's website. The offer rate was 100% so it probably didn't make a difference, but I did find that in the first few weeks I was ahead of my fellow summers in figuring out how to finish our assignments.

So this can be helpful? I was thinking it would be a little like 0L prep before law school in that you end up working on highly specific things that aren't necessarily related to what you read. I might be working in a niche transactional field in which I'm not even yet sure what the day to day tasks are. Would you/other posters still recommend doing this?

Preparing for your SA job is wildly different than 0L prep. As a 0L, you know nothing, so you don't know how to learn the law effectively. As a post-2L heading into a specific area of practice, you hopefully know how to do things like read a brief treatise and a few outlines to get a sense of the broad strokes. I don't see how it could possibly hurt you to spend a weekend doing this.

[Anonymous User]

My biglaw summer consisted mainly of social events and pro bono work. What little research I did get was roughly the same as what was learned in 1L year. Watch your mouth and keep your hands off other people's private parts and you won't be no-offered.

I seriously haven't heard of any summers getting no-offered due to the quality of their work. It was always social/behavioral issues or personality problems.

[Veyron]

Lots of shitty responses ITT. Best response: before running any searches, call Westlaw, tell them what you are looking for, and have them formulate the search for you. They will also run the search and pre-screen it over the phone with you. Only run it if it returns the results you want.

YOU'RE WELCOME

P.S. Fastcase is your friend.

EVEN MORE WELCOME

[Anonymous User]

My biglaw summer consisted mainly of social events and pro bono work. What little research I did get was roughly the same as what was learned in 1L year. Watch your mouth and keep your hands off other people's private parts and you won't be no-offered.

I seriously haven't heard of any summers getting no-offered due to the quality of their work. It was always social/behavioral issues or personality problems.

I know a summer who was no-offered due to work product (told this as the explicit reason, and this is NOT someone with any social issues whatsoever). However, this person had a concrete reason for the work product drop off that they failed to tell the firm. But it does happen.

I don't think it's anything to be concerned about regarding WL/Lexis research though.

[FitterHappier289]

Using WL and Lexis reference attorneys not only is free but will likely get you the case law you need way faster than you doing it yourself. I'm surprised only one person has mentioned this so far.

[keg411]

Using WL and Lexis reference attorneys not only is free but will likely get you the case law you need way faster than you doing it yourself. I'm surprised only one person has mentioned this so far.

I said it on the first page.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 8#p6170402

[Anonymous User]

If you know the specific areas of law you will be involved in as a SA, I recommend you previewing them a bit. A good and simple way to do so would be to read the client memo, guides or other legal insight articles from your summer firm's website. I knew which area of law I would be doing for the summer so I studied up the materials from my firm's website. The offer rate was 100% so it probably didn't make a difference, but I did find that in the first few weeks I was ahead of my fellow summers in figuring out how to finish our assignments.

So this can be helpful? I was thinking it would be a little like 0L prep before law school in that you end up working on highly specific things that aren't necessarily related to what you read. I might be working in a niche transactional field in which I'm not even yet sure what the day to day tasks are. Would you/other posters still recommend doing this?

Well, the preparation should be to find out what the day to day tasks are like, or at least figure out the basics of underlying laws will be.

For instance, if you know that you will mostly be focusing on securities regulations as a SA, read up on the 33' and 34' Acts, use Westlaw to find out what some of the key agreements in securities transactions look like, and maybe even find the a recent IPO prospectus your firm helped to draft. All these will be really help to give some contexts for your summer assignments.

I am sure you can still figure all these out during the summer when you receive the assignments. But you will save a lot of time if you already know the basics beforehand.

[IAFG]

My biglaw summer consisted mainly of social events and pro bono work. What little research I did get was roughly the same as what was learned in 1L year. Watch your mouth and keep your hands off other people's private parts and you won't be no-offered.

I seriously haven't heard of any summers getting no-offered due to the quality of their work. It was always social/behavioral issues or personality problems.

I know a summer who was no-offered due to work product (told this as the explicit reason, and this is NOT someone with any social issues whatsoever). However, this person had a concrete reason for the work product drop off that they failed to tell the firm. But it does happen.

I don't think it's anything to be concerned about regarding WL/Lexis research though.

Ugh how horrible.