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Are ‘Digital Natives’ Equipped to Conquer the Legal Landscape?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2013

Daniel Bates
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Abstract

There is no doubt that the ‘Google Generation’ or ‘Digital Natives’ are entering legal education with a very different set of skills than those who came before them. In this article Daniel Bates examines the precise nature of the skillset of those beginning their legal careers, and considers his experiences teaching research skills to law students at the University of Cambridge for over a decade. Furthermore, he considers how students' educational and cultural background in the areas of research and information literacy should inform the teaching of legal skills.

Keywords

legal researchlegal research skillsinformation literacydigital literacydigital nativegoogle generation
Type
Current Issues
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 172 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2013. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 As first derived by Tapscott (1998) Growing up Digital: The rise of the net generation, and Prensky (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.

2 Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, 2008, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf (accessed 17 July 2013).

3 Exploring User Training Needs at Middle Temple Law Library, Legal Information Management, 13 (2013), pp. 80–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See for example Tomorrow's Lawyers, 2013, in which he advocates Law School teaching of Legal Knowledge Engineering to better prepare aspiring lawyers for legal work in decades to come.

5 Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, vol. 77, no. 6, pp. 1121–1134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Attaining information literacy: An investigation of the relationship between skill level, self-estimates of skill, and library anxiety, Library & Information Science Research, Volume 29, Issue 3, September 2007, Pages 332–353CrossRefGoogle Scholar and subsequently Undergraduate Perceptions of Information Literacy: Defining, Attaining, and Self-Assessing Skills, College & Research Libraries (70)2009, pp. 336–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Accuracy of Physician Self-assessment Compared With Observed Measures of Competence, JAMA. 2006;296(9):1094–1102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Experience effects on the accuracy of self-assessed user competence, Information & Management, 2006;43(3) pp. 378–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Generation Y: Are they really digital natives or more like digital refugees?, Synergy, 7(1), 31–40Google Scholar (http://www.slav.schools.net.au/synergy/vol7num1/coombes.pdf) (accessed 17 July 2013).

10 The Relationship of Undergraduate Students' Self-assessment of Library Skills to Their Opinion of Library Instruction: A Self-reporting Survey, The Southeastern Librarian: Vol. 52: Iss. 3, Article 8.Google Scholar

11 A concept developed by social scientist Herbert Simon to describe decisions individuals take which are satisfactory, but are not ‘maximal’ or optimal (Rational choice and the structure of the environment, Psychological Review, 63(1956), pp. 129–138.).

12 Beyond Google and the “Satisficing” Searching of Digital Natives, Gregor Kennedy and Terry Judd, in Deconstructing Digital Natives, Routledge, 2012.

13 An Empirical Study on the Research & Critical Evaluation Skills of Law Students, Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 12–067 (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2079552).

14 http://www.slaw.ca/2011/10/31/legal-research-training%E2%80%99s-end/

15 Teaching Research Skills Outside the Curriculum: Lessons Learnt at Oxford University, Legal Information Management, (7)2007, pp. 239, 243.Google Scholar

16 Google: to use, or not to use. What is the question? Legal Information Management 9(2009), pp. 168 172.Google Scholar

17 http://www.sra.org.uk/documents/students/academic-stage/academicjointstate.pdf (accessed 17 July 2013).

18 http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/Documents/Law07.pdf (accessed 17 July 2013).

19 http://www.letr.org.uk/ (accessed 17 July 2013).

20 http://www.biall.org.uk/pages/biall-legal-information-literacy-statement.html (accessed 17 July 2013).

21 http://www.aallnet.org/main-menu/Leadership-Governance/policies/PublicPolicies/policy-lawstu.html (accessed 17 July 2013).

22 http://www.sconul.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/SCONUL%20digital_literacy_lens_v4_0.doc (accessed 17 July 2013).

23 http://www.biall.org.uk/data/files/Committees/PR/Press_releases/BIALL_press_release_-_LETR_-_20130627.pdf (accessed 17 July 2013).

24 Supra.

25 “Who Are Those Guys?:” The Results of a Survey Studying the Information Literacy of Incoming Law Students, 2007.

26 A similar view was expressed by Law Firms in Law Firm Legal Research Requirements of New Attorneys 101 Law Library Journal 297 (2009).Google Scholar

27 Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse: A Law Student's Perspective on Developing Legal Information Literacy Canadian Law Library Review/Revue canadienne des bibliotheques de droit (volume 30(2), 80–84 Summer 2005).Google Scholar

28 Net Generation Students & Libraries, Educause Review, March/April 2005.