I am happy to share this guest post by Steven A. Mitchell, a law library faculty member at the Notre Dame Law School. It's about an amazing new course that Steven has designed and is teaching this spring at Notre Dame. As the courts increasingly rely on arguments from historical and linguistic sources, I expect courses like the one Steven is teaching will start becoming more widespread.
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One of the delights of being a Research and Instruction Librarian at Notre Dame Law School is having the opportunity to teach legal research courses. In the fall semester, we research librarians — all of whom have both a J.D. and a Masters in Library Science — teach a section or two of 1L students on fundamental principles of legal research. Students learn about the nature of legal information and how to find it, gain experience working with legal databases, and begin to adjust the way they think about research to suit the particular demands of the practice of law.
