Tutorial A1. Monday, May 21, 2001, 2:00 5:45 p.m.
Search Strategies for Online Legal Research: A Primer and a Plea by Virginia Wise
Attendees at this conference tend to reflect a wide range of expertise and experience with legal databases. This workshop
is designed for those who may know a lot about AI, but not so much about the nuts and bolts of searching legal materials
online on Lexis, Westlaw and the Internet. Roughly the first half of the session will be devoted to discussing the search
methodologies that presently exist for searching legal databases. After the many deficiencies of the present systems have
been revealed in the first half, the second half of the session will be a lively interchange about how AI might contribute to
changing the way searches are done or could be done to improve results, and what the barriers might be to implementing
such improvements.
Virginia Wise is a Lecturer on Law at the Harvard Law School and Adjunct Professor, Simmons Graduate School of
Library and Information Science. Ms. Wise teaches courses in advanced legal research, international, foreign and
comparative legal research, legal research for foreign LL.M. students and legal information sources for library science
students. Ms. Wise previously taught at the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies, Boston
University Law School, and as a visiting professor at the University of Washington. She has been a visiting fellow at the
Australian National University in Canberra, a consultant on legal information and legal education for the U.S. government
in Estonia, Mongolia and South Africa, and a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme in Vietnam.