Resurrecting (and Modernizing) the Research Treasure Hunt

First-year associates will spend forty-five percent of their time on legal research; second- and third-year associates will spend thirty percent. And unfortunately, employers find their associates’ research skills lacking. This is not a new complaint. Employers have been complaining for more than a hundred years that recent law graduates cannot research well. None of this is lost on those who teach legal research, who have long debated the best way to do so. Techniques for teaching research have changed over time, and methods once thought appropriate were sometimes later disfavored. Changes were driven both by pedagogy and by the ever-changing interface of legal research. This article explores the types of research skills employers see lacking today; traces the debate over teaching methodology for research instruction and reviews modern proposals; and suggests that those who teach legal research reconsider one of the methods that has been disfavored—the research treasure hunt. Incorporating the treasure hunt as a small part of the curriculum achieves several goals. It exposes students to a greater number of research resources, gives them more opportunity to research, allows students small victories, allows them to customize their experiences, and marries well with the skills and expectations of the millennial law student. It also reflects the type of quick-turnaround research projects that students are asked to do in their summer employment