Thursday, 22 January 2009

The Finishing Line...

The finishing line for the Legal Research marathon should have been in sight today, but alas, I appear to have misjudged yet again the distance.



The exacting standards of my provider are getting the better of me. Provider doesn't like electronic search terms that give hundreds of hits (and yes we have to list what search term we put in, how many hits it showed and which of those hits we clicked on), so my imagination has been having a field day in attempting to perfect this technique. Lexis-Nexis just leeeerves anything to do with sex, so tap in "artificial insemination" and hundreds of hits pop up, narrow it to "artificial insemination" AND "father" and hundreds of hits pop up and so on...



So, it is now quite a game, let's be very selective, let's really narrow it down, let's really impress the poor tutor unlucky enough to have been given the task of marking my LR paper, let's try - "artificial insemination" AND father AND "non turkey baster method" AND divorce AND "shared residence" AND drugs AND "having a slanging match over maintenance" AND she wants it all her way AND so does he AND he's got an illness AND mediation AND human rights AND "I hate family law".

Oh bugger, 3'783 hits

10 comments:

Mel said...

Haha. Bon courage, BM.

Swiss Tony said...

hang in there BM.

Learning how to google should be part of your course!

Swizz

jacquig said...

See what I say is it is not in a book ! Don't hold it against family law - these situations just get messy especially with turkey basters around. Would be interested to see if old hack family lawyer could find it any quicker.

Jacquig

Minx said...

Narrowing truly EPIC ammounts of information( which, when printed out on to paper would be equivalent tothat which was recently found to have been stowed by an elderly gent in his house and will cost his local council £38,000 to remove)to a few legible sheets is a painful art well worth mastering, but then thats just stating the obvious.

I feel your pain with respect to the recording of search terms ( we had to do the same at my provider) its frustrating and time consuming, but unfortnately the devil is always in the detail and there will ALWAYS be ones Master/Mistress to please.

Stick with it BM - I'll bet you'll come out on top!! :)

Barmaid said...

I have to begrudgingly admit that the assessment has improved my LR skills no end and I am much more confident navigating lexis-nexis.

You have no idea how good it feels to get the first assessment finished, just 13 more to go!

Family lawyers deserve sainthoods (or a session on the trick cyclist couch);-)

Android said...

Well done on conquering that assessment! Research routes used to drive me mad, what a pointless exercise.

Barmaid said...

It seems I spoke too soon Android. A hot off the press Court of Appeal case was published yesterday http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2009/20.html This has turned my 3 weeks of pain staking research on its head. I'm having to cobble together a post script to hopefully gain an extra brownie point for (very) current awareness. No rest for the wicked:-)

Android said...

Barmaid, that's awful! Nooooo :(

I bet now you wish you'd handed it in already :P

Anonymous said...

Arse! At least you LOOKED, though, and can now be sure that you are bang up to speed ( maybe even more so than your assessor, who knows?!? If thats the case you've just done them a big favour!!) with the problem you've taken so much trouble to research correctly.

I think you've done very well!!

Jenna S said...

Grreat reading your blog