Research Tip: Switch Tasks to Stay on Track

Let’s face it – doing legal research can be difficult and frustrating at times. When you’re stuck at a research impasse, chances are your mind will start to wander off task (because it needs a break!), and pretty soon you’ve wasted a good hour or more on Facebook or Angry Birds. One technique you can use to combat this problem is to group your research tasks into chunks, and organize them by “harder” or “easier” tasks and switch between the two. For example, in your research plan, you might list one task as “finding legislative history on my statute.” You might put this task in the “harder” column. Another task on your list might be “Shepardizing the leading case I’ve already found.” You might put this in the “easier” column. Then, while you’re working on the legislative history research, and the going starts to get tough and your mind starts to wander, instead of turning to Facebook or games, you can give your mind a break by doing the Shepardizing task. This easier task will get you closer to completing your research project, but it will also refresh your mind so you can later return to the more difficult legislative history task.