I am troubled by several recent instances of attorneys at our law firm suggesting that their secretaries do library research to keep them "challenged." I am about to communicate my concerns re: quality control, professional education and experience, the complexity of many library materials, etc. to the attorneys. But I am wondering if anyone has been through this before, and might have established some "boundaries" for what kinds of information requests can/should be handled by secretaries.
We have willingly trained our secretaries to do look-ups in Martindale-Hubbell, the court directories, Switchboard on the Internet, pulling and photocopying cases from the reporters, etc., but, beyond this, I get really nervous. I want to rein in this trend before it gets out of control.
At the most basic level, I guess I am just really annoyed that the attorneys think just any Tom, Dick or Harry can do things like locating parallel citations, Shepardizing, etc. Maybe I'm just being snobbish, but, as the one responsible for the quality of the information service, I've got a real problem with this--and it's not because I'm feeling threatened. I'm not.
Anybody have any sage advice for me? TIA
Barbara Avery, Librarian
Marshall & Melhorn
Four SeaGate, 8th Floor
Toledo, OH 43604
(419)249-7228
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