I am not at all stating that a finding or research tool is a substitute for reading and understanding material. The point is that a good researcher knows how to find material that MAY relate and be on point. You are correct that one must think and sort to see whether the material is useful. The quote only states that one can find material. Context and applicabilty concerns come up even under the old reader’s guide to periodicals and subject matter indices way of researching. In addition, when one learns how to use the databases well one can have great staring point; not the end point. In other words, the narrowness of a search can of course allow someone to err in being sure that the material is on point. Another problem is stopping at what appears to be on all fours. The better way to approach research is to read the material and see what is cited or what key phrases may allow one to use a new search to find more material.

“This idea seems to suggest that those who use Westlaw or Lexis cannot find material well.”

Based on what I’ve seen from too many associates (and even partners) who never learned to read anything in context, “those who use Westlaw or Lexis” as their principle law-finding tools are not exactly paradigmatic of careful researchers. Far too often, I see soundbites submitted as authority for dubious propositions; sometimes it only takes reading the whole sentence/paragraph in which the soundbite occurs. One of my favorites was a submission in a federal appellate brief by opposing counsel on the appropriate standard for summary judgment in which the entire preceding paragraph explained that the decision did not concern summary judgment under Fed. R. Civ. P. 56. Sadly, this is far from an isolated instance (either in that matter or in general).

In short, a finding tool is not a substitute for actually reading the material. The current generation of online finding tools — Google, Westlaw, Lexis, whatever — does an extremely poor job of providing enough context to actually evaluate a legal text, and a relatively poor job for nonlegal texts. If we go into the “finding tool” debate with this in mind, we’re going to come to a different conclusion than if we go into the “finding tool” debate equating the tool to the library itself.