Legal research for records managers

This article is intended to provide accurate information in regard to the subject matter covered. The publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal services. If legal or other professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Authorities and writers often urge that information managers utilize adequate legal research, both for everyday management activities, and for the development and implementation of retention schedules. Unfortunately, the organization's lawyers may not be interested in doing the research, may have other priorities, or may not be skilled in this type of research. Thus, for many records managers, the reality is that complying with this advice means doing that research oneself.

For the nonlawyer, this can be a seemingly hopeless task. Law libraries contain thousands of apparently identical volumes; the organization of this material makes little obvious sense, and the sheer volume of material to be searched is immense--the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is over 250 volumes (each 500-700 pages in length), the Federal Register, 65,000 to 70,000 pages every year. There are, in addition, the United States Code (USC); statutes and regulations for all fifty states, five territories, and the Indian nations; court cases from federal and state courts; administrative decisions; revenue rulings and procedures; no-action letters; and a variety of other miscellaneous materials.

Plowing through this mass for that minute fraction one is interested in at the moment requires knowledge of its structure, an understanding of where relevant material is likely to be found, and knowledge of how it is indexed. This column will set forth the basics of the research process.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE LAW

Most law applicable to business activities comes from three basic sources--the legislature, the courts and administrative agencies such as Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (O.S.H.A.), etc. Each of these three sources has counterparts on both the federal and state level--the federal legislature is Congress, and, of course, each state, territory or Indian nation has an assembly or legislature. Similarly, there are federal courts, dealing with questions of federal law, and state, territorial and tribal courts, each dealing with legal disputes arising within its territorial or subject matter jurisdiction. Finally, there are federal and state regulatory agencies, which administer the technical administration of tax schemes, workplace rules, or other legal matters which require relatively detailed rules for adequate oversight.

TYPES OF LAW

Legislatures produce laws called statutes, adopted after public debate and a vote. Statutes are organized and numbered and placed in a set of volumes such as "Code of the United States" or "Colorado Revised Statutes" or the like. These are the preeminent law for most purposes. Courts look to the statutes of the jurisdiction in deciding a question, and are usually bound by them, although they do have some discretion in construing vague or conflicting statutes. A court may only overrule a statute when the court concludes that it is unconstitutional. Even in this case, however, the legislature can assert its supremacy by rewriting the statute so as to ad- . dress any constitutional infirmity, and thereby overrule the courts. So long as a statute is written in a constitutionally permissible fashion the courts are bound to follow its mandate. In addition, court decisions can be overruled (prospectively) by statute.

Regulatory agencies such as the I.R.S. produce laws called regulations, administratiue regulations, or rules. Rules and regulations are usually, but not always, codified in a fashion similar to that of statutes (e.g., "Nevada Administrative Code"). Regulations are of great interest to records managers, because they contain detailed requirements which businesses are required to follow, commonly including recordkeeping and records retention requirements.

In contrast to statutes, regulations are adopted without debate or public vote. Instead, the agency is required to notify the public of its intent to make rules in an area, allow the public to comment on the proposed rules, and then consider those comments prior to adopting the final rule. In some cases, the agency may also hold hearings to take evidence and comment from the public.

Publication of proposed rules, response to public comment and final rules take place in a publication called a register. The Federal Register is the federal version; it contains an assortment of proposed rules, notices, responses to comment, and final rules, all directed at the interested public by administrative agencies. Most states have a similar publication.

In addition to formal regulations, many agencies publish other things which, while not law, may be close to it, or at least important guidance on what the agency thinks the law says. The Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.), for example, publishes "no-action letters," in which it sets forth its position on various points of law. If a regulated party complies with the position set forth in the no-action letter, S.E.C. regards that party as in compliance with the law, and will not institute an action for noncompliance. The I.R.S. publishes similar materials in the form of "revenue rulings," "revenue procedures" and "private letter rulings." State Attorneys General also issue opinions which interpret law, and which are considered highly authoritative,

Regulatory agencies are created by, and completely bound by the mandates of their controlling legislation, and by any other legislation in that jurisdiction. The extent of the power granted by that legislation is the absolute limit of the agency's power. Any act by an agency contrary to a statute, or outside of its grant of authority, is void. Regulatory agencies are similarly bound by court decisions; agency rules are often struck down by courts.

Courts produce case decisions or opinions. Most published cases are those from appellate courts, which review the actions of trial courts and determine whether they complied with the law. A decision differs from a statute or a regulation--a statute or regulation is general in nature, in that it applies to, and is binding upon, the world at large, and under a variety of factual scenarios. In contrast, a decision is based upon the unique facts in front of the court in a particular lawsuit, which may be very narrow. In addition, it is usually binding only upon the parties in court--although other parties are now on notice that the courts deal with a certain set af facts in a given way, and lower courts in the jurisdiction are now bound by the ruling.

Decisions are collected into sets of volumes called reporters or reports. There are reporters for each state, and for federal courts. There are also a variety of specialized reports such as tax court reports, bankruptcy reports, and reports of administrative tribunals.

OFFICIAL VERSUS UNOFFICIAL

In many cases, the legal researcher is faced with a choice of sources for the same law. In addition to the official version, published by the state or federal government, there are often one or more unofficial versions, published by private companies. For example, the United States Code is published in its official version, The United States Code, by the federal government. There are, in addition, The United States Code Arlzotated and The United States Code Service, both private. A similar duplication exists for cases, state statutes, and in many cases, for regulations. In addition, many specialized compilations are published by private firms. For example, Prentice-Hall subsidiary Commerce Clearinghouse (CCH) publishes a wide variety of looseleaf services in such specialized areas as tax law and securities law. These looseleaf services pull together relevant laws from a wide variety of sources and jurisdictions, and place them in a single reference work, often along with extensive commentary.

In most cases, the privately published source is likely to be a better research tool than the official one. For example, the two private versions of the federal statutes contain extensive finding aids, annotations, citations to relevant cases, cross-referencing and other very valuable information, little of which is found in the official version. This holds true for case reporters and other unofficial compilations, as well. In addition (and rather surprisingly), the unofficial publication may be much more current than the official one.

Specialized services such as those from CCH significantly decrease the amount of material which must be sifted through. Rather than wading through the USC, CFR, and fifty states' worth of statutes and regulations, one has only to peruse one or two carefully indexed and organized volumes. Many materials, such as revenue rulings and no-action letters, can, for all practical purposes, only be found by reference to private services.

THE RESEARCH PROCESS

Prior to beginning research, one must first decide what to look for. The law is organized functionally, according to the activity regulated, not according to the class of person doing the activity. Thus, laws dealing with the driving of motor vehicles are to be found in a single area dealing with driving and traffic laws; laws dealing with automobile license taxes are to be found in an area dealing with the taxing of property.

The researcher will therefore not find all the law related to her organization in a single place. A furniture manufacturer cannot, for example, simply look up "furniture manufacturers" and expect to find all applicable laws dealing with employment, environment, tax, and so on, all as applied to furniture manufacturing. Instead, each of these areas must be researched separately, and bearing in mind that the laws may be written in a way that makes them applicable to a wide variety of businesses. Therefore, the first step in research is to identify each of the functional areas where the organization has activities. These are likely to number at least four or five; in the case of a large, complex organization, it could be many more.

For the novice researcher unfamiliar with the general organization of the law, it is a good idea to locate a set of CFRs and simply read the spines of the volumes in order to get a feel for the kinds of functional areas--agriculture, employment, taxation, transportation, environment, and so forth--to be found.

CODIFICATION SCHEMES AND CITATIONS

In order to organize laws and make it possible to find particular ones, it is necessary to codify them. That is, they are organized according to some topical scheme, and a numbering system is applied that attempts to give related laws similar numbers. A law or case is referred to or cited according to a standard scheme which references these numbers, and allows a law to be quickly and precisely located when its citation is known.

Although every jurisdiction has some type of functional organization for its laws, the precise codification can vary considerably. It is a wise idea to begin research by taking a few minutes to peruse the set of statutes or regulations from that jurisdiction and determine how they are organized. Those few minutes spent learning how a codification scheme is set up will save a great deal of time and frustration flipping through dozens of volumes.

Federal

The United States Code is organized into titles, under such headings as agriculture, taxation, protection of the environment, transportation, and so forth. The Code of Federal Regulations is also organized into titles, which roughly parallel the numbering and topics of the USC. Federal law is cited by title, compilation, and section number. Thus, section 1716 of title 28, United States Code, is cited as 28 USC sec 1716; section 556 of title 50, Code of Federal Regulations is cited as 50 CFR B sec 556. The Federal Register and some private looseleaf services are cited by volume or year, and page number. Thus, 60 FR 38456.

State

The physical organization of the statutes and regulations in the books varies considerably from state to state, and some of the schemes are not at all obvious to the newcomer. Further, some states, such as California and New York, have statute sets that run well over a hundred volumes. Although it is difficult to formulate a general rule in the face of this chaos, one can state some general principles.

There are two general schemes in use. One utilizes numbered titles or chapters, each title or chapter containing a single set of related topics. If the title is further divided into chapters or the like, each chapter is similarly topical. Thus, Title 28, Arizona Revised Statutes is transportation, Title 48, Georgia Code is revenue and taxation. These sets are cited by title or chapter, part or subchapter, and section. Sometimes, the section is cited immediately after the title or chapter. Thus, Title 18, Part 3, Section 207, Colorado Revised Statutes, is cited as 18-3-207, C.R.S.; Title 28, Section 1504, Arizona Revised Statutes is cited as 28-1504, A.R.S. Laws using this scheme are generally fairly easy to use--after looking up a topic in the index, one simply finds the appropriately numbered volume, and turns to the desired part and section. Since the titles are in consecutive numeric order, this is usually quite simple.

A variation of this scheme is to use consecutively numbered chapters throughout the entire statute set, with the section number added, usually after a decimal point. Thus, Minnesota Statutes chapter 541, section 7 is MS sec 541.07. Illinois uses a variation of this notion, but with a "/" instead of a decimal, and in addition, sometimes a second number after the /, separated from the first by a dash. Thus, 735 ILCS 5/13-202. Beware of numbers after decimal points--sometimes, these numbers are in normal, consecutive order--01, 02, ... 99, 100. Other times, however, the second operative digit serves, in effect, as a decimal--01, 011, 02, 021, 022, and so on.

The other general scheme uses volumes that are given topical titles, typically called codes, without a number for each code. For example, California has a Corporations Code, a Labor Code, and so forth. Within each of these topics, sections are numbered, either by section alone, or by chapter and by section. Thus, California Corporations Code section 771 is CC 771; Texas Tax Code chapter 153, section 63 is TTC 153.063.

Schemes using codes or similar devices can be maddening to the researcher unfamiliar with a particular scheme. After having located a topic in the index, one must then locate the appropriate code. The various codes may not be in alphabetical order, and the individual volumes are usually not numbered; thus one is forced to scan the spines of the entire set to find the needed volume. This is particularly aggravating due to the fact that some of the states using this approach (Texas, California, and New York) are also the states with some of the largest statute sets. In addition, the names of the codes are often printed so that the spines must be read sideways. Finally, the codes often represent schemes that are quite old; thus, the titles of the codes may represent topics that were of primary importance 150 or 200 years ago, not necessarily those of primary importance today. Scanning the volumes to find one which is likely to be an area of general interest is likely to produce mystification rather than enlightenment.

Individual states have their own unique difficulties. For example, many volumes in New York are quite slim, making them difficult to read, particularly after the volumes have become worn and the spine lettering deteriorates. On a well used set, the spine lettering is unreadable, and volumes must be pulled to see what they are. Beware of similar names--Texas has a "Civil Practice and Remedies Code" and "Civil Statutes," each several volumes long. Inattention here can result in a great deal of confusion when sections turn out to have totally different topics from the ones expected because one is in the wrong volume. California uses section numbers that are unrelated to the numbering of the complex structure within which the section is found--for example, R&TC & 12676 is found in Division 2, part 7, chapter 5, article 3 of the Revenue and Taxation Code. These long numbers are also easily confused with one another, again leading to much frustration.

Maryland is unique in that it has two operative statute sets--the Maryland Annotated Code (MAC), and the Maryland Code Annotated (MCA). MAC came first; some years ago, the state decided to recodify, and very gradually began repealing sections from the MAC and reenacting them in MCA. Thus, MAC is slowly being repealed in its entirety. In the meantime, however, parts of it are still law. When looking for something in Maryland, one must therefore check both sets. Something repealed from MAC may be reenacted in MCA. If something cannot be found in MCA, it may still be in MAC.

Regulations are generally organized in a manner similar to that of statutes. The chief difference is that the organization is likely to be poorer, and thus research somewhat more difficult.

Court cases

Court decisions are placed in reports (the official version) or reporters (the privately published version). These are chronological--each new volume contains the decisions announced since the last volume, in announcement order. If the reporter contains cases from more than one state, the cases are segregated by state within each volume. Many states and the federal government (for the Supreme Court) publish official reports for their cases. These are usually named by jurisdiction, followed by "Reports--Supreme Court Reports, New York Reports, etc. In addition, West Publishing Co. publishes a nationwide series of reporters covering all state and federal jurisdictions. These have names such as the Federal Reporter, Federal Supplement, Southwest Reporter, Pacific Reporter, and so on. Many of these reporters have accumulated so many volumes that numbering has begun again, under the designation of a new series of the same reporter. The Federal Reporter, for example, has about 200 volumes in the first series, 999 in the second series, and more than 60 in the third series, for a total of nearly 1,300 plump volumes. Cases are cited by volume number, reporter name and page number. Thus, AKiona versus the United States, found at volume 938, page 158 of the Federal Reporter, second series, is cited as Akiona v. United States, 938 F.2d 158.

Case research is an example of something that requires a thorough understanding of research technique. Although time consuming and inefficient, it is at least possible to find statutes by reading the spines of volumes and flipping pages inside. It is completely impossible to find case law in this manner; there are just too many volumes and too many pages, they all look exactly alike, and the cases are in chronological, not topical, order. The case you need could be anywhere.

After finding a case, it is necesary to determine if it has been overruled. This is done by use of a Citator, known as Shepard's Citations. These volumes, in sets corresponding to the West Reporter series, list every reported case by citation, and beneath each citation list every subsequent case in which it appears. Coded letters then indicate whether the subsequent case follows, questions or overrules the listed case.

Citators, like other legal materials, are periodically updated with cumulative soft supplements. In addition to the hard bound volume, there is usually a yellow soft bound supplement, and often a newsprint supplement. Since the hard volume may be several years old, a citation may not be in it. Once the citation has been located, each newer supplement (softbound or newsprint) must also be checked to find the latest history on a case.

Supplements and Updating

Through time, the law changes. Therefore, it is necessary to update any set of legal materials periodically. Bound volumes are expensive to replace; therefore, most statute sets are supplemented by means of either "pocket parts" or supplement volumes. A pocket part is a soft supplement to a volume, inserted into a flap inside the back cover to the volume. A supplement volume is a separate soft cover volume placed next to its corresponding hard bound volume. Both of these supplements are cumulative. Each year, a new one is published which incorporates new changes in addition to all the changes found in the old supplement, and the previous year's supplement is discarded. Eventually, the supplement becomes so large that a new hard bound volume is published, incorporating all changes, and the process starts over.

When a law is located in the bound volume, one must always check the supplement to make sure the latest version of the law has been located. If there is no supplement, and the bound volume is not very new, the possibility exists that the supplement has been misplaced. In sets using pocket parts, when no supplement is needed there is normally a card inserted into the back cover flap, stating that there is no pocket part. Unfortunately, in sets using separate supplement volumes, no such safeguard exists. Check with the librarian if you suspect a supplement is missing.

At least one statute set, Oregon's, as well as the CFR, are updated by replacing the volumes each year. Rather than printing expensive hard bound volumes, the laws are placed into relatively cheap soft cover volumes. Last year's volume is simply replaced in its entirety by the new volume. This simplifies the research process, since there is only one place to look.

The CFR is color coded by year. This year's volumes may be gray; they are replaced throughout the year with next year's volumes, which may be green. Thus, any set of CFRs will be a mixture of the two, with perhaps even a sprinkling of a third color from a prior year in areas where there a few changes.

A third approach to updating, used in one or two states for statutes, commonly for state regulations, and in many private services, is to use looseleaf binders, and replace individual pages or sections as needed. In theory, this system is advantageous. The individual pages are cheap to print, and one need only look in a single place to find the current version of a law. In practice, however, dificulties arise. The process of interfiling large numbers of pages is tedious, leading to the possibility that pages will be misfiled. Many of the binders are also very awkward to use, because they do not open very well. This encourages the practice of taking out pages in order to photocopy them, and pages may not get back to the right place. When pages are misfiled, they may well be impossible to locate.

Court cases are published in chronological order; the volumes are simply numbered consecutively. Therefore, the latest cases in a set are always in the volume with the highest number. For very important courts such as the United States Supreme Court, the hard bound edition is preceded in the library by a temporary soft edition, in order to get the cases to libraries very quickly.

Indexes and Finding Aids

Often, the researcher is not in possession of the citation for a desired law, so some other device must be used to find it. Finding relevant laws by simply taking a volume and examining it page by page would be a dreary and time-consuming task indeed (although there are occasions where this is the only effective method of finding something). Therefore, every set of legal materials comes with an index or other finding aid. These come in several varieties--the most common is the topical index, where the indexer attempts to index each law according to its subject matter. Others include common name tables, where one can look up a law by name (e.g., Clean Air Act) and word and phrases lists, where one can find the location of words that may be in specific laws (e.g., "specific performance"). The CFR has a "List of Sections Affected" (LSA), which (in theory) lists the Federal Register citation for every amendment to the CFR up to the date of the LSA. All of these finding aids can be of use, but every one has limitations, and the quality varies greatly.

Indexes are inherently problematic. Every section in a compilation must necessarily be signaled by two or perhaps three index levels, each consisting of one or two words. Within the space of these few words, the indexer must take the researcher from a very general topic to a very specific one, a process which may be very difficult to accomplish with pinpoint accuracy. Thus, the index may only lead to a string of citations, each of which must then be read.

In addition, every index is somewhat subjective--are fire extinguishers listed under "safety equipment," "fire prevention," "fire extinguishers" or all three? The researcher must play a guessing game with the indexer, as she tries to determine what word or phrase the indexer used for a particular topic. The researcher should be conscious of the existence of synonyms. "Statutes oflimitation," "limitations of action" and "liberative prescriptions" are all the same thing, and any of these terms could be used by an indexer.

Many indexes, even when they use precise terms, do not attempt to pinpoint the location of a provision. For example, the index to the CFR commonly cites to title and part number, not to an individual section number. The researcher may therefore be forced to scan the entire part, or at least the table of contents at the beginning of the part, to find the provision of interest.

The Federal Register presents a unique case. It does not have an index as such. Instead, each issue contains a cumulative list of CFR parts and agencies affected that month, and a similar list for that day. Thus, in order to research updates to regulations in the Federal Register manually, the researcher must first consult the CFR and find the title and part likely to contain the desired regulation, use the cumulative list to identify each occurrence of a revision to that part for each month since the effective date of the relevant CFR volume, and then scan every such occurrence to determine if the section in question has been revised.

Cases are indexed by means of publications called digests, each digest corresponding to a reporter. These are organized topically, according to a scheme developed by West Publishing. This scheme includes several dozen broad areas, each further subdivided into further sub-areas, which number in the hundreds. Every case which is published in a West reporter is then indexed according to this scheme. Since appellate cases often involve multiple issues, a case may be indexed in a number of areas. Each topic and a brief analysis are listed in a headnote at the beginning of the case, and a short, one paragraph analysis of the issue is listed in the digest under the appropriate topic. Research then proceeds in either of two ways. When starting from scratch, one scans the topic list at the front of the digest, and attempts to find a topic (and hopefully subtopic) which matches the issue of interest. That topic is then looked up and case synopses scanned until promising cases are found. Cases can then be pulled and read, until the area has been thoroughly covered. If the researcher is already in possession of a case (including one found using the above method), the process is much easier. One looks at the headnotes, finds the issue of interest, and notes its index topic name and number (e.g., homicide 483.2). One then goes straight to homicide 483.2 in the digest, and all cases containing the same issue can now be scanned. Since the system is uniform throughout the United States (and bearing in mind that this only works for West reporters), every jurisdiction can be searched under this same topic and number. The chief weakness of this system is that often the synopses under a subtopic are virtually identical. When looking for a particular fact pattern, the researcher must laboriously pull and read cases until a suitable one is found.

Research Strategy

The first step in research is to determine the area of interest. This may involve several steps. If the question is one of legal requirements for employment records, for example, it may then be necessary to ask additional questions: Are there unemployment compensation tax issues? Wage and hour issues? Employment discrimination lawsuits? All of the above?

Each of these issues may lead to a different place. Therefore, it is important that this thought process be fully developed. It need not all be done up front--having identified an issue, one can begin research, and identify further issues as the research proceeds.

The next step is to determine whether the area being researched is regulated by the federal government, the states, or both. This may involve attempting research on state and federal levels and seeing what turns up, or it may involve discussions with the personnel who deal with regulators, to determine whom they deal with. Many areas--employment, tax, environment, to name a few---are regulated on both state and federal levels.

There are several points to keep in mind while doing the research. Unfortunately, neither the writing of the law, nor the indexing, was done with records management in mind. Within the area of interest, there may be sections entitled "records and reports" or the like, and a first step is to see if such a topic is listed (e.g., Banks/duties of banks/records and reports). However, many, perhaps most, recordkeeping provisions are neither indexed nor captioned as such. Instead, the recordkeeping language is found buried in the middle of a section containing a variety of other provisions, indexed and captioned in some manner that gives little or no clue as to the existence of a recordkeeping provision. In the CFR in particular, even when a section has been devoted to recordkeeping requirements, there are often additional requirements buried within the surrounding sections which do not show up on any index. Thus, one must search the entire relevant text (e.g., the Banking Act of some state), so that the needed provisions do not slip by unnoticed.

This is an area where experience saves a great deal of time and frustration. Familiarity with a particular scheme allows intelligent guesses as to where, and under what terminology, the relevant provisions are to be found. Is it "banking" or "finance," "taxation" or "assessment?" The novice looks up every one of a long string of provisions under finance, and learns a great deal about financing special districts, municipal bonds, and the treasury general fund.

The experienced researcher knows that Title 38 is devoted entirely to government financing, and skips all citations to Title 38. She also knows that there are a variety of standard synonyms for recordkeeping requirements ("keep," maintain," "retain," etc. and "files," "books," "logs," etc.), and standard places where recordkeeping provisions are hidden. Thus, she knows she can safely skip the provisions outlining the duties and organization of the state banking board, and go straight to the provisions dealing with the duties of banks. Once there, the trained eye quickly spots the relevant language.

Remember that relevant laws may be found in more than one place. Wage and hour records, for example, are likely to be regulated by the federal Department of Labor, at least one state wage and hour agency, a state unemployment compensation agency, and probably some taxing authorities. Each of these entities is likely to have at least one recordkeeping law, and the laws will not be in the same location, often not in the same compilation. Research should not stop upon discovery of a single relevant law.

When do I stop?

The legal researcher is usually faced with the question of how to know whether she has found everything, and often lives in dread of the possibility that some crucial law or case was overlooked. The answer here is that it is often not possible to be 100% certain--there are simply too many thousands of pages of laws which must be searched, and the available finding aids are all very imperfect. One would certainly like to find everything that is relevant; however, notwithstanding the justifiable temptation to conclude otherwise, not every record is regulated--there may not be as much as had been anticipated. If the researcher does not have a good feel for the process, and for what is likely to be there, research can continue long past the point of being productive.

Legal research thus presents a conflict between efficiency and inclusiveness. The more tightly one searches--by limiting the number of terms, jurisdictions, or other parameters searched--the more quickly one is done. However, this also increases the likelihood that relevant laws will be missed. On the other hand, the more broadly one searches, the more likely it is that everything relevant will be found. However, large numbers of citations which are irrelevant will also be produced, thus wasting time. There is no perfect balance here--experience, available time, and need for accuracy all play a part in determining how it will ultimately be struck.

ELECTRONIC RESEARCH

A discussion of legal research would not be complete without a mention of electronic research.

There are two national legal databases, Westlaw and Lexis, available via modem, and a variety of smaller or regional databases available on CD-ROM. The two national databases are vast in scope; in addition to statutes, regulations and cases, they contain law review articles, public documents and records, news articles, and a huge variety of other material. The smaller databases vary in scope; they may consist of as little as a single state's case law.

Research on these databases is, to some extent, similar to researching in a library; one can use citations, indexes and other standard tools for finding relevant laws. There is, however, a powerful additional tool available--the KWIC (key word in context) search. One can, for example, search the CFR and find every instance where the word "maintain" is located within 10 words of the word "records." This can quickly produce large numbers of potentially relevant citations.

Although electronic databases are a powerful tool, they are not a panacea. The issue of efficiency versus inclusiveness is highly important; an overly broad search can easily produce thousands of citations; an excessively narrow one may produce nothing. Experience and good judgment are vital.

Databases with connect time charges can also be very expensive. Connect time on Westlaw or Lexis can run several hundred dollars an hour, depending on the number of jurisdictions and databases searched. It is vital that the researcher be thoroughly familiar with the workings of the database, and have a research strategy carefully worked out, prior to signing on to the database.

Notwithstanding all of the above caveats, the records manager should not avoid going to the law library and trying some research. Although initially daunting, legal research can be done very effectively by nonlawyers. Mastery of it can also be highly satisfying and rewarding. Records management is, after all, an activity with strong legal implications. The greater the records manager's familiarity with the law, and the greater her expertise in finding it, the more effective she will be in her primary functions.

Copyright Association of Records Managers and Administrators Inc. Jan 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved