ABSTRACT
To most nonlawyers, legal research seems to consist principally of two species of work. Either lawyers are collecting and organizing old precedents, so that judges can accurately perpetuate the follies of their predecessors; or they are engaged in a priori debate over such questions as how much free speech, or how much privacy, is good for you. Certainly many attorneys busy themselves with such tasks, but to a substantial extent the public confuses the way in which lawyers talk to each other with the substance of what they are doing.
