Every summer that I taught the law firm summer associates legal research class I reminded them that the telephone was a research tool.
Yesterday, a friend IM’d me to ask where to find some statistics related to a specific public service. I did not know for sure that the statistics would be available online. What I did know is someone who worked with the public service.
So…I picked up the phone, made a call to my expert resource and within minutes I knew that the data was collected but that a requestor would need to contact the public service department.
I emailed my friend this information with the warning that a specific geographic area would need to be defined or the open records request would might get lost in the shuffle.
What is your secret weapon of research? Do you network with people across industries to be sure you have an ace in the hole?
Posted by answermaven 
