Vitality

This week the 1Ls were trained on the three big legal research programs: LexisNexis, Bloomberg Law, and Westlaw. Each of these programs has a Bingham Canyon Mine-like trove of information waiting to be delved into. If I hadn't been sitting down for the training, it would have been staggering. Each program also has one or two dozen features for finding, noting, saving, and collecting information. It’s really cool.

From the perspective of a 1L, it’s also overwhelming.

But it drove home a point that was made last week in the Newport News Stake Conference. My Stake President spoke of how life used to be a choice between the important and the unimportant. It used to be enough to recognize something as significant or productive; if the item or event met that standard, it was worth spending time on. But, he suggested, that is no longer the case. Now we are faced with choosing between what is important and what is vital.

The tendency these days is toward more: deeper and broader research, comprehensive coverage, wider authority. As I was listening to the research program presentations, I wondered, “How in the world am I supposed to learn and use all of this information, when it’s all I can do sometimes to keep up with my reading for class?” The answer, of course, is that I’m not supposed to use every bit of data and every tool I've been offered. The key is to use the best tools to sift through the millions of bits of information at my fingertips and find those bits that are vital to my work. Then to leave the rest alone. That itself is a daunting task, but not a jawbreaker.

Strength is not found in “more.” Strength is found in that which is vital. Or to put it another way, that which brings vitality and life.

And as it is in legal research, so it is in life. There are things which are vital that cannot be left undone. That’s not to say there's no time for the good and significant and important. There may even be lots of time for those things. But the vital things are what make life the strongest and richest.

In other news:

• I saw a squirrel try to hide behind its tail by flicking the tail around as if were a cloak (it didn't quite make the squirrel invisible);
• I was happily caught in a shower of autumn leaves on my way to school one morning (other than that, it’s mostly been too warm and green to feel like fall); and
• I learned you can’t sue the devil and his helpers (among other reasons for dismissal, there’s no way to deliver the summons).