I have been teaching legal research for more than 42 years. At times, I long for the easy days of teaching this fascinating subject. The days when you just needed to help students learn about the print tools of the legal trade—primary sources, the great secondary sources, and the helpful finding aids. Today, all of these sources of legal information can be found in print and electronic formats with many completely new legal research tools like Case text and Ravel muscling onto the scene. Experience has convinced me that teaching the basics is what matters most moving forward. All research tools are ever changing, even the print. So, what do students graduating in 2015—students who are likely to practice for 50 years—need to know about legal research today and tomorrow? Nothing will be the same in even 2 years or even tomorrow! Mastering how to use specific legal research tools is less important today because the details of use will change continually. Instead, developing a way of legal research problem-solving is the future and will need to stand the test of time. I like to think about legal research as a complex jigsaw puzzle. The border pieces of the puzzle are the tasks we must complete in order to find an answer to a research problem. Once the border pieces have been fit together, the inside pieces must be found, then turned to fit into place—like knowing the details of how to select and effectively use the best research tool. Let’s start with the border. Jigsaw puzzle veterans know it is always easier to fit the other pieces into place once the borders or edges have been found. But wait, with so many changes in legal information sources, are there any border pieces that we may confidently say will still be available now and in the future? The answer is YES! Known border pieces include There are other border pieces we could put in our students’ hands to provide a framework so they can work with the inside pieces of the puzzle. I like to think of these other border pieces as a checklist of tasks that must be completed to solve the research problem. The checklist I like was framed by Professor Marjorie Rombauer in her seminal work, Legal Problem Solving. Essentially, there are five steps to the research process. They do not dictate exactly which tools you select, but together they remind a researcher of tasks they must complete before any problem can be solved. Helping students learn to find and recognize the pieces and put together the puzzle is our task as legal research professors, starting with the border pieces. And while most of us find it imperative to be sure students know how to use today’s tools in an effective way (the inside pieces of the puzzle), we really must concentrate more on the border pieces if we want them to succeed. To teach the border piece basics, I continue to refine the learning objectives in my research courses to concentrate on: The difference between a novice and an expert is that the expert recognizes the patterns. We can help our students become the experts, to learn techniques and strategies that will help them over a fifty-year career to manage the legal research they need to serve their clients. But only if we help them discover and fit together the border pieces of the legal research puzzle. 3