Long gone are the days when attorneys pretty a dusty room with staggering bookcases to find the latest version of a statute or the case that will win over the judge. Decades ago, legal act work was a time-consuming process that required long days and nights buried in the law library. With the Internet and digitization of books came significant advances and changes in legal resources. Now, the field that provides these modern tools is often as big, if not bigger, than many largest law firms in the country.
Attorneys in modern day age have use of comprehensive indexes of cases and statutes with a simple click of the mouse. These databases and research hubs are operated by a number companies that staff hundreds or thousands of employees to seen the latest cases which usually published, usually using the state or federal court. The employees then provide summaries of the cases, which highlight the most important themes or rulings. In addition, these digital databases offer numerous resources beyond cases and laws. They also contain secondary sources such as law review articles that analyze certain topics in the law or treatises, that respected summaries of certain areas of law.
One of the most important aspects of persuasive legal writing may be the citation of cases that are current and still good law. That means there cannot be subsequent cases that overturn or negatively affect the holding reached in the original case. This task used to be accomplished by the time-consuming process of cross-referencing and reading extra cases. However, with these modern digital databases, the work gets done by the legal resource agency.
These advances in legal research tools have dramatically changed the size and existence of legal libraries all across the globe. In the past, every respectable law firm, courthouse, legal aid center, and law school had large amount of their buildings dedicated in storing books. Now, many of these institutions have dramatically cut down across the size of physical legal books an accidents books. Some may retain a small portion of their previous collection as ornaments rather than practical resources.
One realm offers not been dramatically impacted by these modern innovations could be the research of legislative history, such as looking at the earlier versions of legislation or determining the intent of brand new in drafting legislation. Much of this information is unavailable digitally or online, likely because with the sheer volume of your work and the relatively low demand by attorneys. For any resources, legal researchers must turn to the old fashion approach of going to a state or federal library, requesting the data in advance, and sitting down and reading.