Long gone is the time when attorneys enter a dusty room with staggering bookcases to find newest version of a statute or the situation that will stand out the judge. Decades ago, legal work was a time-consuming process that required long days and nights buried in a law library. While Internet and digitization of books came significant advances and changes in legal resources. Now, the that provides these modern tools may be as big, if not bigger, than a fraction of the largest law firms in the national.
Attorneys in the modern age have regarding comprehensive indexes of cases and statutes with a simple click of a button. These databases and research hubs are operated by its big companies that staff hundreds or thousands of employees to seen the latest cases which can be published, usually by the state or federal court. The employees then provide summaries of the cases, which highlight the best themes or rulings. In addition, these digital databases offer numerous resources beyond cases and regulations. They also contain secondary sources such as law review articles that analyze certain topics in the law or treatises, are usually respected summaries of certain areas of law.
One of an excellent aspects of persuasive legal writing is 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 since 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 project gets done by the legal resource manufacturer.
These advances in legal research tools have dramatically changed the size and existence of legal libraries all a fair distance. In the past, every respectable law firm, courthouse, legal aid center, and law school had large varieties of their buildings concentrated on storing books. Now, many of these institutions have dramatically cut down over the size of physical legal books an incident books. Some may retain a small portion of their previous collection as ornaments rather than practical resources.
One realm which has not been dramatically impacted by these modern innovations may be the research of legislative history, such as looking at the first sort versions of legislation or determining the intent of federal government in drafting the law. Much of this information is unavailable digitally or online, likely because of the sheer volume among the work and the relatively low demand by attorneys. For everyone resources, legal act researchers must turn for the old fashion approach of going any state or federal library, requesting data in advance, and sitting down and reading.