Long gone are the days when attorneys walk into a dusty room with staggering bookcases to find if you version of a statute or circumstance that will wow the judge. Decades ago, legal work was a time-consuming process that required long days and nights buried within a law library. While Internet and digitization of books came significant advances and changes in legal resources. Now, this industry that provides these modern tools may be as big, if not bigger, than a fraction of the largest law firms in the country.
Attorneys in contemporary age have regarding comprehensive indexes of cases and statutes with a simple click of a button. These databases and research hubs are operated by some of companies that staff hundreds or hundreds of thousands of employees to what is latest cases are usually published, usually your 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 statutes. 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 Indian law library.
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 did not have 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, task gets done through legal resource company.
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 round the size of physical legal books and case books. Some may retain a small portion of their previous collection as ornaments rather than practical resources.
One realm that has not been dramatically impacted by these modern innovations will be the research of legislative history, such as looking at the last versions of a law or determining the intent of brand new in drafting legislation. Much of this information is unavailable digitally or online, likely because for this sheer volume in the work and the relatively low demand by attorneys. For those resources, legal researchers must turn to the old fashion approach of going with a state or federal library, requesting the data in advance, and sitting down and reading.