With approximately 30,000 new judicial decisions rendered each year and at least 10,000 new statutes annually enacted, it is obvious that the law is in a constant state of flux and change. It would seem to be a perverse truism of legal research that the one opinion or statute which serves as the critical linchpin of the lawyer's argument, will, unless carefully checked, prove to have been just overturned, reversed, modified, or repealed, thus rendering his entire memorandum or brief worthless.
Fortunately, an ingenious method of avoiding such problems has been developed through the use of Shepard's Citations, indexes which list the citation to every published opinion followed by the citation of every later published decision citing that opinion. These indexes are kept current with pamphlet supplements, and through them the lawyer may quickly verify the current status of a case or a statute to determine whether it is still effective law or whether its authority has been diminished or destroyed. It is imperative that every legal citation in a legal document prepared by the researcher be Shepardized to ascertain its current status and relevance.
In addition, Shepardizing a case or statute enables the researcher to trace the judicial treatment and history of cases and the judicial construction and legislative history of the statutes he is using, and thus discloses many later, additional cases that might otherwise never be discovered. Through the use of Shepard's Citations, the researcher may discover every opinion that has cited a given ease or statute, thus giving him immediate access to how a law or legal principle has been analyzed and interpreted.
Statutes are of mandatory authority in the jurisdiction where enacted. Although statutes, like judicial opinions, are published chronologically in separate volumes, there are also unofficial compilations by topic, such as in the United States Code Annotated. Through detailed indexes the researcher is led to the particular sections dealing with his area of concern. Such compilations are often annotated with court decisions construing, interpreting, and applying the various statutory sections, with statements of the legislative history of the laws, and with references to other treatise sections concerned with the statute and how it has been construed. As with court opinions, all statutes relied upon or cited in a legal document should be Shepardized to verify their current status and also to locate cases which have dealt with them.
With the growth of administrative agencies since the Second World War, the orders, regulations and decisions of federal and state agencies have played an increasingly important role in a lawyer's work. If a legal problem could conceivably fall within the ambit of an agency's jurisdiction, it would be necessary to survey the relevant decisions and rulings of that agency, be it the Internal Revenue Service or a state public utilities commission.
Another legal encyclopedia is Words and Phrases, an encyclopedia of definitions of legally significant words including citations to, and abstracts of, cases that have interpreted or construed the words and phrases.
The American Law Reports (A.L.R.) contains selected, significant judicial opinions followed by thorough, often exhaustive, annotations or discussions of the law of the case. For example, there is a 53-page annotation at 83 A.L.R. 3d 458 concerning "Dissolution of Corporation on Grounds of Intracorporate Deadlock or Dissension," and a 113-page annotation at 55 A.L.R. 2d 6 entitled "Implied or Apparent Authority of an Agent to Purchase or Order Goods or Merchandise." When the lawyer discovers an on-point annotation through the indexes to A.L.R., A.L.R. 2d, A.L.R. 3d or A.L.R. Federal, he will have access to a detailed analysis of the current law in all states on the particular problem, the general principles of law deduced from the case and their exceptions, limitations, qualifications, distinctions and applications, and citations to on-point cases from all states. It might be noted that there are few United States Supreme Court cases annotated in A.L.R. since they are annotated in the Lawyers' Edition of the United States Supreme Court Reporter.
Treatises, such as Corbin on Contracts, Prosser on Torts, Davis on Administrative Law, and Wigmore on Evidence, are narrowly focused on particular areas of the law, but like legal encyclopedias present a detailed review of that particular area. There are numerous treatises on a multitude of substantive and procedural legal topics; they may be located through a law library's card catalogue system or by browsing in the treatise alcove. Although their quality varies, courts often place considerable reliance on the discussion of peculiar developments of the law presented in leading treatises by eminent scholars, and all can prove helpful in making comprehensible an unfamiliar legal topic. Similarly, a relevant law review article, which may be located through the Index to Legal Periodicals, may prove to be useful in gaining deeper insight into a legal problem.
Depending upon the depth to which a lawyer wishes to pursue a problem or the novelty of the problem he is researching, there is a host of other more specialized primary and secondary sources he may wish to consult, in addition to a world of non-legal scholarship if the lawyer wishes to take a more eclectic approach to a legal problem and examine, for example, the social and economic consequences of laws and legal policies. In general, the degree to which a lawyer chooses to research a problem will depend on how much time he can bring to his work and how quickly he becomes convinced of the solidity of his grasp of the relevant law.
The key to unlocking the secrets of a law library and the techniques of legal research is to go into the law library and start "bouncing off the walls"-to take free moments to wander up and down the aisles, to go to the case digests, skim through them, and see how they operate, to use them to look up a case that is to be read for the next day, to try to locate on-point opinions from the jurisdiction in which the student expects to practice, to determine if a decision has been reversed or modified and how frequently it has been cited, to look up a statute on a subject of interest to the student, to thumb through the principal primary and secondary sources until it becomes obvious how they are set up and organized-in other words, to become as familiar as possible with the diverse and extensive range of resources a law library contains.
Similarly, to pick up the special methods and styles of legal writing and to see how legal research is set forth in writing, the first-year student will want to become a regular reader of law review articles and notes. A good starting point might be either the law review of his law school or a law review which covers the law of the state in which he expects to practice.
Thoroughness, speed, and above all, accuracy are the qualities the researcher must bring to his work. The need for meticulous accuracy and perfection in legal research cannot be over-stressed. Whether a research problem involves an analysis of a single case, the application of a settled legal doctrine to a new set of facts, or the development of a creative or novel legal solution to a unique factual pattern, the opportunities for the researcher to go astray are legion. Every lawyer must have at least one personal story of a critical case overlooked, an opinion misconstrued, a statute misread, or a document not carefully proofread, with disastrous results. Charles Evans Hughes, while clerking in 1883 in the New York City firm of Chamberlain, Carter ik Hornblower, had just such an experience which years later stood out vividly in his memory even after his successful careers as a prominent lawyer, Governor of New York, Supreme Court Justice, Secretary of State, a member of the World Court, and Chief Justice of the United States.
Mr. Hornblower [a senior partner of the firm] was in the midst of a vexatious litigation over the assets of an insolvent firm and he was opposed by one E. Payson Wilder, a terror of the New York bar. Hornblower and Wilder were up and down in the courts, fighting savagely with motions, appeals, etc. Wilder never failed to begin his argument by saying-"My friend, Mr. Blowhomer, I beg pardon, Mr. Hornblower," which would make the latter livid with rage. On a certain Friday, Mr. Hornblower, leaving for his place in the country, left with Bovvers [the managing clerk] the proof of a brief which was to be printed and in readiness on Monday morning. Mr. Hornblower had a liking for emphatic printing and used italics, capitals and boldface freely. In this brief, he reached the summit of his argument in an outstanding line, "And the firm paid seven thousand dollars in CASH." On Monday morning, the brief neatly printed was on his desk, but soon we heard his quick step down the hall and he appeared at the clerk's door so full of wrath that he could hardly speak. He pointed to the climax in his brief, which to our amazement and horror read, "And the firm paid seven thousand dollars in COAL." Bowers and I did not know which of us was responsible for this egregious error, whether it was due to a misreading of Mr. Hornblower's script or to a failure to catch the mistake in print, and we both took Hornblower's unsparing denunciation with abject humility and contrition. Thenceforth, I was the most careful of proofreaders, quite sure that the mistake most likely to be overlooked would be on the title page or in some conspicuous place where it would stand out like a monument."
As Hughes learned, eternal vigilance is the price of accuracy. The greatest care must be exercised during every stage of legal research.
In that legal writing deals with the practical skills that will have immediate application in any type of law-related work, prospective employers will in many instances be more interested in what grade the student received in his legal writing course than in any other course. The student will therefore want to devote as much time to preparing the assigned memoranda and briefs or to preparing for oral argument as will be necessary to perform to the best of his abilities. Often an employer will ask for a sample of the student's legal writing. A well-prepared memo or brief can be a strong selling point. The student will of course wish to keep a copy of all of his legal writings for these purposes, duplicating the original before it is turned in and marked up by his professor. Similarly, when the student decides whether to join any extracurricular law school activities, it should be kept in mind that those activities which stress legal research, legal writing, and advocacy skills-such as work on a law review or legal journal (the scholarly legal periodicals of the legal profession prepared at every law school by the top students of the upper classes), or participation in a moot court competition (which involves preparation of briefs and participation in an oral argument on a fictitious legal issue. usually with one or more professors acting as the judge)-will be viewed most favorably by prospective employers as further evidence of the student's working knowledge, as opposed to purely academic knowledge, of the law. Again, a copy of any legal writing the student has done should be kept and submitted with the student's resume as a sample of his best work.
There is little disagreement that whatever time the student can devote to becoming acquainted with the tools of legal research will be profitably spent, for proficiency in the law invariably depends on access to its resources and an ability to mine from those resources the pure gold of legal principles.
Conclusion
In their less guarded moments, law professors have been known to admit that out of each entering class, there will be only several students who really enjoy their law school experience. For the rest, a legal education is somewhat like military service: something that at best is endured.
Unfortunately, this estimate would indeed seem to be a close approximation of the truth. Lord Chancellor Eldon's proverbial advice to law students that the only way to become barristers was to "make up their minds to live like hermits and work like horses" captures something of the total commitment the student must make to his work. Nevertheless, although the pace of law school is fast and the amount of ground to be covered enormous, although the student will probably work harder in law school than he ever has before, and although the work can become repetitious and tedious on some occasions during the three years, there is nothing inherent in a legal education that should prevent it from being a challenging, stimulating, and enjoyable experience.
"The law school," it has been said by the eminent legal scholar Bernard Schwartz, "remains the only place where most lawyers have an opportunity to think about the law in anything like the grand manner." By understanding the requirements and demands of a legal education, and so avoiding much of the initial confusion and uncertainty associated with beginning law school, the student can immediately apply his full talents to his work and achieve a successful law school record. He will also have the opportunity to appreciate more keenly and enjoy more completely the challenge and excitement that should be a part of a successful legal education.
