Introduction to Secondary Resources

This CALI lesson will provide an overview of secondary resources used in legal research. Secondary resources are books and other material ABOUT legal subjects and issues: they discuss and explain primary resources such as cases and statutes and can be useful in assisting our understanding about specific areas of law. The student will learn about the different types of secondary resources and what secondary resources are most useful for specific types of legal research tasks.

Primary vs. Secondary Legal Resources

There are two broad classes of materials used in legal research: primary resources and secondary resources.

Primary resources are those documents created by government bodies which have the force of law. Examples of primary resources are cases decided by courts, statutes passed by legislative bodies, and regulations passed by executive agencies.

Primary resources are often printed by government printing offices. The United States Reports, the official publication containing text of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and the Code of Federal Regulations, the compilation of federal executive rules and regulations, are two examples of federal primary resources that are published by the federal government.

Sometimes governments will authorize a commercial vendor to publish a primary resource and designate that publication as the official version of that resource. For example, many state codes are published by commercial companies. The legislatures in most of those states have designated the commercial editions of the state code as being the official compilation of statutes for that state.

Sometimes commercial publishers will publish their own version of a primary resource without any official authorization of the government. The U.S.C.A. (United States Code Annotated), published by the West Group, is one example of this. It is a commercial version of the U.S.C., the compilation of federal statutes published by the federal government. Even though commercial publications like these are not official, we still consider them primary resources because, except for the occasional typographical error, the text of the actual legal information will be the same in both the official and the unofficial versions of these primary resources.

By contrast, secondary resources are materials writtenabout the law and which assist our understanding of primary legal resources. There are many types of secondary legal resources available. No matter what legal issue you are working on, you can probably find a secondary resource that can help you.

Perhaps you have used one of the many study aids such as Emmanuel's Outlines, Legalines, and titles like Civil Procedure in a Nutshell. These are all secondary resources. If you've used them you know what they do: they explain and assist your understanding of the primary legal resources you are studying - the cases and statutes contained and discussed in your course books.

Secondary resources are generally published by commercial vendors. The titles we will look at in this lesson are all commercial publications. But the government also publishes useful information about areas of law that can be considered a type of secondary resource. For example, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice publishes a pamphlet, A Guide to Disability Rights Laws, that is a good overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal laws related to disabilities. That is one example of a government-published secondary resource.

Why Use Secondary Resources?

Secondary resources are useful even after law school. Most practicing lawyers routinely encounter legal issues and questions involving points of law with which they are unfamiliar. A personal injury lawyer who finds himself researching an obscure area of tax law might initially be as confused as many law students are when they first encounter concepts like the Rule Against Perpetuities in their property course.

To see how secondary resources can be useful, let's look at a hypothetical research question.

Why Use Secondary Resources? Case Hypothetical

As a summer clerk or a new lawyer, let's say you are given this legal issue to research: