These two new titles, both by North American authors, address parallel topics with very different approaches: Bryan Carson's book is an explanation of the US legal system, while John Eaton's “is primarily a bibliography” of English law.
John Eaton's book is, in fact, a series of 97 bibliographies for different areas of law, amounting to 172 pages. After a two page introduction, the book goes straight into the first of these. The topics are listed alphabetically from ‘Accounting Law’ to ‘Wills and Probate’. Each bibliography is preceded by a two paragraph introduction setting out the legislative background to the topic. Any sub-topics are also listed.
As the author notes there is no evaluation of the sources other than their inclusion; the work is “a compendium of relevant works rather than a review as I am not familiar with each of them”, so the reader has to take their own risks to a certain extent.
Each bibliography shows, at a glance, the type of readership to which each book is aimed; e.g. practitioners of law, law student, non-lawyer, and provides the date of the latest edition or an indication that the book is a looseleaf or that it is an annual publication.
Eaton states that, “To researchers not based in the UK it will provide a helpful guide to the basics of many English legal topics and direction toward a range of instructive texts; to those based in the UK it may provide vital as a current and useful bibliographic listing of English law.” Does the book achieve these aims?
The bibliographies are very specific, separating data protection from copyright from intellectual property (for example), making it easy to look for books on very specific topics. Where appropriate, the leading works are included in more than one bibliography.
The listings are comprehensive with a few exceptions. All the Sweet & Maxwell Common Law Library titles and the key LexisNexis titles are here. However, only some of the College of Law LPC texts, which are popular with both law students and experienced practitioners, are included. The author does say that he covers general works rather than specific corners of law but, given that students are included as one of the types of reader, it seems strange to have omitted these.
There are other omissions from the point of view of the commercial practitioner's. The Law of International Finance series by Philip Wood and EU Competition Law Handbook 2013 by Jones and van der Woude are not included, even though other international finance and EU competition law titles are. There is a section on energy and natural resources, but there is no section on project finance. Project finance: a legal guide by Graham Vinter, the leading work in this area, is not listed!
Interestingly, Tolley's Orange Tax Handbook is listed, but the Yellow Tax Handbook is not!
Despite these omissions, this book could be a very useful tool for both UK and non-UK users. While it is just a series of bibliographies it is more useful than a bookshop catalogue; it is short and easy to use, only the leading works are included and it is good value for money at £12.95. The inclusion of a suggested type of reader for each book is very useful, but there is no indication that some of the works listed are statute books containing only legislation and no commentary, e.g. the Butterworths handbooks. Ideally, this would have been included too.
That said, this would be an excellent collection development tool for an academic library, for anyone setting up a library from scratch, or for a reference desk receiving a very wide range of enquiries. It may not be specialist enough for large law firms.
Bryan Carson's book is much longer, running to 281 pages and is essentially a textbook of legal research. The book contains explanations of the US legal system, as well as lists of sources along the lines of Guy Holborn's or Peter Clinch's two worksFootnote 1.
Carson begins with a chapter on the historical background of the US constitution and then moves on to finding legal materials, such as the US Constitution, Congress, the Freedom of Information Act and making FOI requests, the federal court system and state legal systems. Each chapter includes a list of sources organised by type where appropriate.
In the chapter on finding legal materials there is a good explanation of the separation of powers which describes the workings of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the US Government, and an explanation of exactly what the citations for US legislation and cases mean. Key resources are then listed by type (general resources, subscription databases, general legal websites and search engines) with a one paragraph description of each. The listing for subscription databases, for example, is very comprehensive, including Lexis, Westlaw, HeinOnline, Loislaw, PACER, BNA and CCH. The only apparent inaccuracy is the entry for CCH Intelliconnect, which seems to focus entirely on the tax law content at the expense of securities law. There is a discussion on the reliability of websites and key questions to ask oneself when using a website.
The chapter on the federal court system is also very comprehensive, explaining in detail the various official and non-official series of state law reporters. There is an account of the development of the English common law and Roman civil law systems, including both Napoleonic and modern day civil law. He describes the West Key Number system and Shepard's Citations and Key cite, with a focus on the symbols and codes used to show subsequent treatment of a case.
Carson then moves on to state legal systems and explains state and federal legislation. He also includes a section on researching state law with case studies from Kentucky and Massachusetts. Carson usefully lists websites which contain links to the legislatures for each US state.
Carson concludes with a thought-provoking chapter on 'The Past and Future of Legal Research'. This is probably the single most interesting chapter with a very readable history of published law, taking in Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman law and some controversial recommendations as to the choice of research sources by law firms.
He presents and debunks three common myths of legal research:
Myth 1: Everything is on the web – taking the example of US cases and legislation, not all years are available and coverage varies between states. The main barrier is the cost of digitizing and storing existing content.
Myth 2: Everything is available via Westlaw or LexisNexis – users generally use these services for primary sources, not books, which means that users are searching for facts rather than rules. This is the opposite of traditional book research and can lead to users missing important principles. All search languages are not created equally, phrase searching is a common problem, and while librarians are familiar with it other users are not.
Myth 3: Online legal research is less expensive - transactional charging does still exist on some online services and for small firms this may be cheaper than buying print sets. Cheaper still however, would be to use a local law library.
Carson recommends that large law firms should use more printed sources and then check online for very recent decisions, but that both large and small law firms would be better off using local law libraries instead of spending a fortune on online resources. It is difficult to see how the latter would work in practice given the deadlines attached to some legal research, plus some online services are already creating platforms which perform in a similar way to the printed version by allowing browsing and scrolling through large sections of text. Also, vendors are loading more and more commentaries as well as primary sources. However, it is refreshing to have a point-of-view that challenges the dominance of online legal sources.
There are short and expanded contents lists and a detailed bibliography and index. Despite this, it is not always obvious where to start looking. For example, the US Code and ‘where to find it’, often daunting to English-trained lawyers and law librarians, is described in a chapter entitled ‘Congress: the Legislative Branch’. Once there, a comprehensive list of websites for finding the US Code, annotated codes and Statutes at Large is provided.
The index is useful, but it lists concepts rather than individual sources. There are entries for Westlaw, Lexis and Hein Online, but not PACER, CCH and FindLaw, even though these are mentioned in the text. Ideally, these would have had entries too.
This is a very readable book with comprehensive lists of the key resources and a very good explanation of how the US legislature, executive and judiciary work. There is plenty of historical background and a chapter on the future of print and online publishing. This is a book to be read cover to cover, or at least chapter by chapter. However, instant answers to a research or citation problem, a relevant website, helpdesk or list of legal abbreviations, would probably remain the first choice. Despite these points, this remains a good addition to any law library that deals with US law and is excellent background reading.
