This guide will help explain why you should generally start your legal research with secondary resources, which to use for your research task, and how to use them effectively.
The ALR are collections of comprehensive summaries, called annotations, on specific legal topics.
The term annotations is a little misleading as they can be very lengthy documents.
The author of an annotation discusses the seminal cases on the issue and also provides both citations to relevant case law and other helpful secondary sources.
The ALR consists of nine series.
Six adress federal and state issues.
Two are specific to federal issues.
One is for subjects pertaining to international law.
They exist in print and online searchable format on both Westlaw and LexisNexis.
When to use the American Law Reports?
When should you use them?
The ALR are most effictively used as the starting point for your research, whether preparing for a case or a research assignment.
From a practitioner's point of view they help organize case law in a way that will help one clarify and compose their legal position.
They also organize by jurisdiction.
If you are looking for a thorough legal memorandum on a specific topic that includes plenty of relevant citations then the ALR should be your first step. However, not all issues are covered in the ALR and make sure to use a current version as some annotations have been updated significantly.
ALR
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More Extensive Treatment of the American Legal Reports
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