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.
Digests are multi-volume, bound sets used to locate cases that are relevant to your legal issue and ideally within your jurisdiction.
There are a number of different digest resources available.
The case digest system created by the West Publishing Company, was the first significant print system.
Both West and LexisNexis have created online digest systems but out of these two publishers only West's is available in print.
Digests generally correlate to specific case reporters.
For example the Federal Practice Digest covers reported federal cases, state digests cover state reporters, etc.
There are also specialized digests that focus on cases within a certain area of law, such as bankruptcy or education law.
Generally, digests will assign a keynote or headnote to an issue that is discussed within a case. Along with the headnote or keynote it will give an exceprt about that issue. You can then use that headnote or keynote to find other cases discussing that topic.
When to use Digests?
Digests are extremely useful to practitioners, law students, and other legal professionals as they are the premier case finding tool.
They are great to use at the beginning of your research when you may only have just one case.
You can review the headnotes in that case, pick out the relevant ones, and then proceed to find other cases that have discussed that headnote.
They will help you in your initial case selection process, as you decide the strengths and weaknesses of your argument.
They are helpful as you are preparing drafts and even before you go before a judge.
As you draft a brief, motion, or other legal writing you will often come to the realization that you need to beef up the authority of one of your legal arguments. With digests it is relatively easy to go back and do some quick research to help strengthern an arugment that lacked authoritative wright.
In preliminary hearings judges will often have questions about the authority relied upon by the attorneys and it helps to have the ability to quickly have back up cases or to rapidly find other cases discussing opposing counsel's arguments, esepcially in the circumstance when a judge asks for an impromptu brief on the subject.
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