Law Books

Introduction

The term “treatise”is more of a common-law category, the equivalent works in civil-law systems may have other names such as commentaries, encyclopedias, Textbooks , monographs, or festschriften.

Function

The traditional print legal publishing industry caters to a variety of targets.

Law students may prefer study guides or outlines to help them make it through their classes. Lawyers may prefer a more in-depth “hornbook” such as 1802 pages on “black-letter” constitutional law. Annual handbooks designed primarily for practitioners in areas such as landlord-tenant law are also popular. The public may find nutshells and self-help guides more useful to get their bearings on a legal topic. Other types of Law books include continuing legal Education materials, such as those published by the Practising Law Institute.

Traditionally, Law books lacked an important feature in Legal Research – current information in print sources. To compensate, some publishers published annual (or occasional) updates (“looseleaf services”or “pocket parts” ), a method of updating hard copy legal reference works, to be put in the back of the bound volumes. For Legal subjects (such as federal taxation and securities)that required even more frequent updating, looseleaf binders were used in which new pages could be filed as needed (weekly, monthly, quarterly).

However, many legal books are now maintained in real time on legal databases as “living”electronic documents with all amendments continuously merged in. Therefore, many newer legal books are now simply republished every year (or every other year) in the form of easily recyclable paperback books

Introduction

Function

See Also

Further Reading

Conclusion

Notes

References and Further Reading

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