Prepare to Practice Resources

Secondary sources are an excellent place to start because they can provide context and background information about legal problems, citations to primary sources, and can help you keep your research up to date. Secondary sources usually tend to be more straightforward than primary sources as they tend to present the law as a coherent whole and provide a mental framework with which to understand the details that you then glean from specific cases, statutes, and other primary sources. Treatises can be especially helpful for practice areas dominated by complicated statutory or regulatory laws. Making use of these secondary sources can make your research faster and more efficient, something your supervisor will greatly appreciate. 

Remember that you typically are not restricted to running keyword searches in an online treatise or secondary source. These are digitized versions of print books, and so you can browse the table of contents to find relevant chapters and sections, and many treatises will have an online index that will help you find relevant portions by alphabetically arranged concepts assigned by the editor.

Most firms no longer maintain substantial print libraries but may still retain select titles central to the firm's practice areas or to Alabama. Some Alabama sources are only available in print, so be sure to find out what your firm has available. For online access, remember that the availability of secondary sources varies widely between each legal research database and many titles will be exclusive to a specific database or vendor. Please note that some states have more secondary sources on certain databases, so, if you don't find what you're looking for, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It might just mean you need to check another database. 

If you think you should start with a treatise but are not sure which one, consider consulting the Georgetown Law Library's Treatise Finder, one of the most comprehensive guides to legal treatises available.