The production of texts that report laws or discuss the practice of law.
Originally limited to printed materials, legal publishing now encompasses electronic media as well, with most legal publications becoming available on-line or in CD-ROM format.
The first collections of American laws were published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Printing presses allowed laws to be printed on a regular basis. Colonists relied on English law as common law, so local laws were not reported until after the American Revolution. Once the United States gained independence, the number of lawyers grew, along with the need for a printed record of U.S. laws.
The original case reporters were published by individuals without the support of the government. In 1841 Georgia was the first state government to require its judges to write out their decisions. The clerk of the court would send the decisions to the governor, who had the decisions printed and distributed to all the judges in the state.
In the late nineteenth century, John B. West started the National Reporter System. West's Syllabi contained the full text of decisions of the Supreme Court of Minnesota. The publication was enlarged to include decisions of Wisconsin and eventually became the Northwestern Reporter. West's company soon expanded to cover decisions across the country. The company took responsibility for making sure the reports were accurate. It included headnotes for each case, summarizing the issues of law discussed in the decision. The decisions were published in parts that were later reprinted in hardbound volumes; using these " advance sheets" allowed decisions to be reported more quickly.
Other publishers that began reporting decisions in the 1800s included Matthew Bender and Company, Bancroft-Whitney Company, and The Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company. Lawyers Cooperative Publishing printed selected decisions; each year it also printed a volume that reported where original decisions were cited in current decisions.
Federal decisions began to be reported in a regular and complete form in the late 1800s. The first volume of American Law Reports was printed in 1919 by the Edward Thompson and Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Companies.
With so many decisions being reported, it became difficult to determine the status of a case. Lawyers needed to know whether a case had been overruled or modified; typically they would mark any modifications to a decision in the margins of their reporters. In 1875 Frank S. Shepard published the Illinois Annotations. This was a series of sheets that could be cut out and pasted in the margins of the book reporting a case. The sticker format was dropped in 1900, and the citator took on its current table format. Originally covering only cases, Shepard's citator was expanded to include citations to the Constitution, statutes, and court rules.
The publication of statutes followed a history similar to that of cases. Individual states printed their own statutes beginning at the end of the eighteenth century. The first commercial effort to publish federal laws occurred in 1902. In 1924 Congress authorized the publication of the U.S. Code. West Publishing Company and the Edward Thompson Company were hired to assist with the publication. Federal law was divided into individual titles. Today statutes are first published as unedited, uncollated statutes called "slip laws." At the end of each session, the statutes are gathered into the U.S. Code.
Little, Brown and Company was the first to publish books specifically for students. In 1871 Little, Brown started publishing casebooks for students. Casebooks present leading cases in a particular area of law, with accompanying discussion of the law. In 1880 eleven titles were available.
Other common legal publications include practice aids for lawyers, such as form books and practice books. Form books present standard formats for common legal documents. Practice books describe the laws of a particular jurisdiction or practice area and give guidelines on various aspects of the law.
Legal periodicals make up another segment of the legal publishing market. These include newspapers and newsletters that report on current law. Within law schools student-edited law reviews present articles by students, professors, and law school faculty.
Today's legal publishing market includes electronic publishing. Computer-assisted legal research makes it possible to search legal materials on-line. West Publishing's WESTLAW and Reed Elsevier's LEXIS/NEXIS systems give attorneys access to cases, statutes, rules, law reviews and a variety of practice guides. Many jurisdictions are making materials available through the Internet. Case law, statutes, and practice guides are available in CD-ROM format for most jurisdictions.
See: Case Law; Century Digest; Computer-Assisted Legal Research; Court Opinion; Digest; Federal Reporter; Federal Supplement; Hornbook; Law Reports; LEXIS; Shepardizing; Shepard's Citations; Statutes at Large; Treatise; U.S. Code; U.S. Code Annotated; WESTLAW.
