I’m just getting the chance to read my Spring 2007 issue of Law Library Journal (vol. 99, no. 2). (Yes, it’s been a busy summer!) I’m so pleased to see that the issue is devoted to the teaching and writings of Bob Berring (UCLA Boalt Hall). Berring is among the main reasons I’m a law librarian today. I learned about Berring at my first law library job. (Those were the days when Lexis was delivered at around 1200 baud through a little red box and the Westlaw WALT terminal had the annoying habit of catching fire now and then.) Berring’s Commando Legal Research videotape series helped give a serials check-in clerk enough competence with legal research to become a reference assistant. I’ve never known Professor Berring (I think I shook his hand once after a speech in D.C. a few years ago), but he inspired me almost from the start.
So in reading the first article of the LLJ issue, “Legal Information and the Development of American Law: Writings on the Form and Structure of the Published Law,” by Richard Danner, Berring (via Danner) now teaches me something I did not know about the law (or that I had forgotten since viewing Commando…). Namely, he espouses the view that the West digest system has shaped American law itself. In the golden age of print, U.S. case law research often began with a digest. Digests still exist, and in fact, they are the basis of Westlaw’s Keysearch system. The traditional digest system suffers from a host of the problems that plague human classification systems generally. It’s cumbersome to use, it’s antiquated, and it’s slow and labor intensive to apply. Updating it complicates research. Its use requires the researcher to learn to think like the classifier. Yet through its many years as the gold standard of legal research, the digest system has done more than make the law discoverable — it has given American law its very structure. Bob Berring has been among the principle observers of this phenomenon.
Today’s legal researcher is unlikely to use a print digest. Rather, she starts by searching a database. According to a study by Lee Peoples at Oklahoma City University Law Library (author’s disclaimer: I currently intern at OCU’s law library), advanced legal research students would rather use electronic resources than the print digest, even when they know they’ve been successful with the digest. If the digest system has given American law its structure and is peerless for putting cases into context, and if the digest system’s star is fading in favor of keyword searching, what is to become of American law? There are many viewpoints on this question. The rest of the LLJ issue presents some insights. I can’t wait to read the rest.
