Skip to content

Do Legal Research Platforms Include Today’s Secondary Law?

80E71C9B-6625-4183-B264-C2C4B9C4A152
December 8, 2020

As LexBlog’s legal blog grows, I got to thinking if lawyers had access to today’s secondary law. They do not.

Secondary law, as opposed to primary law of cases, codes/statutes and regulations, are sources that explain, criticize, discuss, or help locate primary law. 

Examples of secondary law could include a law review or law journal. 

Though not precedent, I routinely cited and read pieces from the American Law Review to a judge as a persuasive. It worked regularly, having the word of an authority in a niche. 

Today, by virtue niche authorities who now blog, some of the best secondary law is in legal blogs. 

Yet, most legal research companies do not include legal blogs in their databases.

One LexBlog partner does, other legal research platforms do not. 

The larger legal research companies may want to keep secondary law behind a paywall, just as they do for primary law.

In the case of newer legal research companies, I don’t know the issue, Maybe it’s partnerships they have precluding legal blogs. Maybe it’s priorities. 

Technology is not the problem. LexBlog collects the blog posts and accompanying metadata and can make it available via an API. 

As LexBlog’s products expand beyond that of a blog platform to the byproducts of a legal blogging community, the evolution of secondary law to include legal blogs will likely have us in in the middle of access to such law.

Posted in: