What is A Legal Digest?
A legal digest is a systematic and comprehensive collection of the decisions in cases, statutes, court rules, and legislative histories. A legal digest is a form of legal encyclopedia. Each digest contains a number of topics that are then broken down into subtopics. For each subtopic there may be a summary of the law as well as a list of the cases decided in the jurisdiction on that point.
Clients frequently ask for "just the results" of a legal research query. They want the black letter law on Spoliation, or, they want a digested set of cases on a specific point. Law students and legal researchers may be a bit more sophisticated, and they may request specific cases on a specific point, but still, they want results without all of the fluff — that is without "extra" cases that come up because of the keyword or search terms that were used in the query.
The query method is one of the major differences between a legal database and a legal research digest. The purpose of a legal database is to have a full set of results on a topic or a case, allowing the user to review all of the results and then select the ones they want to view . The purpose of the legal research digest is to allow the user to see what has been decided in the courts on the topics of interest, and then to click on the cases that are of interest without having to wade through all of the cases that are shown by the database.
The first legal digest was created in 1742 by Thomas Leach of London, England. He published a digest of the Queen’s Bench, afterwards merging with Jacob Rees to publish The English Reports. Leach and Rees’ publication was a monumental 326 volumes, however, the information was not collected in any sort of topical order. In 1790, Joseph Chitty created a comprehensive digest that collected the data on a topical basis, similar to today’s legal encyclopedias.
In the United States, the National Reporter System (NRS) of West Publishing established regional legal digests starting in 1878.
In recent years, Westlaw, (now Thomson Reuters) and Lexis published legal digests in keeping with their internet-based services.
Why Are Legal Digests Important
Legal digests are more than just reams of case law re-categorized in an indexed and condensed format—they are the very tool that lawyers, law students and researchers use to understand a legal precedent quickly and easily.
Compared to sifting through pages and pages of verbiage in case law or judgments, a legal digest quickly highlights what a case is about. Using legal digests allows you to glean a lot of information in a short amount of time. For example, what legal point is the case trying to make? Is it relevant to your case? What regional or subject area does it cover?
In fact, legal digests are so useful that they are the first place that most legal professionals go when they need to look up a case. And this is becoming even more prevalent with the availability of digests online. Of course, practitioners still need to refer to cases for due diligence; however, once the digest points them to the relevant case, they can easily determine if they need to look at the entire case or if a brief overview is sufficient.
As many have noted, "Reading an overview of a case is like reading a summary of a movie. You get to know the general story line and some of the major events, but you miss out on the nuances and the side characters that make the story interesting."
Like the character of a story, cases tend to be complex and every nuance is not always revealed in a legal digest, which is why practitioners still rely heavily on full case law. Although legal practitioners tend to respect the ability of case-digests to highlight important points in most cases, they do not trust the digital tools to filter out the nuanced, sometimes hidden, aspects of a case in the same way an experienced practitioner can.
The difference between readers who take "move reviews" from movies and those who go to the box office, is that the latter has the right to decide for themselves whether or not they like a movie after seeing it all. Likewise, the more practitioners use legal digests, the more they can assert their ability to quickly―without breaking a sweat―determine the relevance of a case, as well as have an understanding of how those long, verbiose legal documents affect their business.
What Are The Main Features of a Good Legal Digest
The hallmark of a good legal digest is thoroughness on two main fronts: completeness and organization. To be truly effective, a legal digest must create a logical sense of order that makes it easy to locate information, and it must avoid omitting cases that could have a meaningful impact on the results of any research being conducted. Organization is obviously key—otherwise, it would be difficult to find the desired topics easily. Legal digests aim to address this issue by using a hierarchical structure that breaks down specific areas of law into narrower, more detailed topics, much like how a tree branches out into smaller limbs. This organization is generally so structured, that most digests even have a specific numbering system that dictates how the digest is written. For example, state law digests such as West’s and Michie’s organize their case summaries by topic, geneologically numbering each numbered topic such as: 05.20(k). Civil procedure—Procedure—Motions 05.20(k).1. Civil procedure—Procedure—Motions—General 05.20(k).2. Civil procedure—Procedure—Motions—Dismissal 05.20(k).3. Civil procedure—Procedure—Motions—Motions to change venue 05.20(k).4. Civil procedure—Procedure—Motions—Motions for summary judgment 05.20(k).5. Civil procedure—Procedure—Motions—Judgment on pleadings 05.20(k).6. Civil procedure—Procedure—Motions—Motions for continuance, and so on. This example demonstrates how extremely detailed the organization of a digest can be, to the point of breaking topics down into sub-topics that are of narrow width, but highly specific. This particular digest has briefly summarized the information within those cases and sub-topics, in just a couple of sentences, while also using the page number of the digest to cite a footnote for every case. This precise manner of digesting both state level and federal level cases makes these two prominent legal digests very effective tools in summarizing case law nationwide as well as in local jurisdictions. A strong legal digest should be fully comprehensive and sufficiently detail most cases, so any important legal precedent is readily available. Instead of summarizing each and every case in detail, as seen above, some digests such as United States Supreme Court Digest do not summarize the entirety of every case. Instead, they may cover only some of the elements of the cases they digest. For example, instead of summarizing and conveying the bottom-line outcome of a case, the digest merely lists a summary including only the names of the parties, the issue(s) being discussed, and the page number of said digest where this particular case can be reviewed. Depending on the digest, the level of completeness varies, and this can often depend on how frequently a case is being cited. As a general matter, the majority of cases that are at least published, if not widely cited, are typically included in digest publications, but rare cases, unpublished cases and non-binding state or federal circuit court cases are more sporadically included and less likely to be comprehensively summarized.
How to Use a Legal Digest
When using a legal digest, the first step is to have a clear topic in mind. Most legal digests, including secondary resources such as restatements and annotated codes, will have subject (or practice) codes for each of the subdivisions of the law covered. You can find these in the index (primary resources like cases and statutes don’t have subject codes). For instance, Connecticut cases organized by subject might be listed from A (Abandonment to Acquiescence) to W (Workers’ Compensation to Written Agreement) with the availability of specific page numbers where the search term appears.
Once you’re familiar with the system, you can also conduct a keyword search on the legal digest website. For example, when I search for "consideration" on the Westlaw site, the search engine delivers hundreds of results related to consideration, but also offers an option to "Browse" terms of art by topic. Note that although the search engine will give you results from every available state as well as federal and administrative codes, the digests are not comprehensive in all 50 states . I’ve pointed out some of my findings in New Jersey’s case law as examples to demonstrate how a search of a legal digest may yield different results based on the jurisdiction you’re interested in.
If you get what you think is a relevant result, but it doesn’t seem to get you any closer to your goal, don’t throw in the towel – the cases you find through a legal digest may very often be cross-referenced with other cases. For instance, a case involving consideration may be relevant for contracts or for torts – it’s usually up to the user to sort this out and determine which area of the law best suits the search terms provided.
Legislation is altogether different from case law, mostly because it isn’t organized by topic, but is instead classified by state or federal jurisdiction. Keep in mind that since it’s rare to find every single digestable legal resource online, you’ll almost always have to switch between several of them while preparing for any legal matter.
Top Most Legal Digests and Their Specific Features
Both commercial and government publishers produce a variety of digests that have either national or state focuses. For example, West’s Key Number System provides access through statements of legal principles with assigned "headings" or "key number" numbered entries identifying the point of law under a main subject. This system, used by all the major commercial case law publishers, coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court and Court of Appeals as well, providing a shared numbering system across four primary federal case law publications from private publishers: Supreme Court Reporter, Court of Claims Reports and Court of Claims Supplement, Court of Appeals Reports, and Federal Reporter covering all three circuits (see federal cases for 1789-1880 and 1809-1925). Similar digest systems are used throughout the federal and state court systems. Massachusetts has its own digest system that covers the state and federal cases from Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island. Some other jurisdictions like Florida use both the American Digest System and the state’s own digest.
The Future of Legal Digests
In the digital era, the future of legal digests promises to be both efficient and user-friendly. As more cases and statutes are digitized, access to legal digests has become as easy as a type and a click. The digitalization of legal digests has made them not only more accessible but also more affordable. Once reserved only for large law firms or research departments, legal digests are now available to small law firms, solo practitioners and the public at large.
Furthermore, artificial intelligence (AI) is set to play a transformative role in the preparation and use of digest collections. AI has already been applied to the world of legal research and as the technology becomes more sophisticated, its application will only increase. While some digests are compiled by humans who analyze each case to determine its relevance to the cases collected in the digest, others currently rely on algorithms to categorize and isolate the most relevant cases.
As technology continues to advance, it is highly probable that software will increasingly be able to identify the most relevant cases to include in a digest. This means that in the near future, we might likely see a digest that is automatically updated , rather than needing to be manually updated by an editor for inclusions and omissions.
In addition to the changing processes involved in creating digests, it is clear that educational institutions are beginning to recognize their importance. As the legal profession evolves, so too do the practice methods taught in law schools. Although not yet widely adopted, the use of legal digests may become part of legal research courses or curricula at law schools and legal education programs.
Advances in technology are leading to the emergence of unique legal research tools. It is likely that digests will continue to be used in conjunction with new technologies to establish greater efficiencies in legal research.
Even with the changes brought about by technology, it is important to remember that the use of legal digests is still subject to scrutiny. Courts have placed the onus on counsels to decide when it is appropriate to use legal digests. Legal digests aren’t perfect. Some mistakes slip through the cracks, just like they would in any compilation of written work. Digests are subject to the same restrictions and expectations carried by traditional legal research.