Long gone are the days when attorneys walk into a dusty room with staggering bookcases to find the latest version of a statute or the case that will win over the judge. Decades ago, legal work was a time-consuming process that required long days and nights buried in a law library. With the Internet and digitization of books came significant advances and changes in legal resources. Now, the industry that provides these modern tools is as big, if not bigger, than some of the largest law firms in the country.

Attorneys in the modern age have access to comprehensive indexes of cases and statutes with a simple click of the mouse. These databases and research hubs are operated by a handful of companies that staff hundreds or thousands of employees to read the latest cases that are published, usually by the state or federal court. The employees then provide summaries of the cases, which highlight the most important themes or rulings. In addition, these digital databases offer numerous resources beyond cases and statutes. They also contain secondary sources such as law review articles that analyze certain topics in the law or treatises, which are respected summaries of certain areas of law.

One of the most important aspects of persuasive legal writing is the citation of cases that are current and still good law. That means there cannot be subsequent cases that overturn or negatively affect the holding reached in the original case. This task used to be accomplished by the time-consuming process of cross-referencing and reading extra cases. However, with these modern digital databases, the work gets done by the legal resource company.

These advances in legal research tools have dramatically changed the size and existence of legal libraries all across the country. In the past, every respectable law firm, courthouse, legal aid center, and law school had large amounts of their buildings dedicated to storing books. Now, many of these institutions have dramatically cut down on the size of physical legal books and case books. Some may retain a small portion of their previous collection as ornaments rather than practical resources.

One realm that has not been dramatically impacted by these modern innovations is the research of legislative history, such as looking at the prior versions of a law or determining the intent of the government in drafting the law. Much of this information is unavailable digitally or online, likely because of the sheer volume of the work and the relatively low demand by attorneys. For those resources, legal researchers must turn to the old fashion approach of going to a state or federal library, requesting the information in advance, and sitting down and reading.