By Kevin O’Keefe on September 10
For nearly two decades, legal blogs have been challenging the conventions of traditional secondary law. A good number of legal blogs disrupted the status quo years ago.
I was curious how Black’s Law Dictionary defined secondary law, and if it included legal blogs in its definition.
Thomson Reuters holds the proprietary rights to Black’s Law Dictionary, and access to it is restricted by a paywall.
Let’s use GPT as a guide.
According to Black’s Law Dictionary, secondary law typically refers to materials that are not primary sources of law (like statutes or court decisions) but are used to interpret or apply the law. These include legal commentary, analysis, and other resources like treatises, legal encyclopedias, and law review articles. Secondary law helps in understanding and contextualizing the primary legal sources, providing insight and explanation by legal experts and scholars oai_citation:2,Black’s Law Dictionary – Free Online Legal Dictionary oai_citation:1,SECONDARY, Definition & Meaning – Black’s Law Dictionary.
Unprompted, GPT proceeded to make references to LexBlog.
In LexBlog’s context, the term “secondary law” would encompass blog posts and articles written by legal professionals that provide practical insights into how the law is applied in specific situations, making it a crucial resource for legal research and interpretation.
Legal blogs, serving as a secondary form of law, perform functions akin to those delineated in Black’s Law Dictionary. They furnish commentary, in-depth analysis, and valuable insights of primary legal sources.
However, legal blogs present this data in a more prompt and succinct fashion, sourcing from a broad and varied spectrum of active legal practitioners, each possessing profound knowledge in their individual areas of specialty.
Legal blogs, when organized and delivered in an aggregated and curated fashion are already valuable as a resource of secondary law.
Add a unified citation system, superseding the inconsistent and fickle nature of URLs and the use of AI to accelerate legal analysis, legal blogs will significantly influence research and advocacy.
