On 03/13/98 13:35:29 you wrote:
>
>Has anyone done a frequency of citation study for
>legal treatises similar to the ones done for law
>reviews? Attorneys in our office litigate in multiple
>subject areas and ask for the "state of the art"
>treatise on various subjects. I have found nothing
>on the topic published in Law Library Journal.
>
While you could perform a WEXIS search and tabulate the number of times a particular treatise has been cited, that information does not really answer your needs. Courts don't usually bother to cite to treatises because they are persuasive authority only, not binding. To give you an example, B.E. Witkin's treatises on California law are considered "the word" and I know from my job that his volumes are used daily at our court but we don't cite to him very often. What you really want is to determine what practitioners consider the "bible" in a particular subject area and I think your best resources for that are law-lib or the PLL listserv or your regional listserv for state-specific mtls. The expertise is phenomenal!
Nanna K. Frye, Law Librarian
California Court of Appeal
750 B St., Ste. 300
San Diego, CA 92101-8196
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