I’ll put secondary law in the context of the Library at LexBlog as it sometime easier to explain from my perseopctive.
The values and mission of The Library at LexBlog’s are deeply rooted in the “law.” Here, secondary law published by any legal professional, whether a lawyer, academic, law student, other legal professional or a professional working in an organization advancing the law. Anywhere in the world.
The key is preserving and structuring the published works of these individuals, worldwide, for society’s benefit. These published works are secondary law.
I think of it like West Publishing, the precursor to Thomson Reuters. As lawyers, law students and clerks, we needed their case law and its citation system, begun in the 1870’s, to administer transactional law and litigation. Primary law.
We also needed secondary law from publishers like West Publishing, BNA, Lawyers Cooperative, Matthew Bender, Bancroft-Whitney, CCH and more. The published works in these publicationss came from lawyers. I wrote a section on using “learned treatises” during trial for Matthew Bender based on my experience and authority on using learned treatises in trial.
As WordPress and Matt Mullenweg democratized publishing, LexBlog democratized legal publishing. Only a small number of lawyers were publishing online twenty plus years ago. Our managed WordPress platform for the law (its fruition in ’03) democratized legal publishing. Others followed.
We now have millions of published works written by legal professionals around the world. Unlike the books in volumes, this digital publishing is not being preserved or structured for citation (citations are needed for published works to have value in practicing law, as you probably know).
Imagine the chaos that would have been created had West stopped publishing old law, whether primary or secondary, and started tossing out some of which they had. Chaos. But that’s going on with today’s secondary law.
The fact that law firms, lawyers, publishers and legal technology firms can’t see the value of existing and future digital publishing by legal professionals as secondary law that can be preserved, structured for citation and made accessible via AI. doesn’t matter. It’s still secondary law.
The value to society is great. It’s the law, and it has value to lawyers and the public.
Seems there is a latent need that needs to be fulfilled. And from that latent need a sustainable business model to grow and sustain the law.