Those TV ambulance=chaser lawyers usually appear at their desks-bhind them is a wall of impressive, leather bound volumes of case law.
In this day of electronic data bases and search engines, are these books now obsolete?
They must cost a fortune to buy-does every lawyer have them?
Yah, those books are nearly obsolete. The distinction between “nearly” and “completely” does matter - I’ve run across a few cases that I was only able to track down in dead-tree reporters (volumes of published court decisions). It’s also important to note that Westlaw is expensive - it’s not crazy to only subscribe to a basic package that doesn’t include the more esoteric reporters, and just run to a law school if something really obscure comes up.
But you’re basically right - many lawyers don’t bother, especially nonprofits. The problem isn’t even that these books are expensive to purchase - they need to be kept up to date with pocket parts (supplements), which is both pricey and (if you have a large law library) time-consuming.
Just for those who don’t realize Westlaw is an online legal research service.
I suspect that a wall of generic legal volumes suitable as a background for filming advertisements can be purchased secondhand rather cheaply, like furniture stores filling out their bookshelves with a few volumes of old books.
There are actually companies that specialize in selling the correct-looking type of books by the yard. They usually work with set decorators – but if you wanted to create a fancy-looking law office that would impress laymen, you could probably get a shelf full of law books from them on the cheap.
Most lawyers I know have some volumes of basic case law for their specialty, and the applicable laws themselves. For trial, it’s Westlaw, or off to a local law library. Many bar associations and local courts have their own law libraries that are open to all practicing attorneys in an area.
The very first thing that you use is not an online database, but a practitioners text, like say for Defamation in England and Wales you would first consult Gatley. Make a note of cases which you think are relevant and then look them up online.
Secondly, if you have earmarked a dozen cases as relevant it is much easier to simply get the books out and read them quickly than scroll through the online reports.
Thirdly, real research is done library, you never know what a great case you hit upon there, hidden in some obscure reporter which was last published in 1880 and is not online. Finally many reporters are not available or available in a truncated form online.
So yes they are used.
Large law firms still have the walls-of-books. Ours does, and it gets used - admittedly, for the more obscure stuff. We have volumes of old English reporters going back to the late 18th/early 19th century … which are, on occasion, still relevant.
These days, the bulk of legal research is done on-line.
I’ll note that these days very few American lawyers do things the way AK84 describes them.
You can also cut a hollow space into one or two for a flask and a small gun.
My firm still maintains a library with current reporters (the term for the case law volumes), encyclopedias, annotated statutes, hornbooks, etc. Though old volumes are there, it’s not just for searching out the obscure. We have three librarians on staff --one maintains the volumes, one is a research librarian, and one is the library director. That being said , the cost to maintains these is constantly a source of division amongst the various practice groups, some who rely less or not at all on research.
All of that being said, this is spot on:
I can’t think of anyone who does what AK84 describes, either.
Just about everything can be found online now. I have to look in the dead-tree editions of any of the several law libraries to which I have access typically only a few times a year. For most lawyers nowadays the wall o’ books is just for aesthetics.
A local (i.e., Memphis) law firm has been mocking the show of books in its tv ads recently; the theme is basically, “Um, we have computers for that. See? One little laptop holds all that crap.”
Yeah, I have a bunch of loose-leaf style texts in my office right now from the library - Crawford’s Banking and Payment in Canada, for example. Continually updating and keeping track of texts is an ongoing library job, and necessary.
I was thinking more of the ‘wall of books’ effect, in my mind that being paper law reporters. I think those are destined for extinction sooner rather than later, aside from the old and the obscure. On-line searching is simply easier, and gets better all the time.
American lawyers are a different breed then. You don’t have practitioners texts in the US? You know those lovely books which save you from doing hours of pointless research because somebody has done it for you and provided appropriate commentary?
These days, everything is online or in electronic form, including the major treatises.
Like AK84, I often start with a text, but once I’ve got cases to look at, I usually go on-line. The exception is old Supreme Court cases - I’ve got those in a barrister’s bookshelf in my office, and I prefer to use the old leather-bound volumes. It just feels right. 
(Plus, the online providers of old cases often don’t have consistent paragraph numbering, so citing to the SCR is a better option.)
Not yet the case in Canada. Though no doubt, it’s comming.
A decade ago, even five years ago, you may want to use Quicklaw or the like to find cases, but in facta and the like you’d want to use the paper-reported version to cite - including new cases.
Increasingly, people just cite the QL version.
I wonder how many other professions regularly use reporters and other legal texts. Urban planners have their own reporters for land use, zoning and sign law, and we’re schooled on critical cases in our undergraduate and graduate education. Planners also need to have some working knowledge of basic “neighbor law”, even though that’s a bit outside of our purview; it’s unavoidable. I cant say every planner knows how to perform research in a law library, but many, including myself, can.