At the end of “Perry Mason” episodes, the credits rolled over a picture of a few volumes of “CJS”, which stands for (I believe) “Corpus Juris Secundum” and is a legal treatise.
Surprised nobody has pointed this out yet:
There are on-line legal resources, but the best of them cost money, a whole lot more money than coming by some used books. Big law firms can afford to turn their junior associates loose on Lexis/Westlaw, but for very small firms and public service types, it’s usually cheaper to at least try and look up a casecite/statute in a book before looking for it on a search engine.
The main legal database (at least that I know of) in Canada is QuickLaw. When I was practicing, a sole practitioner could have access for a small monthly fee. A firm could have access for an amazing amount of money per lawyer. Since everybody paid a large chunk of cash to the Law Society anyway and they ran the library at the Courthouse, it was a status symbol to have your own “Big Wall O’ Books”. Generally, they were purchased from your predecessors when they retired and were useful only after you’d gone through the updates at the Courthouse anyway.
If you ever get the chance, though, sit down with those old dusty books and get a look at life on the edge through the decades. There is some fascinating stuff in there. A lot of it is dry and of no interest to anyone who doesn’t have a fetish for the tax code or the details of priority of registration in personal property law, but there is a gem in every book. Whether it’s an argument that birds are not animals for the purposes of a bestiality charge or something from the 1950’s involving bikers, strippers, cocaine and corrupt cops or a dispute between neighbours that has gone on for 30 years and has, at its heart, a 3 inch strip of grass that’s between the brick wall and the hedge, it’s all there.
If you want a real treat, though, try to see your lawyer in his office. Not the place he meets clients, his real office. There is a good reason why all of those piles of file folders are there, but it’s fun to watch them try to explain.