Before AnyLaw, Before Google Scholar, Before FastCase, We Had Pocket Parts.

Pocket Parts. If you don't know what this post is talking about, I suggest, young Grasshopper, that you spend some time on this Wikipedia page. I spent many hours as a law student and young lawyer sitting in my law library, surrounded by hundreds of leather bound volumes, and placing thin groups of pages anchored with staples and cardboard, inside the back cover of old volumes of primary and secondary law. Putting in the pocket parts was one of the tasks, in BigLaw, assigned to young Associates, or to Law Clerks and Legal Assistants. It was considered a menial task; but, because I never worked in a firm with more than three lawyers, and went solo in 1985, I did it myself. The odd thing is that the pocket parts contained every new case or statute on point, and I learned a lot doing that mundane task. There is something satisfying, and tactile, about holding the current state of the law in your hands. While the demands of the practice sometimes caused the pocket parts to pile up in the law library, it was always a nice respite from the craziness of the world, to sit among dozens of books at a long wooden table, checking on the new things that affected everything. I still have the paper law library, and I confess to the guilty pleasure of going out there sometimes, and sitting among the work of giants and knaves, and the collective wisdom and foolishness, that somehow has been lost in a cloud of electrons in an invisible sky.