When discussing legal resources it is important to know the difference between primary and secondary legal

materials.
Primary sources are those resources which are the law itself. That means a primary source would be one of the
four sources listed above. Lawyers use primary authority to determine what the law says about a given matter.
Identifying and aggregating these materials in order to solve legal problems is what legal research is all about.

Primary sources can be persuasive or mandatory. Mandatory authority is the term used for constitutions, cases,
statutes, or regulations the court must follow. A primary material is mandatory when it is binding in a given
jurisdiction. For legislative and administrative materials this is often easy to figure out: Illinois statutes are binding in
Illinois. Making a determination as to whether a case is mandatory takes a bit more skill. Stated as a simple rule the
concept is lower courts are required to follow decisions from higher courts in the same jurisdiction.

Primary Sources can also be persuasive authority. The term persuasive authority refers to any material the
court may choose to follow or consider, but which the court does not have to adhere to when making its
determination. Thus, primary law from another jurisdiction or a lower court may be used as persuasive authority.
Secondary resources are those materials which analyze, editorialize, summarize, or comment on the
law. These materials do not have the force of law, but can be very helpful to legal researchers. While these materials
are not usually used to support arguments in the way primary materials are, they can be cited for persuasive value.
More importantly, these materials can help legal researchers understand the area of law in which they are
researching and even connect them to valuable primary sources.
Secondary sources are always persuasive and rarely cited to the court.
When conducting legal research it is important to be mindful of the differences between secondary and
primary materials. This concept will be discussed further in other units.