Restatements provide detailed summaries of what the law generally is or what the restatement writers believe the law should be. The citations to other authority and annotations provided in legal encyclopedias, treatises, American Law Reports, law reviews, and legal periodicals are an important element of their value in the research process. There are also a number of specialized finding tools that enable one to search for relevant materials in primary authorities. The index volumes for statutes and regulations compilations provide a quick guide to relevant rules and regulations. There are also privately published version of statutes that are annotated.
Case reporters contain the decisions in cases that have been deemed important enough to publish.
There are also conversion tables that allow one to link a statute to the bill from which it developed and the commentary surrounding it's approval. Shepard's Citations provides references to when cases and law review articles were cited by another source. Computer databanks have provided the legal profession with quick and efficient tools to do research. The internet is also developing as a serious source of legal information.