NAME: OKOLIE STEPHEN IFEAKACHI.
  MATRICULATION NUMBER: 19/LAW01/195.
  COURSE: LEGAL METHODS II.
 COURSE CODE: LAW 102.
          ASSIGNMENT: Explain secondary sources of law.
 
Legal encyclopedias: 
 Legal encyclopedias contain brief, broad summaries of legal topics, providing introductions to legal topics and explaining relevant terms of art. They also provide citations to relevant primary laws and sometimes give citations to relevant major law review articles.  
American Law Reports (ALR):
 American Law Reports (often abbreviated to and referred to as ALR) contains in-depth articles on difficult topics of the law. American Law Reports (ALR) articles, called annotations, provide background, analysis, and citations to relevant cases, statutes, law review articles, and other annotations.  ALR in print is located in the Langdell Reading Room beginning at KF 132.  The ALR Index is located at KF 132.2.I53.
Treatises:
 Treatises meaning ;books on legal topics are a good place to begin your research or find an answer to a question, and will help you save time by providing explanation, analysis, and tips on the most relevant primary sources. Treatises range from single volume overviews to extensively detailed multi-volume sets. They may come in the form of bound books updated with pocket parts or looseleafs with easily replaced pages. Some treatises are intended for law students while others are meant for practicing lawyers. 

If you need help finding a relevant treatise, this guide will provide you with some of the most useful titles in each subject. Where available, it is noted if the treatise is available on Lexis or Westlaw. Please keep in mind that this availability may change without notice.
Law journals:
 Law review or journal articles are another great secondary source for legal research, valuable for the depth in which they analyze and critique legal topics, as well as their extensive references to other sources, including primary sources.

Law reviews are scholarly publications, usually edited by law students in conjunction with faculty members. They contain both lengthy articles and shorter essays by professors and lawyers, as well as comments, notes, or developments in the law written by students. Law review articles often focus on new or emerging areas of law and they can offer more critical commentary than a legal encyclopedia or ALR entry.

Some law reviews are dedicated to a particular topic, such as gender and the law or environmental law, and will include in their contents the proceedings of a wide range of panels and symposia on timely legal issues.
Restatements:
 Restatements are highly regarded distillations of common law. They are prepared by the American Law Institute (ALI), a prestigious organization comprising judges, professors, and lawyers. The ALI's aim is to distill the "black letter law" from cases to indicate trends in common law, and occasionally to recommend what a rule of law should be. In essence, they restate existing common law into a series of principles or rules.

Restatements cover broad topics, such as Contracts or Property. They are organized into chapters, titles, and sections. Sections contain a concisely stated rule of law, comments to clarify the rule, hypothetical examples, explanation of purpose, as well as exceptions to the rule.

Restatements are not primary law. Due to the prestige of the ALI and its painstaking drafting process, however, they are considered persuasive authority by many courts. The most heavily cited Restatements are the Restatement of Torts and the Restatement of Contracts.

The ALI web site contains information regarding Restatement projects, ALI membership, history and institutional processes.