When you say the word Digest to an attorney, he or she will most likely think you are referring to one the West Publishing Company's Digests. The sooner you come to realize that a digest simply acts as an index to case law, the sooner you will understand its purpose and function.

There are many sets of digests, including:

REGIONAL DIGESTS
STATE DIGESTS
FEDERAL PRACTICE DIGEST
SUPREME COURT DIGEST
DECENNIAL DIGEST
GENERAL DIGEST
CENTURY DIGEST

THE INDEX

OK. Reports and Reporters do not have indexes. Well, then how can a researcher find relevant cases within the reports and reporters? The answer: digests.

Digests act as an index to case law. Thus, the Federal Digest leads to federal cases. The Bankruptcy Digest leads to bankruptcy cases. The Supreme Court Digest leads to, you guessed it, U.S. Supreme Court Cases.

Digests are collections of headnotes arranged in topical order. They are primarily published by West (now Thomson-West), and thus utilize the Key Number System. Start in the index of the appropriate Digest. The index will provide a topic and Key Number leading to the main volumes of the digest.

THE MAIN VOLUME

The digest main volume will contain multiple headnotes. If any are relevant, the researcher would note the citation at the bottom of the headnote, then look up the actual case.

Look at the digest page above. Notice the topic at the top of the page, and the Key Numbers on the page. (They act like section numbers.) Also notice the headnotes, and the citations at the end of each headnote. These citations, of course, are the cases the researcher is looking for.

MORE . . .

There are over a hundred digests by West. There are also a few other digests out there that, although they do not utilize the Key Number System, are accessed in a very similar fashion. For instance, Lawyer's Cooperative publishes the U.S. Supreme Court Digest, Lawyer's Edition, and the A.L.R. Digest, which leads only to cases annotated within American Law Reports.