Legal treatise

There is no fixed usage on what books qualify as a "legal treatise", with the term being used broadly to define books written for practicing attorneys and judges, textbooks for law students, and explanatory texts for laypersons.

Lawyers commonly use legal treatises in order to review the law and update their knowledge of pertinent primary authority namely, case law, statutes, and administrative regulations.

[2] Indeed, certain early treatises like William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England and Lord Edward Coke's Institutes of the Lawes of England have shown a marked increase in citation in the last three decades.

Certain treatises, called hornbooks, are used by American law students as supplements to casebooks.

Hornbooks are usually one volume – sometimes a briefer version of a longer, multi-volume treatise written by a recognized legal scholar.