Introduction
To understand what this website is, you must first understand what it is not. This website is not a substitute for legal research services such as WestlawNext or LexisAdvance; those databases are far more powerful and comprehensive. Nor is this website intended to replace established treatises on Indiana law, such as West's Indiana Law Encyclopedia or Judge Miller's Indiana Evidence, as those treatises provide prose analysis. Finally, this website is not designed to be a Continuing Legal Education seminar. What, then, is this website, and how should you use it?
Like the aforementioned resources, this website has been organized into a hierarchy of legal topics, and for each topic there is a summary of that topic. However, unlike the aforementioned resources, the summaries on this website consist almost entirely of quotations from Indiana statutory and decisional law--in other words, the exact language used in rules, statutes, and judicial opinions. The quotations have been woven together in a way that is, hopefully, clear, intuitive, and accurate. Comprehensive citations to rules, statutes, and case law have been included, and where possible, these citations link to full-text versions of those authorities.
This website has been designed as such for multiple reasons. Anecdotal polling of newly-hired prosecutors has revealed that they most prefer to review the exact language of rules, statutes, and judicial opinions when analyzing legal issues and learning new topics. Furthermore, by utilizing quotations, this website endeavors to fill a gap in the legal resource landscape. Finally, a website was selected as the platform for this content, instead of a printed manual, because websites can be easily updated and maintained by large groups of people. As Indiana law changes and develops, this website can change and develop along with it.
Thus, this website should be used as a supplement to your legal research--not a substitute for it. It will give you an overview of the law for a particular topic, and it will therefore provide you with a starting point for your legal research. You are encouraged to then use it in conjunction with more comprehensive resources to finish your research. In this way, this website can be as useful to prosecutors who need quick answers in court, as it is to prosecutors who need case law for motions and briefs.