When Christopher Columbus Langdell stated that the library was the laboratory of the law and that law books were the "stuff" of legal research, he was stating a proposition that was not only descriptive but prescriptive. 'From the late nineteenth century, the development of the American legal system can be seen as a history of the development of forms of legal publication. This history poses the question whether the forms of publication have been mere vehicles for the transmission of legal knowledge, or important influences in the development of that knowledge. This Essay has two purposes. First, I will examine the suggestion that the form in which law has been conceptualized was strongly influenced by the form in which it was published. Second, I will explore the impact that current technological innovations in legal research may have on the way legal problems and legal structures will be conceptualized in the future