The Practice Review, written by David D. Siegel, is a four-page monthly summary of developments in New York civil practice available exclusively on Westlaw (database "SIEGELPR"). The entire generation of the Review — 267 numbered issues from April 1993 through March of 2014 — are available on the Westlaw site, for which the present site continues to act as a search engine.
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At the end of 1992 the New York State Law Digest,
a monthly publication of the New York State Bar Association edited
by Professor Siegel, had for reasons of space to discontinue coverage
of matters of general practice and procedure and return to the function
of reporting only Court of Appeals cases. The Practice Review took
over the general practice coverage and expanded it.
STATUTES
AND CASES TRACKED
Caselaw and both statutory and rule developments
are closely tracked in the Practice Review. When there are extensive
changes, the Practice Review offers extensive coverage.
LETTERS
AND CASES FROM LAWYERS AND JUDGES
The Practice Review has a file of slip sheet
cases as well as letters from lawyers and judges confronting problems
in daily practice. From these letters and cases, often unreported,
are lessons that the SPR summarizes, stressing overlooked procedural
pitfalls.
SELECTION
PROCESS
The Practice Review sifted through the mountain
of constantly accumulating caselaw and selected only the most instructive
items, helping to spare the practitioner the difficult labor of deciding
what is and what is not important. It stresses
problems that hide in unlikely places.
THE FEAR
OF ERROR
Good lawyers carry with them the fear of error.
The Practice Review advises
on things that can reduce that fear.
WARNINGS
WHEN CASES CONFLICT
The Practice Review often reported on conflicts
among the courts on points of procedure — especially when the risk
of following the more lenient of two decisions, each more subtle than
obvious, showed the sometimes hidden consequences of taking
the easy way out.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Cross-references between the Practice Review and Siegel, New York Practice (5th Ed.) (the " Treatise "), are frequent. They enable readers to refer quickly to the appropriate section of the Treatise for background on an item contained in the Review; and, conversely, by presenting more expansive treatment of a given point, the Review makes it possible for the Treatise , with a simple cross-reference, to call attention to matters that would otherwise be beyond the scope of a single-volume work.
WESTLAW LINKS:
WESTLAW offers "links" both ways between the Treatise and the Review . Just click on any citation that the SPR issue makes to any Treatise section and the cited section appears on the screen immediately; similarly, click on any citation that the Treatise makes to any Review issue and the cited issue appears on the screen immediately. (The WESTLAW identifier for the Treatise is "SIEGEL-NYPRAC"; for the Review , as already noted, the WESTLAW identifier is "SIEGELPR".) And the usual WESTLAW links to cases and statutes cited in the text (of both the Treatise and the Review) remain a prime time-saving feature.
FEDERAL MATTERS
The Practice Review periodically covers federal
trouble spots--things like those highlighted in Chapter 23 of the
Treatise, entitled: "Federal Practice Reviewed and Compared: Parallels
and Pitfalls" — especially for issues that involve the interplay
of state and federal practice, as in removal cases.
