The Lincoln Legal Papers is now Series I of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln.

 

    From 1836 to 1861, Abraham Lincoln practiced law in the courts of central Illinois.   This series is an ongoing effort to collect and publish the surviving documentary record of Abraham Lincoln's quarter-century legal career in the federal, state, and county court systems.

 

    The comprehensive electronic component of this series, The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition (University of Illinois Press, 2000), provides access to images of more than 96,000 documents from Abraham Lincoln's legal career.  The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, Second Edition (Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), freely available online, provides all of the documents from the Complete Documentary Edition, plus an additional 45 cases, 12 non-litigation activities, and nearly 1,300 new documents.  In addition, the Second Edition features new color images of more than 1,500 documents from the Complete Documentary Edition, many written by Lincoln.

 

    The selective print edition of this series, The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases, 4 vols. (University of Virginia Press, 2008) provides carefully transcribed and annotated documents from sixty-five of Lincoln's most interesting, important, or representative cases.  Additional chapters document his travels on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, legal activities that did not result in litigation, his role in various official court roles other than attorney, and his reflections on being a lawyer.