In law, secondary sources (called doctrine or sources secondaires, in French) includes monographs (books), dictionaries, encyclopedias and legal journals. Those works are written by legal experts (lawyers, researchers and professors).
Secondary sources are an excellent starting point for a research, particularly when it is a field you are less familiar with. Those sources allows to understand the main issues related to a field of law. Not only does secondary sources helps to understand the legal principles, but it allows to find the key decisions in a specific field of the law as well.
Not only are they a great source to learn the basics of a legal field, but encyclopedias, dictionaries and monographs are also excellent source of inspiration to find keywords to be used in your search strategy for the databases.
Here's a suggestion of keywords you could use as a starting point to launch a research in the library's catalogue. This list is far from being exhaustive.
Voici des suggestions de mots-clés à utiliser dans l'outil de découverte. Cette liste est loin d'être exhaustive.