is designed to provide resources specifically pertaining to legal research and
writing, with a specific focus on resources useful to the process of citing authorities properly.
The site provides searchable abbreviation tables, phrase definitions,
and a number of other related resources.
Primary among the resources offered by
legalcitation.net is an online supplement to a series of style manuals governing the formatting of legal
citations: A Uniform System of Citation,
the ALWD Citation Style manual, and the Australian Guide to Legal Citation.
Please note that these works provide invaluable information on legal research and writing that is
not replicated on this site.
The site is supported and maintained by the authors
of LegalCitation database software.
LegalCitation is a textual database program that works with Word or WordPerfect to help you with
the fundamentals of legal writing and research: keeping track of authorities, and organizing research notes - with an efficiency
and simplicity you will find refreshing.
Once you start using LegalCitation, you won't know how you got along
without it.
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Software support
for legal citations
& notes.
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Here's a basic guide for using LegalCitation to help organize materials during the research process:
Enter a LegalCitation record for everything you read.
Whenever you read a
potential source work,
enter a LegalCitation record for the work.
LegalCitation provides you with
forms to make sure you enter all the information you will
need on the
case,
statute,
law review article, or
other authority for a proper reference.
Include a few keywords to help you retrieve authorities on similar issues easily, and
an abstract that summarizes the significance of the authority to your work.
Enter research notes in your database as you read.
When you encounter a passage that capsulizes the authority's position on an issue, summarizes
a decisions' impact on legal issues in a particular area,
or illustrates a critical concept you want to address in your argument -
enter a
note record. Link the note to the bibliographic record with an Access Phrase, and the pinpoint reference
for the passage. Include keywords that indicate the relationship of the excerpt to your research interests.
You can enter your comments on the excerpt along with the exact text of the excerpt.
Write, click, cite.
Now, when you are ready to write, you'll find that you can easily
review excerpts and authorities
on any of the
issues you need to address (Citation lists all the keywords you've used, and lets you
easily find all the records in which you've used that keyword), and
cite
any of the works you've read, in proper Bluebook, ALWD, AGLC, or McGill* style with a
click. Once the authority is in your LegalCitation database, you'll never have to type it again. Even
better, LegalCitation lets you switch between styles for law
reviews, court documents, briefs and other documents easily.
The basic point is this: as you are reading and writing, LegalCitation sits quietly on your word processor's Tools menu,
streamlining and simplifying
what you already do when you are researching an issue and preparing an argument. You will quickly find that this
streamlining will make all the difference in the world when you start writing briefs, memoranda, law review articles, or papers for class.
More detailed information and a free demo is available at
the LegalCitation product site.
*Law students and faculty will want to note that LegalCitation also supports most
citation styles used in cross-disciplinary law journals and publications. (i.e., APSA, ASA, APA, MLA, Chicago, GPO)
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