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LegalCitation: Introduction to the basics
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Citation is a powerful bibliographic database manager, designed especially for research writers who need to organize and document their sources. LegalCitation has been enhanced to include forms for many sources used principally in legal studies, and citation styles that are peculiar to legal publications. Citation’s primary function for research writers in law and legal studies is quite simple: it lets writers organize, search, and then format, citations for authorities.
Here's a basic description of how it works.
Right now, you are used to entering citations of authorities already
formatted, according to rules defined in a style manual. (Usually, for legal research and writing in the US, this style manual is A Uniform System of Citation, commonly referred to as Bluebook, though many US law schools have now standardized on the new ALWD Citation Manual, recently published by Aspen Law & Business. If you are studying or practicing in Australia, you will need to reference the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, published by the University of Melbourne; most jurisdictions have style guides peculiar to their court and legislative reporting/recording systems.)
Using the Bluebook as a guide, for instance, you might enter a citation to a case like this: These same authorities, formatted for inclusion in a legal brief, need to be reformatted. If you are working with the ALWD format, or local court rules, the citations may need to be formatted again, differently, sometimes with added information (ALWD style, for instance, requires the name of the publisher for citations of books and treatises).
Enter the information for your citations once using clear, concise forms
With LegalCitation, the formatting of citations is automatic, and instant.
you will type your citations a little differently. Instead of typing out a formatted citation, you will use notecard-like forms to enter pertinent information on your sources in a database that you can use (and re-use). Once the information is in the form, LegalCitation will format citations for you, in the style you need for your work. When you cite the same authority in a different type of writing, just click on a menu to change the style.
As you are entering the record, Citation will format the information on the authority as a citation in the preview box (you can select the style for the preview box from a menu):
Citations can be copied from the preview box and pasted directly to your document as you are writing, or you can have Citation format and write all your citations at once, when you have completed writing your document. You can enter up to ten pages of notes for each record, describing the importance of the decision or source work to your research.
Organize and categorize authorities for research and later use
Keeping information on your sources in a database provides you with a number of benefits other
than simply having a software program format legal citations for you. You'll be able to enter keywords in your records, so you can browse through notes and authorities on similar issues easily, as you are writing, to determine which sources should be cited. You can also enter information on the date the authority was last checked for the currency of the decision, the name of the prevailing party for cases, and related authorities you might want to check later in your research process.
In some instances, you won't even have to type the basic information for the source
into the form.
BookWhere,
a companion product for Citation, will search library systems
for you and let you add works relevant to your research directly to your Citation database.
And you will be able to search CarlWeb's Uncover database for law review articles on
a topic and import bibliographic information on relevant materials into your datafile.
You'll only have to enter the keywords, and perhaps your notes on the source.
Research notes, too, often end up on notecards (which are easily misplaced), or in word
processing documents that are difficult to manage. Citation provides you with forms for
easily entering, categorizing, sorting, and searching your research notes:
 You can enter as many keywords as you like in your note records, and up to 10 pages of text. If you are researching a topic on the internet, Citation makes it very easy to compile a comprehensive set of notes on any topic that you will be able to search, sort, easily and quickly. These slight alterations in the methods you use to enter information on your research sources can make the process of organizing your notes and documenting sources easier and more efficient. With LegalCitation, you will enter and proofread the information on authorities only once. If you sometimes publish in journals that use publishing styles other than Bluebook style, you’ll be able to enter the full name of the journal or law review in your record, publisher names and locations, and other information not required by Bluebook style but required by other publishing styles. Citation will find proper abbreviations for you, and include publisher names, pages, and so forth, as required by the publishing style you select.
 When you get ready to write your document, you can use Citation to automatically format citations for the authorities. You can copy the citations from the preview box to your paper, or enter "keys" in your paper and have Citation write all the footnotes and intext cites at the same time. Copying citations from the preview box is simple. You simply use the preview box to display the current record formatted in the appropriate Bluebook style:
 You can then copy the formatted citation and paste it into your document. Entering keys in your paper requires a few more steps, but it is just as easy:
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