Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2019
Learning the rules of legal citation is a challenge for new and seasoned legal researchers alike. Good instruction and practice are required to master these rules. Think about the first sport you learned to play. Did you master all the rules the first time you played the game? Do most people even read a rule book when learning to play a new sport? Initially, it is a challenge for any player learning the game to follow all of the rules correctly. Generally, only coaches study the rule book. The rules of the game are very important so coaches and players know what is and is not permitted “on the field.”
Most rules are disseminated orally and learned through practice. Law professors who teach legal research or supervise legal writing are the coaches in the game of legal citation; they must disseminate the rules to their students. The professors have a duty to stimulate a student's mastery of legal citation rules to meet the proficiency required of legal writing in the profession. Law students who do not master the rules of legal citation are more likely to plagiarize.
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2 Black's Law Dictionary 1335 (10th ed. 2014).Google Scholar
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4 Under the “fair use” copyright provisions, copyrighted materials may be reproduced for news reporting and educational use. 17 U.S.C. § 107 (2000). In particular, the fair use statute allows “the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” Id.; Kindergartners Count, Inc v. DeMoulin, 249 F. Supp. 2d 1233, 1251-52 (D. Kan. 2003) (quoting Black's Law Dictionary 1170 (7th ed. 1999) (quoting Paul Goldstein, Copyright's Highway 12 (1994))); Robert D. Bills, Plagiarism in Law School: Close Resemblance of the Worst Kind?, 31 Santa Clara L. Rev. 103, 108-09(1990).Google Scholar
5 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), (b).Google Scholar
6 Id. §§ 107-109; Bills, supra note 4.Google Scholar
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11 I have had discussions with several other law librarians and law professors over the years. The comments provided are from Elizabeth M. (Betsy) McKenzie, Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School, BA, Transylvania University; JD, MSLS; email on file with author.Google Scholar
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13 Law Library Directors Listserve Julie Clement, Charles Calleros, Ralph Brill, Mary Barnard, and Jane Scott.Google Scholar
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69 Chicago survey of law firm issues with new student's arguments judges often stops presentations and request the authority. First year students participating in the law review write-on process are eager to learn citing in law review articles, footnotes, or endnotes. Also, a 1994 survey of Texas appellate judges and clerks concluded that “'citation form [was] so wrong as to be distracting'” and in a 2003 survey the judges polled found citation mistakes to be common problems in legal writing. Wayne Schiess, Ethical Legal Writing, 21 Rev. Litig. 527, 536 (2002) (quoting Pamela Stanton Baron & Douglas W. Alexander, Briefing to the Texas Courts of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court—Avoiding Common Mistakes, Fourth Annual Conference on Techniques for Handling Civil Appeals in State and Federal Court 15 (Univ. Tex. Sch. Law 1994)); Ian Gallacher, Cite Unseen: How Neutral Citation and America's Law Schools Can Cure Our Strange Devotion to Bibliographical Orthodoxy and the Constriction of Open and Equal Access to the Law, College of Law Faculty Scholarship (2007), available at http://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=lawpub. In particular, they determined the absence of citation error more important than the absence of punctuation or spelling errors. Gallacher, 2 n.9 (quoting Susan H. Kosse & David ButleRitchie, How Judges, Practitioners, and Legal Writers Teachers Assess the Writing Skills of New Law Graduates: A Comparative Study, 53 J. Legal Educ. 80, 90 (2003)).Google Scholar
70 E.g, Kapco Mfg. Co. v. C & O Enters., Inc., 886 F.2d 1485, 1496 (7th Cir. 1989) (sanctioning an attorney whose “briefs misrepresented propositions of law in legal treatises and misrepresented facts”); Wallace Computers Servs., Inc. v. David Noyes & Co., No. 93 C 6005, 1994 WL 75201, at *1 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 9, 1994) (trial court chastised defense counsel for repeatedly citing authority “in an inappropriate, out of context manner”); Federated Mut. Ins. Co. v. Anderson, 991 P.2d 915, 922 (Mont. 1999) (dismissing appeal for, among other reasons, inaccurate citations to authority); Carrier v. Salt Lake Cnty., 104 P.3d 1208, 1213-14 (Utah 2004) (discussing whether to strike pleadings as a result of inaccurate record citations and inadequate citation of legal authority).Google Scholar
71 See Judith D Fischer, The Role of Ethics in Legal Writing: The Forensic Embroiderer, the Minimalist Wizard, and Other Stories, 9 Scribes J. Legal Writing 77, 77 (2003) (citing Tyler v. State, 47 P.3d 1095, 1108 (Alaska Ct. App. 2001)).Google Scholar
72 See In re Lamberis, 443 N.E.2d 549, 553 (Ill. 1982). This Illinois Supreme Court censured an attorney for incorporating nearly verbatim two published works into his L.L.M. thesis without attribution. Id. The court found that the plagiarism could not go undisciplined because honesty is a fundamental function of the legal profession. Id. In Iowa, an attorney was suspended for six months and ordered to pay the costs of the disciplinary action. Iowa Sup. Ct. Bd. of Prof l Ethics & Conduct, 642 N.W.2d 296, 302 (Iowa 2002). The attorney copied 18 published pages from a treatise into his brief and then sought $16,000 in attorney's fees for 80 hours of work preparing the brief. Id. at 298. When the judge questioned the brief's content, Lane attempted to conceal his actions. He was found guilty of plagiarism, for attempting to deceive the court, and, thereby, “jeopard[izing] the integrity of the Bar and the public's trust of the legal profession.” Id. at 302. Also, in USA Clio Biz, Inc. N.Y. State Dep't of Labor, an attorney was ordered to show cause why he should not be sanctioned for his brief that repeated large sections almost verbatim from another brief. No. 97 CV 250, 1998 WL 57176 (E.D.N.Y. Jan. 3, 1998). In Dewilde v. Guy Gannett Publ'g Co., the attorney copied large portions of his opposing counsel's memorandum into his brief. 797 F. Supp. 55 (D. Me. 1992). In Federated Mutual Insurance Co. v. Anderson, 920 P.2d 97 (Mont. 1996), a law firm was sanctioned for providing misleading and selective quotations that were often taken out of context or omitted a critical phrase, and for citing cases that supported the opposite proposition for which they were cited. Id. at 102. In Columbus Bar Ass ‘n v. Farmer, 855 N.E.2d 462 (Ohio 2006), Respondent Farmer filed a brief, which was a nearly verbatim recasting of the brief prepared by the previous attorney on the case. Id. at 465. The panel suspended the attorney for two years, required him to refund his client all but $1,000 of the $8,915 fee collected and ordered him to pay the cost of the proceeding. Id. In In re Hinden, 654 A.2d 864 (D.C. 1995), an attorney was reprimanded for pasting ten pages from an A.L.R. annotation into his brief without citation. The court was particularly annoyed by the attorney's thrown-together brief that aided neither the lawyer's client nor the court. In Alamo v. Puerto Rico, No. 05-1955, 2006 WL 1716422 (D.P.R. June 19, 2006), Mr. Nolla-Acosta, counsel for plaintiff, submitted a brief that contained more than seven pages of text copied nearly word-for-word from another supreme court's opinion, without any citation to that case. Id. The court found the plagiarism, “for which we can only guess Mr. Nolla-Acosta actually billed his client, is unacceptable.” In this case, the attorney violated two major rules, because he plagiarized and then provided an unearned fee for the disservice.Google Scholar
73 In re Brennan, 447 N.W.2d 712, 714 (Mich. 1989).Google Scholar
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75 Vice President Joe Biden presents the best example of how plagiarism can haunt one for a lifetime. In 1965, Biden committed his first act of plagiarism as a first year law student at Syracuse University College of Law. E. J. Dionne Jr., Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not ‘Malevolent,' N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 18, 1987, available at http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/us/biden-admits-plagiarism-in-school-but-says-it-was-not-malevolent.html.Biden plagiarized part of a paper he wrote in his legal methods course from a law review article entitled “Tortious Acts as a Basis for Jurisdiction in Products Liability Cases” that was published in the Fordham Law Review. Id. His law school record indicated that “five pages of Biden's 15-page paper were copied without quotation or attribution.” Jack Shafer, What Kind of Plagiarist Is Joe Biden? The Unusually Creepy Kind, Slate (Aug. 26, 2008), http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2008/08/what_kind_of_plagiarist_isjoe_biden.html. Although Biden's first plagiarism charge eventually appeared to be just a bad memory, it returned to haunt him in his 1987 and 2008 presidential campaigns when a second charge of plagiarism surfaced. This time Biden was accused of taking major parts of a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock and incorporating it into his campaign speech. Id. Upon disclosure, this action became the downfall of his campaign. Although many may not have been aware of either incident, the information resurfaced during his 2008 presidential campaign and continued to haunt him.Google Scholar
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125 “Mosaic or ‘patchwork’ plagiarism is when a writer does not directly copy another's work, but instead changes a few words or slightly reorganizes some sentences. Though mosaic plagiarism is not a word-for-word account of someone else's work, it uses many of the ideas and concepts in an obvious way.” Leslie Nierste, Three Kinds of Plagiarism, eHow, http://www.ehow.com/info_7986111_three-kinds-plagiarism.html#channel=f20428e4bc76414&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ehow.com (last visited Oct. 15, 2013); see also Definitions/Plagiarism, Academic Integrity, http://webs.purduecal.edu/integrity/dishonesty/definitions-plagiarism/; What Constitutes Plagiarism? Harvard Guide to Using Sources. http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page342054; Bowdoin Office of the Dean of Student Affairs, Common Types of Plagiarism, http://www.bowdoin.edu/studentaffairs/ academichonesty/common-types.shtml.Google Scholar
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157 Young attorneys entering law firms are expected to draft legal documents and are often directed to formbooks to retrieve sample documents they can edit to fit the facts of their client's case. Practicing attorneys often incorporate the use of formbooks in their legal drafting. In the practice of law, this text is freely borrowed and recycled without attribution. Gerhardt, supra note 76.Google Scholar
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171 University of Hawaii at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law, Policy on Plagiarism, at 10. Under an exception to this rule, some legal scholars omit a citation when the idea can be found in five or more independent sources.Google Scholar
172 Bluebook R. 10, at 87-109.Google Scholar
173 Id. R. 1.2, at 54-56. When a signal is incorporated, it should be accompanied by a parenthetical describing the relevance of the source. The citation and signal combination give credence to the purpose for citing the authority.Google Scholar
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178 Bales, Richard A., Footnotes, 68 Bench & Bar Kentucky 41 (2004). Citations should not be the transition for a sentence. Test the substance of the citation.Google Scholar
179 Id.Google Scholar
180 Seligmann, Terry Jean & Seymour, Thomas H., Choosing and Using Legal Authority: The Top Ten Tips, 6 Persp. 1 (1997), reprinted in The Best of Perspectives 73 (2001).Google Scholar
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186 Rodell, Fred, Goodbye to Law Reviews, 23 Va. L. Rev. 38 (1937); Fred Rodell, Comment, Goodbye to Law Reviews—Revisited, 48 Va. L. Rev. 279 (1962); see also Jack M. Balkin, The Footnote, 1989, Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 287 (some law students, lawyers, and legal academics believe, “footnotes are the real measure of worth in legal writing”), available at http://digitalcoomons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/287. However, students should be aware that overusing footnotes or using textual footnotes can be distracting. Bales, supra note 178. Cramming six footnotes into one sentence may increase an academic author's footnote and tenure chances, but it is unlikely to enhance a reader's understanding of the material. Bales, supra note 178. Noel Coward, once said: “Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.” G.W. Bowersock, The Art of the Footnote, 53 American Scholar 54, 54 (1984).Google Scholar
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192 Schiess, supra note 69, at 541; Westinghouse Elec. Corp. v. NLRB, 809 F.2d 419, 425 (7th Cir. 1987).Google Scholar
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197 Schiess, supra note 69, at 536. Pinpoint citation is also called a jump citation, dictum page, or pincite. Black's Law Dictionary 278 (9th ed. 2009).Google Scholar
198 Dickerson, Darby, Citation Frustrations—And Solutions, 30 Stetson L. Rev. 477, 507 (2000).Google Scholar
199 Association of Legal Writing Directors & Darby Dickerson, ALWD Citation Manual: A Professional System of Citation 36 (Aspen Publishers 4th ed., 2010).Google Scholar
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201 Gerhardt, supra note 76, at 16. When you fail to refer readers to specific pages where the referenced material appears, readers become frustrated. Scheiss, supra note 69, at 537. Pinpoints are valuable to anyone who reads and checks legal authority because without pinpoints, the checker's job is much more complicated. Id.Google Scholar
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215 Shepard's provides an 800 number on each of their titles. How to Shepardize: Your Guide to Legal Research Using Shepard's Citations, https://www.lexisnexis.com/shepardscitations/printsupport/shepardize_print.pdf.Google Scholar
216 Joel Fishman & Dittakavi Rao, Navigating Legal Research & Technology: Quick Reference Guide to the 1,500 Most Common Questions about Traditional and Online Legal Research 45 (2010).Google Scholar
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226 The ALWD website shows its survey determined that 131 schools used the Bluebook exclusively, 19 schools used the ALWD exclusively, 10 both, 16 either and 8 others. ALWD Association of Legal Writing Directors website is available at (last visited Jan. 24, 2014); Gallacher, supra note 69, at 19 n.93 (in 2006, 91 schools were using the ALWD exclusively).Google Scholar
227 Lysaght & Tonner, supra note 225, at 1058. As of January 24, 2014, a total of 203 institutions are approved by the American Bar Association, ABA-Approved Law Schools, Available at http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/abaapprovedlawschools (last viewed Jan. 21, 2014); Weresh, supra note 79, at 3.Google Scholar
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234 Students complain that the first year of law school is a time of major information overload. While they are expected to absorb an enormous amount of new terminology and information on substantive law, they are equally expected to consume the very new and complex nature of legal citation, a foreign language all its own. Lysaght & Tonner, supra note 225. Legal citation can be a very frustrating process for the student and professor. Gerhardt, supra note 76. Another frustration for practicing lawyers is that the examples in the text use law-review typeface conventions rather than practitioner typeface conventions. Schiess, supra note 69, at 537. However, mastering the Bluebook is a manageable and attainable goal. And although mastering the Bluebook is confusing, having no “uniform system” of citation would indeed be worse. Barris, supra note 230, at 3. Robert Berring notes, “The Uniform System of Citation has inflicted more pain on more law students than any other publication in legal history.” Weresh, supra note 79 (quoting The Bluebook: a Sixty-Five Year Retrospective Vol. 2, app. A, 6 (1998)). Ultimately, you will be able to write most but not all citations without use of this manual. Some sources will drive even the most experienced legal writer back to the pages of the Bluebook or local citation guides. Martin, supra note 222. That is why the Bluebook is ultimately so useful because it provides a system so that everyone's citations are similar. Barris, supra note 230, at 3.Google Scholar
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260 LexisNexis Research Help, http://web.lexis.com/help/research/gh_brief-check.asp (last visited May 10, 2014).Google Scholar
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