A new website that generates McGill Guide-correct legal citations could spare law students a good deal of time and frustration.
The service, which is currently offering free subscriptions to students, takes CanLii web addresses and spits out proper citations ready to be copied-and-pasted into your next paper.
The automated generator only works with CanLii URLs. Cases from Westlaw and Quicklaw have to be inputted manually. It can also create citations for UK and US cases, books and journal articles, but the user has to input those manually as well. Certain additional information, like which judge authored an opinion, also needs to be added by the user.
Currently the service doesn’t work with legislation, which the site’s creators say they avoided because CanLii already has a service that generates citations for legislation.
Intra-vires.com was founded by U of T JD/MBA student David Pardy and Stephen Huang, a computer science and physics student at the University of Calgary. According to Pardy the idea came up at his 1L small group dinner, where students were complaining about all the time they were forced to spend with their style guides.
Pardy says he wants to ensure students don’t lose marks on citations, but rather are able to focus on substantive things. While some instructors tend to stress the importance of proper footnotes and punish students for minor infractions, Pardy hopes his service will help shift their focus. “Citations are not the law,” he says. “First years will be able to cut down a lot of their time on their first assignments.”
Students seem to agree. Less than two days after it was launched, Intra Vires Research Tools already had 250 subscribers and some 2000 page views.
Pardy says that while he has plans to monetize the site in the future, for the time being it will remain a free service. He’s also been talking to law firms about getting practitioners to start using his service.
So is it time to put the torch to your copy of the McGill Law Journal, Canadian Guide to Uniform legal Citation, 7th ed (np; Carswell, 2010)? Tempting as it seems, that may be premature.
Assistant Dean Sara Faherty, who teaches legal research and writing, says that while the service could make the mechanics of citing cases easier, “the more significant point—knowing how to use case law appropriately—can never be delegated to computers.” If only…
