Legal Citations – Introduction
Approximate duration: 45 minutes
Description: Learn more about the citation formats required in Canadian Common Law, and figure out, once and for all, where those pesky commas should go.
What Do You know?
Before starting this module, test your baseline knowledge with the following questions. You will receive basic feedback on your answers that will be further explained by the content in the module. Good luck! These questions are just for practice: your results will not be recorded by the system.
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1. Legal Citations
In terms of legal citations in Legal Research, which of the following statements are true? (Click all that apply)
In Ontario, we use the APA (American Psychological Asociation) guide for legal citation.
Feedback: False. While there is no one universally-accepted standard for legal citation in Canada, all Canadian universities and many Canadian legal publications use the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, more commonly known as the McGill Guide.
A proper citation will provide your reader with all the information required to locate the source.
Feedback: True. For example, if you only cite the title and author of a book, your reader might spend hours trying to find that book, especially if it has several editions.
Proper citations are one way to reduce expenses of a law firm.
Feedback: True. Proper citations minimize client, lawyer, and firm expenses by reducing the amount of time spent in the library or on an electronic database. In other words, a proper citation means the document can be located again very quickly and easily.
This is an example of a proper citation: Peter W Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, 5th ed (Toronto: Carswell, 2007) at 73.
Feedback: True. Depending on the type of document, a proper citation will include all information needed to later retrieve the document.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this module you will be able to:
- Describe the importance and function of uniform legal citation;
- Identify the form and content of legal citation and use it to locate source material;
- Explain and apply the various models of legal citation, including case law and legislation;
- Explain when material and references should be cited.
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Last Updated: 2014-09-09
