Legal Research

Zotero on LLRX

By Michael Lines

beSpacific reports that LLRX has posted a positive description of Zotero. The review does not mention that there is only a draft version of a citation style for the Blue Book, and nothing in the works to make Zotero work with our own inimitable Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation.

I think Zotero is the product of the near-to-mid future, and I expect legal writers will move to it as soon as there is a style for them to use, because most of us are fed up with the vagaries of Endnote and related products (lack of networkablility and lack of product support being the main ones). Here are links to the tools and info that Zotero provides to help create a style:

Forums, and the Law Forum
Extensions
Developer’s page

and here is a draft style I have put together with the help of the Simple Style Generator:

zoteroMcGill (please change the .txt extension to .csl)

and finally, here is a link to a discussion forum for the style, hosted on the Zotero site:

A Canadian Legal Style, and its RSS feed (Atom, RSS2).

I call on all the XML-ing librarians and lawyers out there to have a look and see if you can contibute an improvement or two. If we can pull together a style that covers 4 or 5 of the major formats (cases, legislation, books, articles…), I think we’ll have something very useful. Imagine not having to install Endnote ever again!

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on July 25, 2008 (boomark / email).