Legal Research

Citer Looks for Legal Citations in Web Pages and Points to Content

Citer is a new tool from the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute that looks for legal citations in ordinary web pages and points to a free, full-text version of the cited source. The concept is very similar to Jureeka, but Citer works in multiple browsers including IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. Jureeka is only available for Firefox and Chrome.

With Citer, you select an area of text on a web site that contains the cite you would like to look up, click a button in the browser bookmark linkbar, and Citer will attempt to transfer you to a page containing the content.

Jureeka is a little different in that it actually turns the citation into a live link which you simply click on to take you to a page containing the content.

Currently Citer covers the follow citation formats: US Code, US Supreme Court and Circuit court opinions, CFR and Federal Register, Statutes at Large, and federal public laws. They are working to expand it to state courts and some law reviews.

Jureeka's coverage is broader, covering selected federal, state and international sources, as well as some law reviews. See their spreadsheet for complete coverage.

Of the two, I prefer Jureeka - it's less cumbersome and has better coverage (at least for now). But, if you don't use Firefox or Chrome, then Jureeka is not an option for you. Citer is certainly a very good alternative.

Thanks to my law librarian colleague, Bev Butula, for the tip.

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).