Citation form as a sign of excellence
In the following quotation, Professor Ian Gallacher may be right, but is that a good thing?
[A]n ability to generate accurate citations is viewed as a proxy for a lawyer's attention to detail. [5] Some argue that . . . “[a]ttention to citation form . . . will improve the reader's sense of reliability, credibility, and integrity when evaluating the worth of the document and the writer's professionalism.” [7] Others note that “in our legal culture, attention to detail, even in citation form, is a sign of excellence.” [8]
FootnotesIan 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, 70 Albany L. Rev. 491 (2007).
[5]. “Every lawyer needs to know proper citation form. Sloppy or inaccurate form suggests inattention to detail or ignorance of the correct form.” Susan W. Fox, Citation Form: Getting It Right, Fla. B.J., Mar. 2000, at 84, 84; see also Michael R. Smith, Advanced Legal Writing: Theories and Strategies in Persuasive Writing 169 (2002) (identifying the careful and full compliance with applicable citation rules in the citation of authorities as one the ways a legal writer can be “a more persuasive advocate in terms of both logos and ethos”).
[7]. Id. at 95.
[8]. Nancy A. Wanderer, Citation Excitement: Two Recent Manuals Burst on the Scene, Me. B.J., Winter 2005, at 42, 46 (citing Carol Bast & Susan Harrell, Has the Bluebook Met Its Match? The ALWD Citation Manual, 92 Law Libr. J. 337, 338 (2000) .
7 Comments:
Maybe proper citation form is evidence, at least, that the Judge, in the end, was in control (as in Madman-Architect-Carpenter-Judge). Of course judgments can't hang on a comma, but I have to think that judges, like anybody, would take correct formatting as evidence that the draft before them is, indeed, fully finished.
I have two thoughts on this issue. First, I believe in practice there is no one perfect citation format. For example, I frequently see variants between New York and bluebook style; and case names can be presented as underlined, italicized, or both, without being universally seen as "wrong." That said, however, there is also a clear distinction between stylistic license and sloppy citation.
Second, in my experience, many judges will view sloppy citation as a cry for help. For example, I am working on an appeal where I was the unsuccessful proponent of a motion to dismiss in the court below. The plaintiffs' papers were abominable: the arguments were barely coherent, authority was poorly cited and inaccurately described, and it seemed as if success on the motion was a foregone conclusion.
The judge, however, took sympathy on the plaintiffs. The result of the plaintiffs' terrible motion papers (after they were given an opportunity to redraft them, with little improvement) was that the judge searched the record and came up arguments she would have made if she were the plaintiffs' attorney.
In this example, the judge's advocacy was a little over the top, but I have seen the same thing happen -- to a lesser extent -- many times. When opposing poorly drafted papers, an attorney faces the difficult decision of to what extent they should state and address the arguments that should have been made, or were poorly attempted, by the other side.
Think about citations from the perspective of a law clerk or judge who must read several hundred dense pages every week. Abnormal citation form is just another form of static, similar to archaic language, redundancy, or overuse of typefaces. Anything that detracts from the message is bad. Thus, the closer to "normal" you can make your citations, the less static in your message. The existence of permitted variations in citation form make this more difficult. It is especially challenging when the court you are writing for uses citation forms that depart from the Bluebook or other norm
Seer,
A good point. I like the "static" analogy.
If we assume the goal of any sort of citation is to accurately convey the source of the information and the relevance quickly, then there are some very important caveats to the Professor's statements.
First, mere compliance with the citation rules does not mean that the author has met that goal. Indeed, one could craft "perfect" citations but fail to meet accuracy and/or relevancy requirements.
Second, it's very plausible that non-compliant citation forms meet all of the goals. My favorite example is the practice of including all the possible sources of the material in a list following the case name--this may have been important when people only had paper bound volumes, but that seems like a set of 0 individuals now.
And, in any event, citation form (not citation itself) seems like a secondary, if not lower, consideration when evaluating writing. I can't imagine people look first to citation form for evidence of "inattention to detail" or "ignorance." It would probably be faster and easier to find typographical and grammatical errors, logical fallacies, etc. in the main body for that evidence.
And, mind you, if the main body is clean, then you're really being really pedantic to point out flaws in citation FORM.
I agree with Mike (and with Professor Schiess's attitude on this subject), but the audience my students face often feels very differently. I literally have law firms in Cleveland who passionately oppose our school's use of the ALWD Citation Manual because the abbreviations it calls for don't include apostrophes. Thus, for example, my students will abbreviate "association" as "assn.," not as "ass'n." These deviations from Bluebook form are, for many lawyers in these law firms, "static." I'm appalled at their attitude, but, of course, my students are stuck with the audience they've found themselves before.
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