March 4, 2009 – Crafting citations for legal materials is a daunting prospect for many brief writers. It’s not surprising since the Bluebook system of citation is one of the most complex citation systems in existence. Fortunately, there are several new tools that can help attorneys create citations more easily.

• CiteGenie - http://www.citegenie.com/

CiteGenie is an amazing new add-on for the Firefox web browser that automatically creates Bluebook-formatted pinpoint citations when copying from Westlaw or LexisNexis. Simply highlight some text from a document, right click, and choose “Copy with CiteGenie.” The text and citation are then placed in your clipboard where you can paste them into your word processor or other application.

A license for CiteGenie is available for $14.97 for three computers, plus $4.99 for each additional computer. There is also a 90-day free trial.

• Introduction to Basic Legal Citation - http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/

This guide from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute introduces the general principles of legal citation and provides corresponding examples. It focuses on the forms of legal citation used in professional practice.

• Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations - http://www.legalabbrevs.cardiff.ac.uk/search_title.jsp

This index allows you to either search by title to find the correct legal abbreviation or search by abbreviation to find the full title. It covers English language legal publications from the United States, the British Isles, and the Commonwealth nations.

Bonnie Schucha is the head reference librarian at U.W. Law School