On Cleaned Up Citations: A Modern Interpretation

What is a Cleaned Up Legal Citation?

A cleaned up legal citation is a legal citation that still gives credit to the source, but modifies "cite" language that is typically found after citations in legal documents. While there is no unanimity with respect to which "cite" language should be reworded or omitted, examples include: "(quotation marks omitted)," "(alterations in original)," "(internal quotation marks omitted)," and "(internal quotation marks and citation omitted)." These phrases typically tell the reader that the original cited material has been modified in some way. While it is conventional wisdom that an attorney should never quote quoted material in law school, many of us learned from experience that it was perfectly acceptable to quote quoted material if the text was modified—in essence, giving the original source two bites of the apple.
The origin of this recently cleansed approach is unclear , but with the increasing reliance on online research, where archived cases are automatically linked with each other, the phrase "(alterations in original)" tends to complicate the construct of archived links. The net effect is that the citation appears to have been changed. Accordingly, the American Bar Association released a new rule in August for their citation style stating, in relevant part, that "the language is not used because of its length or its potential to mislead the reader." It also provides a link to the Ohio Supreme Court Style Manual, which provides guidance on the appropriate use of this style of citation. Law schools and publishers have responded with varying degrees of acceptance, many published opinions have been updated to reflect the new standard, and it is turning into a sizeable portion of my day-to-day work.

Traditional Citation Form v. Cleaned Up Citation Form

Traditionally, and depending on the jurisdiction, legal citations have included the case name, case number, court name, year decided, and the citation to which reporter or database the opinion can be found. For example, the case citation for a California Court of Appeal decision might look like this: Smith v. Jones, 12345 Cal.App.4th 1234 (Cal. Ct. App. 2002). Or, in federal court, the case citation for a U.S. District Court decision might look like this: Smith v. Jones, Case No. 123, 2002 WL 123456 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 12, 2002).
Because modern legal research platforms do not require us to locate cases based on these citation elements, a number of legal professionals have begun to clean these citations up and simplify them by removing any unnecessary information. For example, the same case citation could be cleaned up to now resemble more like this: Smith v. Jones, 2002 WL 123456 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 12, 2002). So, why are legal professionals doing this?
When publishing legal opinions to a case management system, or exporting them to Opus, a cleaned up citation can add a number of efficiencies. First, a cleaned up citation is shorter, and can save valuable space on the printed page. Second, a cleaned up citation is a more efficient way to format a citation as standard conventions for modern word processing applications allow users to link directly to a cite. A cleaned up citation would not be the same as a hyperlink, such as this: Smith v. Jones, 2002 WL 123456. A cleaned up citation would look more like this: Smith v. Jones, 2002 WL 123456. With a linked citation, if a user clicks on that case name, their browser will take them directly to the case in the research platform that is also linked to that case.

The Benefits of Using Cleaned Up Citations

Cleaning up legal citations also can have practical advantages, most notably increasing clarity of legal documents. In particular, the ability to reduce wordiness aids in – and improves – readability. Judges, clerks, and law students in particular benefit from the improved ease of locating portions of cleaned up citations. Many judges are moving away from the use of citation manuals. Therefore, the cleaned up citation may actually become the standard citation format for some courts. Client matters and communications also benefit from cleaned up citations. Further, use of cleaned up citations can ultimately save you time and clients money.

How to Clean Up a Citation

In Six Steps: How to Clean Up Your Legal Citations
There are two kinds of judicial citations in the world. For example, R v. Smith 2013 SCC 40 refers to an older style of citing a court decision with a "volume number" — that is "2013" — followed by the "court abbreviation" — SCC for the Supreme Court of Canada — followed by the "judgment number" — "40," in this case — and then the "court type" — court decisions from all over the country are officially referenced, before the "reporter citation" — for the SCC the report series is called "SCR." Abbreviating those long words gives us R v. Smith 2013 SCC 40 (SCC) or R v. Smith 2013 SCC 40 (SCC).
The purpose of this citation is to make it easy for lawyers and judges to find the report (in this case the SCR where this case would be included) and if they have it, get the answer as to what the report says.
The cleaned up citation, however, assumes the reader has the reports and needs only the reference to the court, so R v. Smith 1/2/2013 SC (O) (on the first page of the case summary) means it’s the decision of a Ontario Superior Court on January 2, 2013 referring to R v Smith 2013 SCC 40 (SCC) above.
The advantage to the cleaned up version is that the user can immediately see the date and the name of the court, and the reference refers to the official record, not the publication by the reported publisher, meaning you can see the full case even if you don’t have the physical book on your shelf. A nice short link is also made possible, in this case , to allow the user to get right to the decision.
PRIL takes that a step further, by changing the "1/2/2013" into a full date….. by adding 01/02/2013 in place of 1/2/2013 to get "January 2, 2013".
To clean up a citation, take the steps below. If done correctly, the body of your document will be universally understandable by anyone who may need to know where to look up the reference, from lawyers to paralegals to judges to the public.
First, is the citation a court decision or not?
If yes, go on to step two. If not (constitution, statute, bylaw, etc), then you’re done.
Step two, is the citation with a court abbreviation or not?
If no, for example Park v Giannetti assumes the reader knows it’s a court decision if it’s in the body of a legal document. No further action is needed in that case.
If yes, for example R v Smith .. then carry on to step three…
Step three, is there a "court type" or not?
If yes, for example SCC (Supreme Court of Canada), then go on to step four.
If no, for example R v Smith 2013 SCC 40 then clean it up with R v Smith 2013 SCC 40
Step four, is the citation with a "reporter citation" or not?
If yes, see previous post for example: AB v CMR 2007 YKSC 58 is proper citation as AB v. CMR 2007 YKSC 58 (YKSC)
If no, see below:
Step five, if it looks like a decision from a lower court, such as 2014 ABQB 251, then it should be cleaned up with 2014 ABQB 251, or a better example with 2014 ABQB 251 (QB)
Step six, if not a lower court decision, then time to identify the court type, example Family, QB and then clean it up, 2014 ABQB 251 (QB)

The Problems and Critiques of Cleaned Up Citations

While conversions of reliable legal citations to a cleaned up format is relatively new, the legal community is sure to come up with its share of challenges and criticisms. For one, consistency through out a single document might be an issue. For example, if part of a legal opinion is converted during a deposition or drafting of a motion, there might not be a universal standard for cleaned up formatting that all clerks and judges observe. One judge might not require any punctuation while another might require citation to be in all caps. Another judge might prefer the year of the decision to be in parentheses in next to last position, while another might want the year citation where it is currently located at last position. Due to these inconsistencies, having a common format universally observed by legal professionals may be a moot point.
Further, cleaned up citations have not been universally recognized by courts. Not only do judges have any number of formatting preferences, the format itself might not be yet recognized by courts. Without the majority of courts adopting cleaned up citations as a normal practice, the format itself might have little legal value.
Another challenge to providing cleaned up citations is that there will likely be slow adoption by legal professionals due to a simple lack of knowledge. How many legal professionals are actually aware of the format? Until there is a collective knowledge that provide cleaned up citations are acceptable, lawyers may still provide the legal world with its traditional messy citations.

The Future of Citation in the Digital Era

As digital legal resources have become more readily available and searchable, the relationship between the case law and the citation has evolved. As with so many aspects of research, the cleaned up citation may be useful for different reasons in a digital world than it was when they first appeared in print.
For example, most no longer keep rows of dusty books near their desk containing "unreported decisions" published by the courts until they finally made their way into the reporters. Now, unreported decisions are either just reported online or in a single compilation and rarely in an old hardcover book. So while the cleaned up version of the unreported decision may remain relatively unchanged from the original, there is little need for another step in the process of looking up a case to put the decision into the more useful format. In this digital world, the cleaned up version of what used to be referred to as an unreported decision no longer appears to be what it was.
With the advent of electronic legal databases, search engines, and research tools there are many opportunities for the cleaned up citation to come into its own as a modern tool. For one example, a cleaned up citation can make a simple search of case law such as a keyword search, more effective by eliminating irrelevant results. A cleaned up citation can open up new avenues of citation analysis for search engines and research tools, whether that search engine is being used to research the cited case or the citing case . One common method – and probably the least innovative and in some ways least useful – is to simply collect the cleaned up citations for a cited case into a list of citing cases for review, essentially saving a page-turning exercise. A better approach would be to foster new ways to allow lawyers to work with that information, perhaps by tracking how many times the cited case is being referred to in more contemporary legal writing, or by tracking in what ways it is being used. In other words, as we create a wealth of searchable and readily available metadata through the cleaned up citation process, those opportunities should continue to evolve and become more sophisticated.
Further, in the increasingly international environment of professionals and researchers, where more and more work is being done on the internet in different countries and using different languages, what about translating the cleaned up citation into other languages? Translation certainly comes with some unique challenges, but it may be something worth considering as we think about the future of the cleaned up legal citation. Finally, the same government agencies that produce the official versions of the print reporters are now producing digital versions of their cases online. If freely accessible to the public, would it be appropriate to link to these cases as they appear as cleaned up citations on our site? Do the same rules apply? These are just some of the potential future developments for the cleaned up legal citation to consider, as the tools that are driving legal research continue to grow and evolve alongside them.