Citations are an integral part of legal writing.

—— Why do we need legal citation rules? ——

One of the obligations of the attorney is to perform adequate research.

Inclusion of legal citations in a document is an indication that the statements contained in this document have been thoroughly researched, and a well-educated paralegal can assist an attorney in fulfilling this obligation.

—— Reference manuals & legal citation forms ——

The major competing reference manuals are The ALWD Citation Manual (today in its 3rd Edition), the Bluebook (19th Ed.), and the University of Chicago Manual of Style Manual of Legal Citation (also known as the Maroonbook).

Legal research is a field generally known for its conservatism. Tradition weights heavily when one thinks about making a change from one set of citation rules to another.

But the advent of electronic publication of legal sources has put pressure on legal citation form, especially as some law firms have virtually abandoned maintaining a print law library. This has led to a movement toward neutral citation form unrelated to any particular vendor and any particular medium.

The other pressure on legal citation is the interest in improving citation form by making it simpler and more consistent.

—— What do we want as paralegals? ——

Surveys have shown that there has been support for a long time for:

• having just one set of typeface conventions,
• eliminating the “large and small” cap typeface altogether,
• including more full-text examples showing how citations should be used and how they should appear.

—— The Bluebook today ——

Thus, one would think that with new editions available and the growing importance of online media, legal citation would have changed considerably in the past few years. But in fact, as of this day, we are still waiting for the radical changes and the 21st Century legal citation revolution.

Because of the competition, the Bluebook, in its latest edition, has incorporated new features and become somewhat more user friendly: the Bluepages have been considerably updated and expanded, and Rule 18 now allows increased citation to Internet sources and podcasts.

Nevertheless, despite these revisions, the Bluebook still provide hyper complex citation rules for law review articles, and is seen by some as "an enormous waste of time and effort".

To respond to the challenges presented by the practice of law in the 21st century, it is time to change legal citation for real and dream of a lawyer focused software and even a mobile application that would flag incorrect cite (the same way it does a misspelled word) and help us automatically turn it into a perfect looking one!