Help me with my journal work Forum

[TJISMYHERO]

Does anyone know of a good program or method of gathering a list of all the sources in a law review article?

I am tasked with making a list of all the sources in many, many articles and am looking for a more efficient way than simply copying and pasting each source into an excel file.

Thanks.

[CourCour]

Does anyone know of a good program or method of gathering a list of all the sources in a law review article?

I am tasked with making a list of all the sources in many, many articles and am looking for a more efficient way than simply copying and pasting each source into an excel file.

Thanks.

I'm a 0L so not sure exactly what you mean but EndNote is a software specifically for keeping track of sources, citations.

[AreJay711]

If they are old sources, maybe the table of authorities on Lexis Advance. I hate journal so much, I can only imagine what you are going through.

[TJISMYHERO]

I'm a 0L so not sure exactly what you mean but EndNote is a software specifically for keeping track of sources, citations.

Thanks for this idea. The software looks promising, I'm going to try it when I get home from work.

If they are old sources, maybe the table of authorities on Lexis Advance. I hate journal so much, I can only imagine what you are going through.

That's an excellent idea, however unfortunately these articles haven't been published yet. I'm gathering a list of sources for the 40ish articles my journal is publishing this volume. I'll be doing it in groups though, issue by issue. So, this isn't something that's going away anytime soon.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I think Westlaw and Lexis both have some cite-checking gizmo that shepardizes/cite checks the sources in a document? There was something called West Check, but I think there's some integrated function now. In any case, I think it's supposed to create a list of everything cited and sheperdize it all? Not sure how it handles non-case sources, but it might be worth looking at. (We had a resources editor for my journal but I don't know whether she did this or did it all by hand or got info from the author or what.)

[z0rk]

http://www.westcheck.com <--- I used this a lot in private practice to cite check briefs, it pulls the source and also verifies any quotes. Its not perfect, but it saved me a lot of time when we had a filing that had to go out in hours and the finalized brief needed to be checked one last time. Most educational institutions block this feature on WestLaw because, frankly, you are supposed to learn how to do this properly rather than rely upon an imperfect algorithm to do it for you.

That said, I assume you are gathering a list of sources so that you can collect eventually original versions of the document. Honestly, though journal can be a bit tedious you are probably safer off doing the line by line review instead of being automated. Below is a list of instructions on how I organize myself around pulling cites when I have a spading assignement:

1.) Save a copy of the document to work from
2.) Convert all footnotes to end notes
3.) Copy and paste all end notes that I have to review into an excel spreadsheet.
4.) Clean up the cites by a.) breaking up all end notes so each cite is in its own cell (i.e. breaking up a string cite so each citation is separate), and b.) removing all parenthetical commentary and anecdotal discussion (leaving you with JUST the cites).
5.) Save this spreadsheet and use it for a checklist when you go through the entire document, then save a new copy.
6.) Using the new copy run de-dupping on the spreadsheet to remove exact duplicates.
7.) Once the exact dupes are removed do a review of the document for any documents that are exact duplicates but may not have been picked up by the algorithm (i.e. a period was off or something so the text is techniqule unique but citing to the same source and pin). Sort alphabetically to make this review easier so you can compare simillar cites to other cites.
8.) the remaining list are unique citations ready for collection. Use the original spreadsheet from step 5 as a checklist to note when you collect a document, if you checked blue booking, and if there are any notes. I turn this in to my editor with my final work product so they can follow along with my work.

[nonprofit-prophet]

if I understand what you're looking for, we just always download the pdf files from hein online and then put it in a source binder for the article.

[Bikeflip]

if I understand what you're looking for, we just always download the pdf files from hein online and then put it in a source binder for the article.

We did the electronic version of this. I wish I had known about Westcheck.