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Hello everyone,

I am actually not a member of the legal profession so I apologize ahead of time for the ignorance of my questions. I am in the process of writing an article to be published in an unrelated academic field and as part of the article I need describe in detail the different citation procedures and methods used in law.

It seems to me that I should focus my discussion on two types of citation procedures – 1) footnoting that occurs in law review articles and 2) the use of Shepard’s citations to describe the precedential history of court cases and statutes.

Can someone please explain the Shepard’s citation model to me? In particular, I am interested in knowing who engages in “Shepardizing”. I understand that law students learn how to Shepardize as a rite of passage, but definitive Shepard’s analysis codes are only assigned by paid professional of Shepard’s, right? I’m curious to know more about the process too. I assume the outcomes of court cases are immediately sent to the Shepard’s organization to be updated in the database. Is that correct? How does Shepard’s acquire the up to date information needed to Shepardize court cases quickly and efficiently? Any information about who Shepardizes and the logistics of Shepardizing as it relates to the courts and the Shepard’s organization would be greatly appreciated.

Also, are the footnoted citations that appear in law review articles indexed electronically in any way other than the citation counts that appear on an indexing service such as Google Scholar?

Thank you so much in advance for your help!! I really appreciate it

Citation is what you see in law review footnotes. You want a copy of the Bluebook for a description of how that works. And yes, as you begin to read, that feeling of horror that starts to creep over you is a perfectly rational and reasonable response to the monstrosity that is the Bluebook.

Shepardizing, on the other hand, is just to see if a case is still "good law," as they say: has it been overruled, has it been cast doubt on, has it been disagreed with in another jurisdiction? It's not really a "citation procedure" per se.

There are two major databases of cases: LexisNexis and Westlaw. LexisNexis owns the trademark for Shepard's (they bought the original Shepard's almost 20 years ago — in fact, start by reading this article). I've rarely used LexisNexis, so I can't say that I know anything about it. Westlaw has a similar Key Cite system (red flag, yellow flag).

The basic idea is this: LexisNexis employees and Westlaw employees analyze cases as soon as they are decided and the text is available. (I imagine that the courts send their opinions to these two companies more or less as soon as they are decided — they're up in the online databases within a day — but I don't know.) They look through the citations in the case and determine how the analysis in this case relates to the analysis in previous cases and flag the prior cases appropriately. They also insert headnotes, etc. This is the underlying data.

Then, when a law student needs to know whether a case is still good law, the law student "shepardizes" the case, which, in Westlaw, literally just means looking at the top of the case in Westlaw and seeing what color the flag is. Red means bad. Yellow means that there's something iffy, but it's probably fine. You can go further by clicking and seeing what the subsequent cases (or sometimes legislation) have said about the case. That's shepardizing.

For the technical details of exactly how LexisNexis and Westlaw get their case information and process the cases, you'd be better off asking company representatives than us.

Also, are the footnoted citations that appear in law review articles indexed electronically in any way other than the citation counts that appear on an indexing service such as Google Scholar?

I have no idea what you mean.

tomwatts wrote:

Also, are the footnoted citations that appear in law review articles indexed electronically in any way other than the citation counts that appear on an indexing service such as Google Scholar?

I have no idea what you mean.

I believe OP means something like http://scholar.google.com/citations?use ... AAAJ&hl=en - mostly clarifying because I'd be interested in knowing the answer as well.

The Washington & Lee ranking of law reviews uses number of times a source is cited to determine the rankings, so there's got to be some kind of index out there, but I don't know which one it is.

ema2146 wrote:Hello everyone,

I am actually not a member of the legal profession so I apologize ahead of time for the ignorance of my questions. I am in the process of writing an article to be published in an unrelated academic field and as part of the article I need describe in detail the different citation procedures and methods used in law.

It seems to me that I should focus my discussion on two types of citation procedures – 1) footnoting that occurs in law review articles and 2) the use of Shepard’s citations to describe the precedential history of court cases and statutes.

Can someone please explain the Shepard’s citation model to me? In particular, I am interested in knowing who engages in “Shepardizing”. I understand that law students learn how to Shepardize as a rite of passage, but definitive Shepard’s analysis codes are only assigned by paid professional of Shepard’s, right? I’m curious to know more about the process too. I assume the outcomes of court cases are immediately sent to the Shepard’s organization to be updated in the database. Is that correct? How does Shepard’s acquire the up to date information needed to Shepardize court cases quickly and efficiently? Any information about who Shepardizes and the logistics of Shepardizing as it relates to the courts and the Shepard’s organization would be greatly appreciated.

Also, are the footnoted citations that appear in law review articles indexed electronically in any way other than the citation counts that appear on an indexing service such as Google Scholar?

Thank you so much in advance for your help!! I really appreciate it

There are two main types of citations that you might want to cover, depending on the angle of your article (1) law review citations, footnotes with explanatory text, citations, background reading, tangential information, etc.; but there is also (2) practitioner citations, which are shorter, in-text and in a different format, and have a somewhat different purpose, which is mainly to support assertions.

Tomwatts is correct about "shephardizing," but also keep in mind that something could be "red flagged" but the red flag might only be for a point or points of law and the other points or even the holding might still be good law, or it might just be a complete overruling. So you have to be careful and check and see what the case actually says.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:The Washington & Lee ranking of law reviews uses number of times a source is cited to determine the rankings, so there's got to be some kind of index out there, but I don't know which one it is.

Yeah, so do people like Leiter, etc. I wonder if he has any information on his blog.

Thank you so much, everyone! This is really helpful information.

I am also curious about the different procedures that writers in the field of law use to direct readers' attention to the nature or type of content cited instead of just the generic citation. I know about jump citations and pinpoint citations that give the reader more context and specificity (e.g. regarding the exact page number).

Are there other methods used to convey additional information?

Thanks so much!!!!

ema2146 wrote:I am also curious about the different procedures that writers in the field of law use to direct readers' attention to the nature or type of content cited instead of just the generic citation. I know about jump citations and pinpoint citations that give the reader more context and specificity (e.g. regarding the exact page number).

Are there other methods used to convey additional information?

Thanks so much!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_signal, R1.2 in the bluebook

Thank you!