has been posted to SSRN and can be downloaded

Abstract:     
Wikipedia has been cited in over four hundred American judicial opinions. Courts have taken judicial notice of Wikipedia content, based their reasoning on Wikipedia entries, and decided dispositive motions on the basis of Wikipedia content. The impermanent nature of Wikipedia entries and their questionable quality raises a number of unique concerns. To date, no law review article has comprehensively examined the citation of Wikipedia in judicial opinions or considered its long-range implications for American law.

This article reports the results of an exhaustive study examining every American judicial opinion that cites a Wikipedia entry. The article begins with a discussion of cases that cite Wikipedia for a significant aspect of the case before the court. The impact of these citations on litigants’ constitutional and procedural rights, the law of evidence, judicial ethics, and the judicial role in the common law adversarial system are explored. Part II discusses collateral references to Wikipedia entries. Part III proposes a set of best practices for when and how Wikipedia should be cited. Detailed statistics on the quality of Wikipedia entries cited in judicial opinions and the completeness and accuracy of citations to Wikipedia entries are provided. The article concludes with a discussion of the impact of Wikipedia citations in judicial opinions on the future of the law.

Cheers, Shaunna

On August 31, 2009 I posted a note about a problem with the LawSource Cases template citation search box.  The 'Find' box did not require punctuation (CLR) but the Cases template did (C.L.R.)  As of this past weekend Carswell has added a line beneath the Citation box that reads: Exact punctuation required.  This should help users understand how to correctly input searches to secure correct results. 

Thanks goes out to Carol Morgan and everyone at Carswell who put this on the 'to do list', monitored it and let us know when it was fixed.

Josette McEachern

Last summer it came to my attention that Westlaw Canada has a glitch in the way it handles searching citations, which I posted to this blog on August 31, 2009. This email is an update to that glitch.

If you enter a citation in the Find box (Home page) you can use periods or no periods, e.g.: 46 c.p.r. 3d 492 works, as does 46 cpr 3d 492.  But, if you enter a cite in the Citation box under the Cases template, it only works with periods, e.g. 46 cpr 3d 492 returns zero results.  I reported the issue to Carswell and initially they hoped to fix it. But it turns out the cost associated with doing so would be enormous so it will not be fixed.

However, they did agree to add a note to the Citation box at the Cases template to remind users to use periods in a citation.  Unfortunately, they can only do that at their regularly scheduled maintenance. I don't know when that will occur.  In the meantime you may want to ensure you include this tip in any training sessions your lawyers and students receive.

Josette McEachern

There is a very thought provoking article on the Value of Checklists by Mary Abraham at Above and Beyond KM.  Mary's blog is excellent and I would highly recommend it for your RSS feeds.  This post talks about surgeons using checklists for both routine and complex tasks.

We had a new associate start today, and of course we have pulled the "new lateral hire" checklist out of our Library Procedures Manual to make sure we share all of the relevant need to know info as well as do all the preparatory steps to welcome a new person (personalize the sign out rotunda, get a Westlaw Canada password, etc.)

What about legal research checklists?  I admit, I fail miserably at using a checklist except for the brain stumper questions, even though there are good checklists available. We put checklists for research sources and noting up processes in the student's Head Start packages.  Is a checklist instructional material or is it something we SHOULD use as a practice tool?

I look forward to reading the comments!  Cheers, Shaunna (cross posted to my blog)

The Stream which is a new blog from Courthouse Libraries BC has some excellent coverage on Wikipedia used in Canadian judgments, and the relevance of Wikipedia as a legal research source.

There are also some very recent academic articles on this topic posted on SSRN.

I recently spoke to the CBA Research Lawyers South subsection on the topic of Social Media for legal research. My slides and the handout are available.

[cross posted to mireau.blogspot.com]