Topics
Introduction
1. LawCite1‘LawCite’ , accessed 30 October 2023is defined as an automatically generated international legal case and journal article citator. 2‘LawCite’ , accessed 30 October 2023
2. Its primary purpose is to help users locate judgments, see their subsequent treatments and comments, and identify where journal articles have been cited.
Comparison with Other Citators
3. LawCite shares similarities with commercial legal citators like CaseBase, First Point, Sheppard’s, and Key Cite.
4. However, it operates in a slightly different space compared to these commercial citators.
Features of LawCite
5. LawCite is free for private use.
6. It’s automatically maintained, ensuring it remains up-to-date.
7. The platform is inclusive, capturing all references to all decisions without any editorial bias.
8. It boasts a global reach, indexing over 18,000 Law Report and journal series, with over 4.5 million cases and articles. While it currently focuses on common law countries, it’s expanding its coverage to civil law jurisdictions.
Limitations of LawCite
9. Unlike commercial citators, LawCite doesn’t provide editorial annotations indicating the treatment of a decision. The platform believes that the value of such annotations is overrated.
10. Instead, LawCite offers insights on widely used decisions and how they rely on previous decisions.
11. In the future, LawCite plans to include features like identifying catchwords and “words and phrases” discussed, and it also aims to include antecedent and post-decision case histories.
Uses of LawCite
12. LawCite is particularly useful in the context of a specific legal decision or law journal article.
13. Users can identify decisions by various parameters like citation, party names, and jurisdiction.
14. The platform includes decisions and some articles that have considered a case.
15. Whenever possible, LawCite provides a link to a free version of a decision or indicates a commercial service that might have a copy. It also attempts to provide every parallel citation used subsequently and finds articles that discuss a case.
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