New Australian Legal citation style

fbennett

For a robust version of the style, you might consider casting it in the extended version of CSL used by Multilingual Zotero (CSL-m). There are some aspects of legal citation that are hard to capture in current CSL, including:

• Jurisdiction-specific cite forms


• Distinct item type for Hearing (current Zotero uses bill under the hood)


• Distinct item types for Regulation, Gazette and Treaty, and a special Classic type for things like Blackstone


• Multiple date fields on some item types (useful especially on the Treaty item type)


• Correct formatting of institutional authors, in long and short forms


• Flexible formatting of court name parts


• Support for a user-controlled hereinafter backreference short form


• Ability to store individual statute provisions as separate MLZ items (for easier note-taking and research)


• Extended condition syntax in CSL-m for complex formatting problems


• Parallel case reports (not sure if that's an issue in AGLC 3rd)

There's a bit of a learning curve to the CSL extensions, but MLZ is stable, and designed for legal writing projects. More info is here:

http://citationstylist.org

The New Zealand Law style is probably close to AGLC 3rd (see the Proofsheets area of the site linked above for examples). If you're interested in contributing, I'd be happy to host an Australian style with the six others in the project.

thecriticalgman

Hi fbennett,

I'd be happy to contribute to an Australian style.

I've downloaded and installed MLZ and it seems to work quite nicely with the AGLC style guide. However, I think a bit of work needs to be done to achieve full AGLC compliance, e.g. Gazettes.

What can I do to get started?

aarontimo

Hi all,

I was wondering where should I put the jurisdiction (e.g. 'Cth' or 'SA') when citing legislation (doc type: statute)? I am using Mendeley, which uses this CSL style.

I see back in 2009 there was a field called 'extra' where this information could go, however, I don't have the field 'extra' available by default or when I go to 'Mendeley Desktop>preferences>document details'. Is there an equivalent in Mendeley?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Cheers

Aaron

adamsmith

it needs to go into "Publication" in Mendeley. It's a bit unsatisfactory (in Zotero that corresponds to the somewhat better "Code") but it's the best we have in regular CSL at this time.

aarontimo

Thanks so much Adam for your prompt reply. That worked a treat!

Would a lot of these issues (including the bibliography and 'above n') be resolved if the style was transferred to CSL-m? There was some discussion about this occurring above and some potential funding for the dev work. What's the latest?

fbennett

There has been progress on the reference manager side. MLZ and its friends will be released in the near future under a new name (on the same generous terms), with modular jurisdiction support that will simplify the coding of legal styles. No action yet, but it will be coming soon.

aarontimo

That's great news! Thank you to everyone who has been involved in the dev of the current and updated version.

adamsmith

But note that csl-m won't help you when you're using Mendeley. csl-m styles really only work properly with MLZ Zotero (soon to be renamed Juris-M).

I'm a bit confused though -- the bibliography and above n should work in the regular style right now.

aarontimo

That's good to know. I've recently given up on EndNote (its expensive and the iOS app has lost me several hours of work on numerous occasions). I have tried Papers 3 (VERY expensive if you have a large library and have to pay for the premium 1TB Dropbox account in order to sync and no support) and now Mendeley. But I'm wondering whether I should go with Zotero?

I've read through http://citationstylist.org/tools/ and @fbennett's post on Aug 11th 2013 re MLZ Zotero. It sounds very promising! I have one question which I hope you can help me with. The above URL states 'Because MLZ is designed to work smoothly with the Zotero sync service, data can be shared among members of a research group, including those running the official Zotero client. The local MLZ database (on your PC) is incompatible with official Zotero, however, and the Zotero standalone client cannot be used after MLZ is installed.' I'm using PaperShip v 3.4.2 on iOS to read and annotate my library files, which connects with a Mendeley or Zotero library. If I start using MLZ will I still be able to use PaperShip or some other app that will sync with my library and keep all the tags, notes and annotations I make?

Also, @adamsmith, you are most correct, the bibliography does work correctly (sorry about that) but I'm not sure the 'above n' is working correctly. When I cite the same article later on all I get is '[Author], [Publication Title]' fields - no 'above n'. This isn't a big deal though...I can always add this text manually with a cross reference to the original footnote. Although it would be great to cut down as much manual editing as possible.

Thank you for your help @adamsmith and @fbennett!

adamsmith

As for switching -- it's always a matter of taste, Mendeley certainly has its advantages, plus there's always some cost to switching in terms of time spent getting used to a new product and getting everything back in order.

If you're interested in legal citations specifically, while I think Zotero does this a good deal better than Mendeley, if you're going to switch you should really switch all the way to MLZ. That's really an order of magnitude better than anything else you'll be able to find in terms of the quality of citatons generated (though I don't know if there's currently a good AGLC style).

And yes, you'll continue to be able to sync with PaperShip; the only odd thing you'll not is some weird codes in curly bracket in the extra field, which is how MLZ manages to remain sync-compatible.

I've asked our (that's the CSL project) contact at Mendeley about the above n thing. I figured that should work, but I haven't tested it and it's possible the functionality isn't implemented. It's in the style for sure.

aarontimo

Thanks Adam. I think I'll give MLZ a go before I transfer my whole library over to Mendeley - I've just been trying Papers and Mendeley out over the last week so the costs aren't too high at this stage.

I've downloaded the free MLZ eBook 'Citations, Out of the Box' (http://citationstylist.org/2013/05/26/mlz-book-citations-out-of-the-box-now-available/) and will read that so I know what I'm doing.

fbennett

aarontimo,

Your timing is impeccable. The book is good on the aims of MLZ and on the multilingual features. On the law side, things have moved on a bit. The client is also about to become much friendlier to your data.

An upcoming release will make its own copy of your Zotero database when it is installed (and remain disabled until the official Zotero for Firefox is disabled or removed). Your Zotero data will remain intact, so the awkward steps needed to migrate back to official Zotero from MLZ will be history.

The new release will offer jurisdiction-specific style support for legal materials, and an online editor for users who need or want to set up or improve styles for legal materials.

A beta version will be available soon. I'll send you a note before making a more general announcement on the forums.

aarontimo

Thanks Frank. I look forward to testing out the beta!

In terms of exporting my Papers & Mendeley libraries to MLZ, would you recommend exporting in BibTeX, RIS or Endnote XML? Will all of them export attached pdfs as well?

fbennett

adamsmith can provide the best advice on that score. For imports from those formats, the recommendations for Zotero would apply equally to MLZ.

adamsmith

Results may vary somewhat depending on how Papers and Mendeley export, but in general I'd try Endnote XML, RIS, and BibTeX in that order. And Zotero/MLZ can import PDFs in all of those formats, but again, results depend on what Mendeley/Papers export exactly.

aarontimo

Having downloaded the MLZ and other required addons, as per citationstylist.org, I get the following notification when on the Zotero forums site: 'Your version of Zotero for Firefox is out of date. Download the latest version.'

As I'm using MLZ, am I right to ignore this notification because I don't actually want to download Zotero?

adamsmith

that's right, yes. This won't be an issue anymore once the newly named tool that Frank mentions above is released (since Zotero won't treat that as a Zotero version anymore).

aarontimo

Hi all,

I am wanting to make a few changes to the MLZ New Zealand Law style so that it complies with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC). I've duplicated the NZ style in zotero's styles folder for me to play around with. Having a quick look at the csl code, I couldn't really see how, for example, to change how the journal articles appear. Specifically, I want to remove the quotation marks around the journal title and replace it single apostrophes, and remove the 'at' before the page number and replace it with a comma.

I was hoping to use CSL editor available at http://editor.citationstyles.org/about/, but I couldn't find the MLZ New Zealand Law style listed there.

I've posted some feedback to the CSL editor webmasters asking them to add this style.

In the meantime, I am wondering if there is a way I can upload the MLZ New Zealand Law style to the CSL editor website myself, or can someone recommend some user friendly resources about CSL editing (i.e. for a non-programmer)?

Thanks for your help.

fbennett

There are two things:

First, the MLZ New Zealand Law style is written with an extended syntax (CLS-m). The visual editor at CitationStyles.org can't handle it.

Second, in MLZ (soon to renamed as "Juris-M"), the MLZ styles will soon be deprecated in favour of a new family of "JM" styles. In the new styles, legal references will be formatted by a common pool of jurisdiction-specific style modules, called by the "main" styles.

So the bad news is that the legal reference code in the New Zealand Law style will need to be reimplemented from scratch - so you should start from scratch for AGLC as well.

The good news is that there is now a previewing editor designed for drafting legal style modules, with a comprehensive tutorial on how to use it. There is a learning curve to it, but it's the next step in legal support.

aarontimo

Thanks Frank - I'll look into the Juris-M style and I hope to get started on developing the AGLC soon.

Can I have the Juris-M desktop resource manager installed while still using the MLZ, or will they conflict (like MLZ and zotero)?

fbennett

Juris-M should be "shy" when installed.

If MLZ or Zotero are already on the system, Juris-M should issue a warning, disable itself, and force a second restart of Firefox. If you re-enable it and disable Zotero/MLZ, it will run with its own copy of the database, which can be synced up to the Zotero service, and synced down to your Zotero/MLZ database if you re-enable it.

The experience of switching between Juris-M and Zotero/MLZ is not as smooth as I would like yet, but it should not touch your Zotero database. (That said, you should still back up your database before installing JM.)

In other news, I'm just about finished with basic support for U.S. federal law in the "United States" module. The Bluebook is a mess (like U.S. legal resource bundling in general), but the module holds up pretty well, which is promising.

fbennett

@aarontimo: I've finished the basic U.S. federal law module, and the next target will be OSCOLA. The forms for OSCOLA should be close to those of the AGLC (for first-reference cites), so that will give you a base to work from, if you want to wait for a week or so.

aarontimo

That would be great @fbennett - thanks!

aarontimo

Hi all,

I'm currently running Juris-M and in the last few days have received the following error message when Firefox opens "Zotero Word for Mac Integration 3.5.11 requires Zotero 4.0.27.5.SOURCE or later to run. Please download the latest version of Zotero from zotero.org."

Integration with Word still seems to be working ok.

I am wondering whether it is safe to update to the latest version of Zotero if I'm running Juris-M?

Also, Firefox Sync does not seem to be retaining its password (i.e. I have to enter it every time it opens). Not sure if this is related.

Thank you for your help!

aarontimo

Hi there!

I was wanting to cite Halsbury's Laws of Australia, which a legal encyclopedia (per AGLC rule 6.3). I have tried using item type 'encyclopedia article', however the AGLC style does not include the encyclopedia title or the date in the footnote reference. I have checked @adamsmith useful templates in the Zotero group (https://www.zotero.org/groups/aglc_samples/items) but I couldn't a relevant template.

Am I using the wrong template or should i put the relevant information in different fields?

Many thanks

Aaron

caracolesa

Hi @aaronsmith , I see you were going to look into the 'above n' issue with the AGLC style. I just wondered whether you heard back in relation to that? I'm using this CSL in Mendeley and it doesn't appear to be working still? It could also be that I have no idea what I'm doing!

adamsmith

I'm pretty sure that's just not possible in Mendeley. It works in Zotero.

caracolesa

Thanks @adamsmith - I'll switch over to Zotero then. And sorry for tagging the wrong person above! Late nights writing research papers and my brain is mush.