Convert Citations to New Location within Record on Appeal

clintcrabtree
WHAT: Need to re-format and modify citations based on a Record on Appeal (ROA). In an intial brief for Appeals, the citations are to the respective court documents. But once those documents, evidence, orders are consolidated into volumes called the ROA Volume X, (each volume is limited to 500 pages) then the new citation could be automated if a list of its starting page within the ROA is given.

EXAMPLE AUTO CONVERT to a Bound Volume of Citations
FROM: Judge McFaddin, Temp Order Ruling, 30 Nov 2015 page 7
TO: ROA Volume 2 page 56.
GIVEN: that the subject document starts at page 50 in the Record on Appeal

WHO: I am a full stack developer and I'm curious if I could do the contribution for the feature if necessary. I code for mysql, php, javascript primarily using dreamweaver. I am a PRO SE defendant appealing a divorce ruling and realizing anyone doing an appeal could use this.

HOW: It seems if I had 2, or 3 fields to enter in Zotero for my citation I could convert the citations. The fields would hold the label for "ROA" the Volume, and then the starting position within the volume for that document. From that info then the entire brief could be re-numbered thus if the referenced document calls for page 7, and it's starting place in the ROA is page 50, the code will simply add the difference putting it at page 56.
  • bwiernik
    @fbennett Do you have a suggestion for holding this sort of item? Is there something in Jurism that would be a good fit?
  • clintcrabtree
    In Juris-M there are fields that I've never seen get populated i.e. via google schoolar or google case, but I've only managed a couple appeals with about 55 references. Fields that could be temporarily used and seem common to the various reference modes such as (book, book section, document, journal article, Newspaper article, manuscript, etc) are the fields labeled (`call number`, `rights`, and `extra`). These could be used for such purposes. Such as using the `call number` field and entering text such as ROA Volume I, and then in the `extra` field entering the starting position page number. There would need to be a tool in the document processing side to convert from `individual refernce mode` to `bound volume reference mode`

  • bwiernik
    I wouldn’t suggest trying to hack something together. I imagine Jurism can already accommodate such items, but my knowledge of legal citation isn’t enough to offer specific advice. You could try the mailing lists listed at juris-m.github.io
  • fbennett
    @clintcrabtree Sorry, I was down with a bad cold for a few days there.

    Could you clarify what you mean by "convert?" Making accurate citations to materials with metadata like that you describe will certainly work in Jurism. Automatically transforming cites b/c of some procedural event is beyond the design. Not sure which you are needing.

    Grabs from Google Scholar etc will not yield clean and complete Jurism data, because GS doesn't provide much in the way of metadata. That's pretty typical of legal aggregator sites everywhere. CourtListener.com is an exception, don't know of any others.

    Also, I may have missed it, but what jurisdiction is this for?
Sign In or Register to comment.