I am excited to post about the new Canadian Open Access Legal (COAL) Citation Guide, 2024, now available on CanLII.

While I appreciate the time and effort that goes into the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (the McGill Guide), and the importance of citation structure and style, I believe it's time for open source resources and tools for the Canadian legal community.

When I started law school part-time in 2018, I was frustrated that all footnotes and bibliographies had to be crafted by hand, knowing that free and open source tools existed for virtually every other faculty. Zotero, a free and open source research and citation management solution, helps manage and share research, sources, and citations, and was well supported in almost every domain and faculty except Canadian law.

Out of this frustration, I created and maintained the Zotero Canadian legal citation (McGill 9th edition) stylesheets, and am just releasing the 10th edition updates. My efforts built upon earlier work by other volunteers who built the original, 7th edition stylesheet (thank you).

Open and accessible resources and tools should be available to the Canadian legal community and shouldn't rely solely on the efforts of a few volunteer CSL developers, law students or legal professionals. I want to congratulate and thank the law librarians from across Canada on this effort, and I look forward to contributing to this new project.

I'm pleased to announce the new McGill Guide 10th Edition stylesheets for Canadian legal research are done!

They are have passed the initial tests and in the Github queue to be added to Zotero repository.

But in the meantime, they are available for download here:

• English version (mcgill10-en.csl)
• French version (mcgill10-fr.csl)

All citations are available here. Both Zotero groups are open, so you can join, view, and use the examples in your own Zotero instance:

• McGill Guide 10th Edition Examples (link to Zotero group library)
  
• McGill Guide 10e édition examples Français (link to Zotero group library)

The stylesheets were validated against the example citations in the Guide. The Word documents below have the citations added with pinpoints, and some notes about how to input the different citation types and variations in the McGill Guide:

• McGill Guide 10th Edition English examples.docx
  
• Guide McGill 10e Édition examples.docx
  

(Apologies to francophone users - my notes in the Word document are in English.  I will release a French version, but wanted to make it available now).

Special thanks go to Ethan Dubeau and the volunteers at CIPPIC who helped with entering and reviewing all the citations!

The Canadian Law and Technology Research Assistant  is crafted to serve as a highly specialized assistant for legal research in Canadian internet and technology policy and public interest law. It's designed to support upper-year law students and legal professionals, focusing on topics such as privacy, intellectual property, telecommunications, and rights online. It can address a broader range of legal and policy questions, and will provide citations when retrieving information online.

This GPT is designed to ask probing questions for clarification, to include web searches for up-to-date information, and can summarize and synthesize uploaded files or cut-and-paste text.

It's important to remember that this GPT cannot give legal advice, instead offering educational and informational assistance. Users must verify information against sources.

The GPT Assistant is publicly accessible (a ChatGPT account is required):  

https://chat.openai.com/g/g-GXTEW9Znv-canadian-law-and-technology-research-assistant

This neat browser extension was made to improve legal research in CanLII.  It adds a table of contents based on headers, and works particularly well with SCC decisions.  It is available for Chrome (and Chrome variants like Brave), Edge, and Firefox browsers.

The extension is the work of two people - Peter Wills and Peter Goshulak.  It costs $10 per year, which is a very modest fee that supports an independent project that helps the Canadian legal community.  The extension identifies judgments and reveals headings within the decision (most SCC, FCA, ONCA, BCCA, and ABCA cases), as well as formats all cases on CanLII.  

I have been using it for over a year and find it useful enough to recommend.  You can find more information on their website (https://courtingtrouble.ca/iDissent/ ).  You can also search for the extension/addon using your favourite browser's web store or addon repository.

I have recently finished a Zotero stylesheet for Canadian legal citations and bibliographies. It is compliant with the McGill Style Guide (9th ed) and available in both English and French versions.

This is an open-source, free project to support the Canadian legal community.  I would like to acknowledge the team at the McGill Law Journal, and the other contributors who have contributed to this project over the years.  They are listed in the csl files directly, and can be found in the Contributors list on Github:  https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/blob/master/mcgill-en.csl and https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/blob/master/mcgill-fr.csl.

I can confirm that the Zotero plugin and the McGill style work in both MS Word and Google Docs. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Intro to Zotero

1. create account: go to https://www.zotero.org/ and create a free account.
2. install software: go to https://www.zotero.org/download/ and download the correct version for your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux)
   • software should also automatically install MS Word addon
   • for help on the install: https://www.zotero.org/support/installation
3. add browser plugins: from the same URL as #2 above, download and install the browser plugin(s) for Firefox, Chrome and/or Safari.
4. add McGill stylesheet:  https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=mcgill

How to use Zotero

1. General instructions, tutorials: https://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide
   • see also all Zotero support documentation: https://www.zotero.org/support/start
   • UOttawa library: http://uottawa.libguides.com/citation-management/home

2. Canadian legal (McGill) specific usage instructions

   a. Link to McGill Guide examples: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2427436/mcgill_style_guide_examples/library - can be downloaded and used by anyone with Zotero.

   b. Link to French examples: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2577414/guide_mcgill_examples_franais/library

Recurring costs can quickly run out of control, especially with so many cloud-based services.

With regards to technology, the goal is to minimize recurring costs, and to maximize the "one-time-only" expenses.

For example, it is always better value to buy a lifetime license when given the choice, instead of monthly or yearly.

I have opted for Zoho One as my main recurring charge ($30 USD per month of $450 CDN per year).

The domain name 'spanglett.legal' also costs around $100 CAD per year.

A business-class laptop should cost $1000 CAD.  

I recommend the HP Color LaserJet Pro M283fdw - color laser printer/copier/fax  - that currently costs $530 CAD.

I have gone with one-time only software purchases, which include:

SUMMARY:  LESS THAN $2500 FIXED (OTO plus laptop)/$50 MONTHLY (Zoho One subscription and domain name)

= $3100 in first year, $600 each year thereafter, $5500 over five years.

Zoho One replaces Quickbooks, Clio, project management, HR, expenses, invoicing, etc.

Compare that with opting for individual subscription services instead:

SUMMARY:  $1530 FIXED/$2800 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS 

= $4330 in first year, $2800 each year thereafter, $15530 over five years.

THAT IS A $10k DIFFERENCE, USING JUST A FEW LINE ITEMS.

As a principle, do not opt for subscription services - it is almost always more expensive.