A new resource for legal research in Canada
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.