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Citrus (think Cit-r-us) is a new legal citation tool which automatically corrects legal citations in Word as you type. "When you're ready to type a citation, press F2 and make an educated guess. Once you're done, press F2 again, and Citrus will generate a correct Bluebook citation." Citrus cites to cases, federal and state statutes, CFR, Fed. Register, U.S. Constitution, court rules and more. According to the web site, it also includes parenthetical information, "such as whether a decision is per curiam, whether you need to cite the editor as well as the case reporter, or even whether an opinion in the U.S. reporter came from the court or an individual circuit Justice." Unfortunately, the web site doesn't explain much about how Citrus works. Can it handle law reviews and other more complex citations? There is a "tour," but it's nothing more than a couple of screen shots. A similar tool is Citation: Legal Edition. Citation, however, is a bibliographic database management system (unlike Citrus which seems to be an add-on to MS Word). You enter (or import) your citations into a database, and it generates the proper Bluebook cites for you. Unfortunately, pricing was unavailable on the web site. But before you spend any money, you may want to check out RefWorks, a bibliographic database management system available campus wide at the University of Wisconsin. With RefWorks you can: - Format bibliographies and citations automatically while you research - Create and organize a personal research database online - Access your information online from any computer, anywhere - Share your database with colleagues around the world Unfortunately, RefWorks doesn't support Bluebook citation style (which, I've been told, is because it is too complex). But it is still a great tool for organizing your scholarly sources. And it's free. Thanks to Conglomerate for the tip about Citrus.

Submitted by Bonnie Shucha on February 28, 2007

This article appears in the categories: Law Library

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