Proper Citation Form for Jurisdiction with Cite Genie

Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian, sue.altmeyer@law.csuohio.edu | April 01, 2009 – 19:52

Cite Genie is a Firefox extension which, when copying text from a case in Lexis or Westlaw, will:

1. Put the citation into the proper format for the jurisdiction you choose, or in standard Bluebook form, and
2. Add a correct pinpoint citation.

While reference management software such as Zotero, Endnote or Legal Citation will put citations into Bluebook form, they do not put citations into the different formats required by various jurisdictions. For more information on these, see our page Reference Management for Legal Scholarship.(note that Zotero only has law review Bluebook form. Endnote and Legal Citation have both Bluebook brief and Bluebook law review formats)

It’s a good idea to double check your citations when using Cite Genie as it still has a few glitches. They are continually making improvements, however.

More on Cite Genie:

Once you have the extension installed, when you copy text in Westlaw or Lexis, this box appears:

When you copy with Cite Genie, Cite Genie pastes the quote into your document along with the citation of the case which contains the quote. Cite Genie puts the citation of this case into proper form.

Pick the jurisdiction format by clicking Tools in your Firefox toobar, select add-ons, and under Cite Genie, click “options”. Select “Legal Citation Options” tab.

Cite Genie uses the proper form for Ohio briefs when Ohio is the selected jurisdiction, ie. Ohio Univ. v. Ohio Civ. Rights Comm., 175 Ohio App. 3d 414, 2008-Ohio-1034, 887 N.E.2d 403 at ¶57. See Ohio Manual of Citations and Revisions to Manual of Citations on the Reporter of Decisions site.

For more information, see Wisblawg, Cite Genie Now Captures Citations from Lexis and Westlaw and Review of Cite Genie on LLRX.com by Marc Hershovitz. Note that the review is of an older version of Cite Genie that did not work with Lexis.