Got into a discussion over on LinkedIn, today, about the lack of legal citations by legal bloggers with CarolynElefant who said “After 23 years of blogging, the common practice of not hyperlinking by most bloggers is my biggest pet peeve. What do you think Kevin O’Keefe?”
Legal bloggers do a poor job of linking – at least as to each other’s publishing, if not to the law. As much as I have served the role of a legal publisher for the last twenty-plus years I have not looked closely at whether bloggers cited primary or secondary law.
Interesting Carolyn raised this today while we are working on the citation structure for the Library at LexBlog. We’re preserving and structuring for citation over twenty years of digital publishing by legal professionals.
Imagine millions of published works being retrieved with a citation akin to:
“Daniel Schwartz, Nineteen Years Later (Library at LexBlog No. 3999073, Sept. 8, 2026) (published at Connecticut Employment Law Blog, Shipman & Goodwin LLP), lexblog.com/lib/3999073”
Legal blogs and other legal digital publishing deserve to be treated as secondary law, and to be cited as such in digital publishing and in that copy going before the court, you need a citation system.
A citation system can be a start.