Wiki Law School:Manual of style

From wikilawschool.net. Wiki Law School does not provide legal advice. For educational purposes only.
Revision as of 04:58, December 17, 2006 by WikiSysop (talk | contribs)

This is a general guideline for the creation, editing, and formatting of Wiki Law School Articles. This guideline will be a work in progress as all contributors experiment to find the most useful styles and formats. As contributors decide on more specific guilelines, this article should be edited to reflect those decisions in order to achieve uniformity throughout the wiki.

Types of Articles

This web site will generally consist of legal topical outlines, articles about law schools, and case briefs. The legal areas focused upon will be U.S. law, but jurisdiction-specific outlines for any jurisdiction are allowed.

Outlines

The outlines consist of several types of outlines:

  • Full-length outlines
  • Brief outlines
  • Jurisdiction-specific outlines
  • Class-specific outlines

All outlines should be of a theoretical nature, insofar as the subject matter allows. Outlines that may be used by law students and law practitioners in all U.S. jurisdictions are preferred over jurisdiction-, class-, or professor-specific outlines.

Outlines should not contain detailed descriptions of any cases, but contain cross-links for important cases.

The layout of a good outline will generally follow the organization of a table of contents of a text for that topic. A good tip in creating an outline from scratch: type in the table of contents from your text book, save the article, then go back and fill out each section. Use headings and subheadings for organization. (See Help:Formatting).

Full-Length Outlines

Full-length outlines should be comprehensive and contain all information relevant to the legal topic. The legal topics should relate to U.S. laws.

Brief Outlines

Brief outlines should be no more than five pages in length. They should be viewed as a "cheat sheet" with abbreviations, etc. to help students remember the material at a glance. The legal topics should relate to U.S. laws.

Jurisdiction-Specific Outlines

This is self-explanatory. General outlines are preferred over outlines that are specific to any one jurisdiction. However, some students in certain jurisdictions may need to have such an outline. Students and practitioners from any jurisdiction in the world are welcome and encouraged to create outlines for their specific jurisdiction.

Class-Specific Outlines

This category is for students preparing for a very specific class wherein the professor has a very particular focus such that the students would be better off with their own outline. This format is not preferred, as it reduces the overall utility of the outline.

Law Schools

These articles may contain any information deemed useful for potential law students, current students, or alumni at a law school.

Case Briefs

Seminal cases for any one topic should be included in its own article which will then be cross-referenced from the outline.

Editing

While the end goal is to have a fully comprehensive, easy to understand outline covering every legal topic, this will not occur immediately. The idea of a wiki is that you improve a page however and wherever you are able. If everybody were to do even a litle contribution, all the little contributions will eventually result in a very good article.