Wiki Law School:Manual of style

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Revision as of 03:01, December 21, 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. The goals of this manual are to encourage uniformity and understandability. However, we should be careful to not create too many guidelines and instructions; as such may discourage people from participating.

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.

Full-length outlines should be categorized in the generic Outlines category. This is done by inserting "[[Category:Outlines]]" at the tail end of the outline.

The title should reflect only the legal topic discussed.

Short Outlines

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

Short outlines should be categorized in the Short Outlines category. This is done by inserting "[[Category:Short Outlines]]" at the tail end of the outline.

Short outlines should be entitled with a name that corresponds to that legal topic's full-length outline, but with "(short)" added after.

Full-length and short outlines for the same subject should link to the same case briefs and should cross-link to each other.

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.

Jurisdiction-specific outlines should be categorized in a category that reflects the legal topic and includes a jurisdiction identifier. This identifier would follow the word "outlines." For example, an outline dealing with property law in the state of New York would include the category identifier: "[[Category:Outlines NY State]]". A short outline dealing with New York property law use the identifier: "[[Category:Short Outlines NY State]]".

Jurisdiction-specific outlines should be entitled with a name that corresponds to that legal topic's full-length outline, but with the jurisdiciton indicator ("NY State") added after. For example, "Property NY State."

The jurisdiction identifier should be selected that reduces confusion with other jurisdicitons. The identifier should be uniformly used by all outlines dealing with that jurisdiction. If the jurisdiction is a state, the word "State" should be used as above to prevent confusion.

Jurisdiction-specific outlines should link to the corresponding non-jurisdiction specific full-length and short outlines, but the generic outlines should not link to jurisdiction-specific outlines.

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.

Class-specific outlines should be categorized in a category that reflects the legal topic and includes a law school or professor identifier. For example, an outline dealing with property law taught by Professor Jones at the University of Michigan Law School would include the category identifier: "[[Category:Jones Outlines]]". A short outline dealing with the same class would use the identifier: "[[Category:Jones Short Outlines]]".

Class-specific outlines should be linked to more-generic outlines, but not the other way around.

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.

Title of the Case Brief

The case should be entitled exactly how one would cite the case using BlueBook rules (i.e., abbreviate terms, use proper spacing, etc.). This way, others will be able to find the brief you already started working on, and prevent duplication of work.

Category of the Case Brief

Insert the case brief into the proper category, according to which area of the law the case holds importance. For example, Erie R.R. v. Tompkins falls into the Civil Procedure Category, so the contributor adds "[[Category:Cases:Civil Procedure]]" at the bottom line in the case brief. In this way, the case brief will be categorized under Cases:Civil Procedure, which in turn will be categorized under the Cases category.

Redirects

Of less importance, create redirects from reporter citations that point to the case brief.

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.