If you’re a member of, or work anywhere adjacent to, the Canadian legal information community, you’ll have heard by now that there is a new citation guide on the scene: the Canadian Open Access Legal (COAL) Citation Guide. Published in early June 2024, the COAL Citation Guide represents 2 years’ worth of energy and effort by a collective of law librarians and legal professionals across the country, and encompasses input from students, educators, and practitioners throughout the field of Canadian law. Read on if you, like me, might benefit from more context about how and why to use the COAL Guide in your legal research and writing.
When I started this post, and I don’t think I’m alone here, I was under the impression that The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, aka the McGill Guide, was the nationally accepted standard for legal citation in Canada. I was surprised to learn that it is not, in fact, universally regarded as the authority within Canadian courts and case law reporters1, and that there are conflicting opinions about which edition takes precedence2 even among those that do. If the existing standard isn’t even really a standard, I thought, why then publish another, equally unofficial guide?
The basis for the creation of the COAL Guide is simple: as became abundantly clear at the beginning of the pandemic, researchers and writers of law in Canada lack a universal, freely available system of legal citation.
Prior to the publication of the COAL Guide, the McGill Guide stood as the principal method of citation specific to Canadian law. The McGill Guide was originally conceived to provide citation guidance to contributors and editors of the McGill Law Journal. It has since been widely adopted by other legal journals and is taught and used in most law schools and college programs. When law libraries closed as part of the lockdowns in 2020, many lost access to print editions of the McGill Guide and found themselves without a reliable digital alternative, the online version being restricted to paying subscribers.
So, harnessing existing industry opinion that Canada needs an open access citation option, together with the remote collaboration enabled by the global crisis, a working group emerged who would produce the COAL Guide over the course of the next two years.
Although it is not officially recognized by Canadian courts yet, the benefits of the COAL Guide are many:
- It’s free! The McGill Guide is behind a prohibitive paywall, disadvantaging students, solo & small firm practitioners, and self-represented litigants. Because the COAL Guide is hosted by CanLII, there is no barrier to access besides an internet connection.
- It’s open access! Meaning that the editors sincerely welcome feedback (you can email them at coal.rjal@ubc.ca) and take it into consideration. There’s no set schedule for publication – the Guide will be consistently updated. Feedback is already being incorporated into ongoing edits.
- It’s written by law librarians, who “hold a special expertise in legal citation that has been utilized by traditional publishers, but has until now not been organized by members of the profession into a resource of our own”3. With citation specialists at the helm, the COAL Guide is an intuitive and up-to-date system that better meets the entire legal community’s needs. There’s even a section on citing AI-generated material, which, we well know, will only become more relevant as time goes by.
The more of us that know about and use the COAL Guide, the closer we come to establishing it as a national standard. To this end, Ann Marie Melvie and the rest of the working group are speaking with judges and law librarians across Canada, advocating for the COAL Guide’s widespread adoption. French translation will be crucial – as Canada is a bilingual nation, Canadians have the right to trial in either English or French, and an official citation manual must be likewise available to speakers of either language. The translation of the Guide into French is underway, and in the meantime, the link to the English version is here once more: https://canlii.ca/t/7nc6q
Tell your friends!
- For instance, see the current Reference Guide for Citation Practices at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, which make no mention of the McGill Guide. ↩︎
- See this SLAW article for one opinion about changes to the most recent edition of the McGill Guide: H. Rosborough, “Seeing Red: The McGill Guide, 10th Edition” (1 December 2021) https://www.slaw.ca/2021/12/01/seeing-red-the-mcgill-guide-10th-edition/. ↩︎
- J. Bachmann & A. Loumankis, “Canada Has a New Open Access Legal Citation Guide” (22 July 2024) https://www.slaw.ca/2024/07/22/canada-has-a-new-open-access-legal-citation-guide/. ↩︎
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