The +CITE Concept

by Bryan Lester Dupler

In legal writing, the +CITE (“plus-cite”) consists of:

  • a public domain or other standard plain text citation (Roper v. United States, 1908 OK CR 1); and,
  • a distinctive, standardized hyperlink (+CITE) to a free online version of the cited material.

The first +CITES on the internet were born in Oklahoma. The +OSCN citation files joined over 60,740 current OK CR and OK public domain citations with a distinctive hyperlink (+OSCN) to the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network online version, uniting traditional citation with a trusted online version of the authority:

  • Roper v. United States, 1908 OK CR 1 +OSCN.
  • Allison v. Berger, 1890 OK 1 +OSCN.

+CITES are quickly inserted from the source files into word processing docs with copy/paste or drag/drop, or made on the fly with the URL (web address) of the cited material.

+CITES are free, as in freedom. They use no proprietary or pay-for-service legal databases, and the +CITE source files are freely available under the Creatives Commons Share-Alike Attribution 4.0 license.

+CITES for Supreme Court and lower federal court case law are easily generated on the fly from the Google Scholar case law collections!!

  • Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) +CITE
  • In re Grand Jury Subpoenas, 906 F.2d 1485 (10th Cir. 1990) +CITE

+CITES are well-suited to next-generation smartmotions and smartbriefs that can be e-filed (or e-mailed to trial courts and opposing counsel) in portable document format (PDF), providing the reader with both a standard citation and quick online access to the authority.

If you choose to adopt +CITE smart motions and briefs in your practice, send success stories and PDF samples here!


Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License