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Tips for writing great case commentary and summaries
Welcome to CanLII Connects! Here are some tips for writing great case commentary and summaries on this platform:
Case Commentaries
Most case commentaries are structured as follows:
Introduction: a short section stating the subject of the case and the author’s position on it
Background: a summarized presentation of the main facts of the case, the historical legal context and procedural background for the case, the main legal issues raised by the case, the major arguments presented by counsel, and the judgement of the court
Analysis: a critical examination of the judgement and an explanation of its social and political implications
Some common approaches to writing commentary on a case include:
- explaining why the case is important or not within a broader legal context,
- arguing that the case was decided incorrectly,
- arguing that the judgement of the court was correct, but for the wrong reasons,
- arguing that the court failed to address an important point of the case in the judgement, and
- arguing that the case was decided correctly.
However, these approaches are not mutually exclusive, and we encourage our contributors to use multiple argument types wherever they feel it is necessary in order to get their perspective across.
Case Summaries
Unlike case commentaries which give room for the author’s opinion on a case, case summaries are meant to be objective and abridged reports of a case. They should contain about the same information as the Background section of a case commentary, but with the scope of sources limited to the text of the case itself.
In determining exactly what information your summary should contain, start by identifying a key takeaway of the case (i.e. the legal precedent it sets or a legal question it answers) and then tailor the content of your summary around it. Stick to the essential facts and leave out extraneous details like case-specific dates or information about the case’s legal history and context that isn’t in the case’s text.
Finally, try to impose a word limit on yourself. It can be tempting to delve into more detail than is necessary, especially with longer cases, but it is important to remember that the key goal of a summary is brevity. A word count between 500-1000 words is generally a good benchmark to aim for.
General Writing Tips
- Draw your reader in with an engaging title or a ‘hook’: This is a writing trick used by everyone from listicle writers to academics composing essays. Opening with a quote that gets to the heart of a case’s issue, or with a question that your writing then proceeds to answer, is a great way of getting your reader’s attention and keeping hold of it.
- Be concise: When reporting facts about a case, use clear and straightforward language and avoid overly flowery or dramatic language. Also, don’t be afraid to use bullet points or lists to condense and organize your information, especially with regard to more complex legal ideas.
Guidelines
In order to keep CanLII Connects a welcoming, inclusive, and respectful forum for professional legal discussion we advise all of our contributors to:
- Be as objective as possible in your writing: Keep your writing relevant to the case that you’re commenting on, and highlight information that other legal researchers would find helpful.
- Be respectful: Refrain from making personal attacks and using inflammatory language.
- Be discreet and selective in your usage of personal information derived from a case: If it isn’t pertinent to the central facts of the case, leave it out.
- Please refer to the parties in a case using the terms plaintiff or complainant and defendant or respondent rather than using their personal names or surnames.
Special thanks to regular CanLII Connects contributors Matilda Lici, Russell Alexander, and Omar Ha-Redeye for their input and feedback on these writing tips.
Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions1. Do I have to be a member to access summaries and commentary on CanLII Connects?
2. Does the content of this site explain the law?
3. How can I report inappropriate use?
4. How can I be updated on new content being added to CanLII Connects?
Searching CanLII Connects
5. How do I search CanLII Connects?
6. What kind of citations can I use to find a case?
7. How do I refine my search?
8. Why can't I find a summary or commentary on the decision I want?
9. I can't find a summary or commentary I read before, where did it go?
Becoming a member of CanLII Connects
10. Who can sign up with CanLII Connects?
11. How do I sign up with CanLII Connects?
12. What can I do if I tried to sign up to CanLII Connects but my application was not approved?
13.How do I edit my profile, change my publisher affiliation, reset my password or terminate my account?
14. What is a publisher?
15. How do I become a publisher?
16. I am an individual user, how do I change my publisher affiliation?
17. I am a publisher; how do I manage who publishes summaries and commentary under my name?
18. I am a publisher; how do I manage posts affiliated with my account"
Contributing content to CanLII Connects
19. I registered as a user but I am not able to draft any new content for CanLII Connects.
20. How do I add a summary or commentary?
21. Can I add multimedia content to CanLII Connects?
22. What is the difference between a summary and commentary?
23. Can I write in the text box and upload an attachment to a single post?
24. Can multiple authors claim one post?
25. How do I edit commentary or a summary?
26. I'm an author; who owns my contributions and what rights am I giving up in posting material to this site?
27. How do I upload a large quantity of content to my account?
28. How do I delete a commentary or a summary?
General questions
1. Do I have to be a member to access summaries and commentary on CanLII Connects?
Anyone can freely access CanLII Connects’ content.
You can find this content by using the main search field, filtering the home page content, or browsing the site.
Only concurring, commenting, and contributing content are restricted to registered members of CanLII Connects.
2. Does the content on this site explain the law?
Registered members of CanLII Connects contribute summaries and commentary of Canadian case law.
*All content is for information only. Nothing on this site is intended as advice to any person or advice on any topic.
If you need legal advice, questions should be referred to the appropriate legal expert.
CanLII will not respond to them.
Please consult your jurisdiction’s Law Society lawyer referral service for information about obtaining legal advice and legal assistance.
3. How can I report inappropriate use?
If you identify inappropriate use of CanLII Connects please “flag it” by clicking the grey flag appearing beside the content.
You can also report the user or the post directly to connect@canliiconnects.org
4. How can I be updated on new content being added to CanLII Connects?
CanLII Connects allows you to save your searches and have any new results that are added emailed to you once a day.
Just click the green “save” button that appears under the search boxes after you run a search, fill in your email address, verify your search parameters, and click “submit”.
Searching CanLII Connects
5. How do I search CanLII Connects?
Click “Search” in the top right corner to reveal the main search fields.
When the main search fields are revealed you can enter a search query to find a summary or commentary.
You can query by “Document Text”, “Author, Publisher” name, or “Case name, citation” It is not necessary to use all three fields at the same time.
You can also use search directives such as “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT” to tailor your search query.
Multiple words will be connected by a default “AND”. For example: “copyright infringement” will be searched as “copyright AND infringement”; however, the default “AND” will be invisible to the user.
6. What kind of citations can I use to find a case?
CanLII Connects only recognizes CanLII citation format (ex. 2011 scc 47 or 2011scc47) or case name (Crookes v. Newton).
The following is an example of a CanLII citation format which you can find in the URL of any case indexed at canlii.org.
7. How do I refine my search?
If you have started a search by entering information into one, two or all of the main search fields, you can further refine your search with filters.
The filters on the right side of the page allow you to select from two types of documents (commentary and summaries), by author, by publisher, and by date posted or the number of concurs.
You can use one or more filters to achieve an increasingly narrow set of search results.
8. Why can't I find a summary or commentary that I want?
Likely because none have been submitted – take the opportunity to be the first to explain the decision!
9. I can't find the summary or commentary I read before, where did it go?
CanLII Connects members generate the content of the site. Each individual author can post and delete material as they wish. If you recreate a previous search and do not find the post you are looking for now, this may be because the author has chosen to remove it from the site. Deleted posts are not recoverable.
Becoming a member of CanLII Connects
10. Who can sign up with CanLII Connects?
CanLII Connects is committed to ensuring high-quality information for its users. For this reason, applications will be reviewed to determine whether you have the necessary competency to contribute summaries and commentary on Canadian case law. However, members are not necessarily required to be practicing lawyers or legal professionals.
If your application is approved you will receive an email confirming activation. If your application is incomplete or insufficient to determine your competency you may be contacted to provide additional information.
11. How do I sign up with CanLII Connects?
To make an account with CanLII Connects click “sign up.” You can sign up through an existing social media account or by creating an account with your email address.
Users are required to use their real names, valid email addresses, and to provide short biographies describing themselves and their competency in legal analysis.
12. What can I do if I tried to sign up to CanLII Connects but my application was not approved?
CanLII Connects is a platform for summaries and commentary on Canadian case law generated by a user community. In order to maintain the quality and usefulness of the information on this site, we require that members be competent in legal analysis. Your application to sign up to contribute to CanLII Connects may not be approved if it is unclear that you have verifiable competence in this area.
13. How do I edit my profile, change my publisher affiliation, reset my password, or terminate my account?
When you have signed in to your account you can change your publisher affiliation by clicking “My Account”.
Next, click the “edit” button appearing beside your personalized icon. This action will take you to the edit page.
Change or re-enter text in the same manner as when you first established your account and then press “update account”.
If you choose to terminate your account, follow the same process and press “Delete Account”. You will be presented with an option to “keep all content” which, if selected, will leave your contributed summaries and commentaries on the site for ongoing public use. If you select “remove all content”, you will permanently remove all content from the site.
14. What is a publisher?
A “publisher” is an organization, group, firm, business, or school that is also a member of the legal community. Publishers have opted to participate in the CanLII Connects online community by creating a publisher account. Publishers can post content to CanLII Connects directly and are able to manage the content published under their names and the users affiliated with them.
Individual members of these organizations can sign up to CanLII Connects and associate their posts with their “publisher”. Publishers are provided with the authority and the tools to approve or deny this affiliation.
15. How do I become a publisher?
To create a publisher’s account and publisher’s page you must contact CanLII Connects directly.
16. I am an individual user, how do I change my publisher affiliation?
When you have signed in to your account you can change your publisher affiliation by clicking “My Account”.
Next, click the “edit” button appearing beside your personalized icon. This action will take you to the editing page.
Scroll down to the “Find your publisher” drop down list. You can either select one of the organizations from that list or click the “x” at the right side of the field to remove all affiliations. Press “update account”.
17. I am a publisher; how do I manage who publishes summaries and commentary under my name?
After signing in and navigating to the “My Publisher” page click the “Edit” button appearing above your personalized icon. Next, click “Administer your members”.
Once you are on this administrative page, you can view all new requests to affiliate with your organization. You can also “deactivate” or “reactivate” existing affiliations.
18. I am a publisher; how do I manage posts affiliated with my account?
A publisher can chose to “approve” or “remove” any single post. “Removing” a post will remove any visible affiliation between your organization and that individual post. The post will become greyed out on the “My Publisher” page and disassociated from your organization on the rest of the site. At any time, you can “approve” the post to make it show on your page again.
Contributing content to CanLII Connects
19. I registered as a user but I am not able to draft any new content for CanLII Connects.
If you have recently registered with CanLII Connects you must wait for your application to be approved before you can post content, although you will be able to modify elements of your profile. If you haven’t received an email confirming that your account has been activated within 24 hours of registering, please contact CanLII Connects directly.
20. How do I add a summary or commentary?
To add a summary or commentary you must be logged in to CanLII Connects. Click the “Log In” button and enter your email and password. If you have not signed up to CanLII Connects, you cannot post content to the site. When you create a new post, complete as many information fields as possible. Be sure to select the appropriate “Summary” or “Commentary” tag for your post.
Once you have successfully logged in, click “New Post”.
You can write your post in the text box provided or you can choose to upload your content instead by clicking “Upload a file instead”.
Press “Submit” to post your content on CanLII Connects.
21. Can I add multimedia content to CanLII Connects?
Yes, you can embed multimedia content in CanLII Connects. Just fill in the other fields, click “Embed multimedia instead.” on the content creation page, get the html share code from other services such as YouTube or Vimeo, insert it in the text box, and click “submit”.
22. What is the difference between a summary and commentary?
A summary is a shortened version of the full court decision. It typically contains the key facts, reasoning of the case, and the court’s ruling. A summary should not include any commentary or opinion about the case; it’s our preference that contributors keep these documents as neutral as possible. Commentary, on the other hand, might include a summary of the case but will go generally further by offering an analysis or new idea related to the case or the legal topics at issue.
Another important distinction specific to this site, is that registered members will have the ability to offer further comment and promote discussion of contributions posted as commentary. In contrast, members will not have the ability to comment on summaries.
When you are creating a post please consider carefully which category best describes your work as CanLII reserves the right to re-categorize material from summary to commentary if, in our view, the content warrants the change.
As we welcome and encourage discussion among members, please consider posting contributions as commentary in the majority of cases.
23. Can I write in the text box and upload an attachment to a single post?
No, you cannot write in the text box and upload a document to a single post. You must choose between the two formats in order to create your post. The uploader will only accept documents in .pdf, .rtf or .txt format.
24. It is possible to identify more than one author on a post.
Simply enter additional authors in the “Author” field. Although the post will be associated with one account (the creator), it will be searchable by all of the authors listed in that field.
25. How do I edit an commentary or summary?
You can edit a summary or commentary that you have posted by clicking on the “edit it” prompt located at the end of your text.
26. I'm an author, who owns my contributions and what rights am I giving up in posting material to this site?
When you register, you will be presented with our terms of service in which you warrant that you have the authority (e.g., you hold the copyright or are otherwise authorized by the copyright holder) to post the material.
You retain all rights and control (including the ability to withdraw the material at any time), but you grant CanLII a right to reproduce and make available your contribution.
All users – members or public – will have the right to access, download, print, tweet, share, etc… the material, and you agree that CanLII is not responsible for any actions taken by users in respect of your material.
27. How do I upload a large quantity of content to my account?
If you have more than 50 documents (summaries or commentary) to upload at one time, please contact CanLII Connects directly at connect@canliiconnects.org.
28. How do I delete a summary or commentary?
You can delete a summary or commentary you have posted by clicking the “delete it” prompt located at the end of your text.