Advanced Legal Writing

Final Paper Guidelines

Scope
• Survey of jurisprudence
• Comparative analysis of laws
• Identifying problems and suggesting solutions
The Basics
Font: Bookman Old Style
Font size: 12
Spacing: 1.5 (except for in-text citation)
Alignment: Justified
At least 20 pages
Citation of cases and authors
• Use the APL format
• Title of the case should be in uppercase with
the word versus spelled out in lowercase.
• When citing an authority (author or previously
cited case), italicize.
• Italicize title of books, Latin terms, and other
non-English terms.
Quotations
• In-line quotations must be italicized and
enclosed in quotation marks.
• Block quotations should be set at 0.5 from
margin with the first line further indented at
1.0 from the margin (left side). On the right, it
shall be indented at 0.5 from margin.
• Block quotations must be italicized and
single-spaced.
• The footnote number should appear
immediately after the punctuation or
word, as the case may be. No space between the
word or punctuation and the footnote number.
• Segment title and numbering must be
consistent.
Footnotes
• Font: Bookman Old Style
• Font size: 6
• Spacing: Single
• In General: Follow APA Formatting
• When footnoting a case:

eg.

1 G.R. No. 187246, July 20, 2011.

OR

1 CRUZ vs COURT OF APPEALS, GR No.

122445, November 18, 1997.
• Footnotes should end with a period (.).
Ibid.
• Ibid., - ‘in the same place’
• It is used in endnotes or footnotes when you cite
the same source and page number(s) two or
more times. If you cite the same source but a
different page number, you can use ibid.
followed by a comma and the page number(s).
• Note that ibid only works where you intend to
point the reader to the footnote immediately
above.
1 Y. Anzai and H. A. Simon. The theory of learning
by doing. Psychological Review, 86, 124-180,
1979, p. 126.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p.157.
Supra
• If your footnote is referring to an already cited
source that is not immediately preceding it, use
supra as a short form.
• To use supra, the first time you cite a source in
your paper, give the full citation and at the end
in square brackets, place the short form that you
are giving to the source; it can either be a short
form of the case name or a short form of an
article using the author’s last name.
1 Rodriguez v British Columbia (AG), [1993] 3
SCR 519 (CanLII) [Rodriguez]
2 Sanjeev Anand, “A Case for Upholding the Child
Pornography Law” (1999) 25 CR (5th) 312.
3 Rodriquez, supra note 1.
4 Anand, supra note 3 at 313.