While different disciplines have different citation conventions, some basic rules apply across all disciplines:

• You must acknowledge the source of the words, ideas and analysis of another person or an AI program in your writing by citing the source accurately and completely. Pinpoint citations (indicating the exact page of the words, ideas or analysis) are required for accurate and complete citation.
• Copying someone else’s or an AI program’s words verbatim into your own work is plagiarism (even if you provide a pinpoint citation to the source of those words) unless you put those words in quotation marks.
• Paraphrasing someone else’s or an AI program’s work where you are simply changing a few words but largely maintaining the sentence structure, ideas, and progression of thoughts of the original writer is also plagiarism (even if you provide a pinpoint citation to the source).
• Explaining, clarifying or synthesising the ideas of another person or of an AI program, using your own words, is not plagiarism so long as a pinpoint citation to the source material is provided.

When referring to case law or legislation in a legal reasoning problem or research essay, the primary source of the legal rules will be the relevant case or statute. You must accurately and precisely cite all legal rules you rely on in argument. Citation conventions, including pinpoints to legal principles, must follow the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC), 4th edition for law.

When referring to legal rules in your legal reasoning you essentially have three options which you can mix and match to suit your needs:

• Provide short quotations (or series of short quotations stitched together using quotation marks and ellipses). This is precise but time-consuming.
• Provide a longer quotation (quicker but uses more words).
• Put the rule in your own words (paraphrasing). This is less precise but can help summarise concisely; you must still acknowledge the source.

There are significant risks in relying on another person’s summary, AI-generated content, or any secondary source where legal rules are included without proper attention to the primary source.

Hypothetically you are writing an essay on the ‘separation of powers’ and have found a piece by Graham Spindler entitled ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice’ in (2000) 12 LegalDate 5.

Spindler writes (p. 5):

Quoting a long paragraph (which requires indenting the text, using smaller font and providing a pinpoint citation as above) is not a good way to use Spindler’s work in your essay. This paragraph is not remarkable in how key concepts are expressed nor does it illuminate or advance a particular point in your essay. Spindler is simply summarising or describing the doctrine. So, in an essay such as this, you will need to explain the doctrine, by reference to what you have read in Spindler rather than quoting this entire paragraph.

Quoting a long paragraph like this is rarely useful unless it directly supports your argument. Generally, quotes should be short phrases or key sentences that capture essential ideas.

But if you shouldn’t quote, in this instance, how do you do you explain the doctrine based on what you have read in Spindler?

• ¹This explanation of quoting, paraphrasing and synthesising is based on the approach taken in a document produced by the University of Adelaide’s Writing Centre entitled ‘Avoiding Plagiarism’.
• ²Graham Spindler, ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice' (2000) 12 LegalDate 5, 5.

Paraphrasing Spindler’s paragraph too closely is plagiarism, even with citation:

This kind of paraphrasing is plagiarism (notwithstanding the pinpoint citation at the end of the paragraph) because it reproduces the structure, ideas and sentence progression of Spindler’s writing with some minor changes of vocabulary (replacement of particular words) or omissions (removal of some phrases). This is a particularly insidious form of plagiarism because it can obscure how much of another person’s or an AI program’s ideas have been appropriated by the essay writer and, in some cases, is deliberately designed to confound Turnitin (which it doesn’t).

However, the ideas and content are not the writer’s own work, nor is it clear how much of what is written is related to the footnote at the end of the paragraph. Just the last sentence? The whole paragraph? This is an example of plagiarism.

• ³Graham Spindler, ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice' (2000) 12 LegalDate 5, 5.

Look at this from the perspective of the marker of your essay. What the marker needs to know is that you have understood Spindler’s description and can render his core ideas in your own words. Ideally, you would be synthesising your reading of a number of sources on the separation of powers in writing your paragraph but, for illustrative purposes, let’s look at an explanation or synthesis of Spindler’s work.

This is properly referenced, includes a quote from Spindler’s paragraph (which eloquently sums up a key idea) and indicates clearly how much of the writing is based on Spindler’s explanation of the doctrine of the separation of powers. What differentiates it from paraphrasing is that it seeks to summarise Spindler’s core ideas in the writer’s own words and using the writer’s own sentence structures.

• ⁴Graham Spindler, ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice’ (2000) 12 LegalDate 5, 5.

Law has specific citation conventions. You must familiarise yourself with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC). A convenor will indicate any special citation requirements when setting particular assessment tasks.

In general:

• Provide authority for all legal propositions (with pinpoint citations).
• Acknowledge both primary and secondary sources used in your essay.
• A bibliography alone is insufficient; citations must appear where the source is used.
• Footnotes are standard unless instructed otherwise.