Post By: Jhon kater
When graduating in law, you must have learned about plagiarism and its types, especially intentional and unintentional. Well, it’s not just an academic term.
Instead, it has the same importance in your professional career. Just like you used to avoid it in your assignments, you must prevent plagiarism, particularly accidental plagiarism, in legal writing when practicing law.
Otherwise, you might lose your reputation due to being alleged to be using stolen work. Even you may have to face legal penalties for committing plagiarism, no matter if you didn’t intend to do so.
However, why ruin your professional journey when identifying and eliminating unintentional plagiarism is in your hands? But how exactly to do so? If you don’t know, read this article till the end.
How To Identify Plagiarism In Legal Writing?
Identifying plagiarism in legal writing involves some manual and automated ways. Let’s look at all of them and see how they help you know which part of your legal document is plagiarized.
Look For Missing Citations
In writing, you might have to borrow facts, figures, and stats from reputable resources to strengthen your claims. So, if you borrow details from others, a big sign of plagiarism could be the absence of source attribution. Therefore, whenever you end writing, look for parts that you incorporated from external law experts but didn’t credit them.
When you miss citing a source, you actually infringe on their rights unwittingly. This creates unintentional plagiarism in your files, which could lead to severe consequences. So, when revisiting your content, see if you have missed any citations or not.
Watch For Citation Mistakes
Sometimes, you add citations when writing for law, but plagiarism still remains intact in your document. Wondering how? Well, this usually happens when you make a mistake when crediting the original author. It could be referring to a wrong source, using incorrect source details, or citing the source in an inappropriate or unacceptable style.
In all these cases, the external content in your file is considered plagiarism. Unfortunately, it has the same impact on your reputation and credibility as intentional plagiarism. Therefore, whenever looking for plagiarized parts in your legal documents, pay close attention to sections that include borrowed details.
Check For Unquoted Statements
Your case might match case studies or legal research work present on credible sources, both online and offline. In such a situation, when you leave the copied words unquoted, you actually blur the line between original and borrowed work. So, if you copy exact words from such resources, make sure that you have added quotation marks around them.
If you forget to add quotations, it means that part will still be counted as plagiarized. Why? Because quotes are supposed to properly refer to the original author or platform so their credibility can be judged. This means that if you remember that you have included the exact words of someone else but didn’t quote them, your document contains plagiarism.
Do A Plagiarism Test For Final Assessment
In addition to citation mistakes and missing quotations, there is another thing that can constitute plagiarism in your document. Wondering what? Well, we are talking about accidental resemblance with existing case studies, law-related articles, and other copyrighted legal content.
Unfortunately, you can’t identify this type of plagiarism with manual efforts. This is because there is vast information about laws, both online and offline, and you can’t tell which one your text matches. This is where an advanced yet free plagiarism detector comes in handy. It helps you identify plagiarism that you can’t spot with manual inspection.
So, access a free online plagiarism checker and upload your legal document there. The tool will instantly show all plagiarized parts along with matching sources, if present. This way, you ensure that all plagiarism is identified, enabling you to eliminate all of it in a timely manner.
Tips To Fix Plagiarism In Legal Write-Ups
Identifying plagiarism in legal writing is not enough. It’s necessary to fix plagiarized parts to comply with copyright law. When it comes to eliminating or avoiding plagiarism in law-related write-ups, the following practices can help a lot.
Keep Track Of Your Research
When writing about the law, it’s necessary to remember where you got your facts, figures, and ideas. Otherwise, you might make mistakes when citing sources, leading to unintentional plagiarism. So, whenever you do research to gather evidence for your claims in legal writing, make sure that you keep a comprehensive record of sources.
Make a complete list of all external sources. You can use either a digital document or a physical notepad for this purpose. With the track of every borrowed detail, it becomes easier to remember to cite the sources. Also, this approach saves you from falling victim to incorrect citations.
Paraphrase Legal Text Effectively
When practicing law, you read a lot of laws, cases, and different types of documents. With vast knowledge, you often mimic the language of content you already read somewhere, leading to creating inadvertent similarities in your legal documents. If you identify such plagiarized parts, the best technique to make them unique is rephrasing them effectively.
When paraphrasing an unintentionally copied idea, try to explain it in a way that makes sense to you. However, make sure that the original meaning and context remain intact. Remember, each word in legal writing carries weight. So, if you misinterpret anything, it may seem that you tried to bend the laws to make your point.
Attribute Even When Paraphrasing Text
Even if you change the words, the copyright law says the idea still belongs to the original creator. With rephrasing, you will only succeed in bypassing plagiarism detection. It doesn’t let you break the intellectual property law. Therefore, if you learned something from a law-related book, article, or case and want to add its rephrased version to your file, you must cite it.
This little step shows your respect towards your profession and the real author of that material. Making attributed use of others’ ideas, especially the paraphrased versions, doesn’t count as plagiarism. Instead, it falls under the category of fair, honest, or legal use of information. So, don’t forget to attribute sources of paraphrased content.
Add Quotations Where Needed
Sometimes, the best way to explain a law is to use the exact words. However, in such a case, a simple source attribution is not enough. In other words, it doesn’t justify the acknowledgment of the original contributions of a reputed legal expert or platform. Instead, verbatim incorporation of someone else’s legal work requires an additional protocol.
This is where quotation marks help you avoid plagiarism. When quoting the original author, it clearly states that the words enclosed in quotation marks don’t belong to you. This way, you openly acknowledge external contributions, which hints at your honesty and compliance with the law. So, don’t hesitate to add quotations wherever needed.
To Sum Up
In short, identifying plagiarism requires you to pay close attention to citations and quotations in your legal writing. Above all, you must conduct an instant original test to find all accidentally plagiarized parts that you couldn’t have seen if you hadn’t used an advanced tool. Once you spot the plagiarism, cite the sources and add quotations where needed.
Also, paraphrase unintentionally matching sections, and don’t forget to attribute sources of rephrased texts. Together, these techniques enable you to make your legal work plagiarism-free, eliminating the risk of serious consequences. So, you must apply our suggestions to stay original in your legal career and avoid any unwanted problems.
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