Gerard Magliocca, writing at Concurring Opinions:

If I cited [someone else’s] brief in an attempt to fairly attribute the source when I made the same point, then I’d look like an uncreative doofus. If I did not cite the brief, though, then that would (or could) be plagiarism.

It would be an interesting bit of research to determine how many sentences are copied without attribution from the briefs of other attorneys. I suspect it happens often.

I don’t think it’s uncreative to cite another lawyer’s brief. Legal writing is a game of cites. If anything, an uncited thought may raise questions rather than project creativity.

The real creativity in legal advocacy, as far as I have learned in law school, working as a litigation paralegal and reading far too much legal writing for “pleasure,” is in the optimal juxtaposition, creatively, of the cited facts and the thoughts of your forbears.

No one wants to see a newly minted physics professor work out the proof for E = MC2. The formula is there as a shortcut so others can build, creatively, upon the concepts for which it provides a shorthand.

After all, what judge prefers your lengthy version of an angle you could just as easily refer to with a short quote and a cite to a previous brief?

Whatever you think of this, a quick search turned up a bit of further reading on the issue and I’ve included a few links below. The question certainly isn’t settled, so I’m as interested as Mr. Magliocca in hearing other opinions.

Further Reading

• The Problems of Plagiarism as an Ethics Offense (PDF)
• Plagiarism: A Workshop for Law Students (PDF)
• Lindsay Lohan’s lawyer sanctioned for plagiarizing in briefs

Aggregation is plagiarism:

I couldn’t help but aggregate (though not plagiarize) this link Jim Dalrymple aggregated to a post by a Mr. Joe Wilcox about how aggregation is, well, plagiarism.

It’s true, now that you’ve read this you don’t need to read the original to know what it’s about. However, my guess is you’ll miss out on the personal reasons and nuanced perspective Mr. Wilcox offers if you don’t go and read his post.

I certainly agree with his position, not an uncommon one, that word-for-word copies or close paraphrases are plagiarism plain and simple. But I would term that behavior, well, plagiarism. Aggregation, done right, will collect interesting material to which the collector wants to point his own readers, adding context or perspective or opinion lacking in the original.

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball is a great example of that: it’s comprised almost entirely of links to the work of others, often including quotes from the linked-to article. But it’s as far from plagiarism as you can get. People read Gruber’s site specifically for his opinion on the news of the day. Most of his readers probably find the newsy bits elsewhere, be it on Twitter or another news site. But Gruber’s take adds value, and that’s why they’re there.

I like to think that’s what I’m doing here, but I suppose only readers like you can decide that.

I would be honored to work for Time, CNN, The Atlantic, or The New Yorker. While I may require some on-the-job journalism training, I will absolutely do my own work 100% percent of the time.