Last week Illinois joined the ranks of states that have moved to a new system of official citations that is vendor neutral and eliminates the need to refer to print versions of cases. The official versions of Illinois state cases will now be those maintained online on the Illinois Courts website, giving lawyers and members of the public free access to official case law. In conjunction with this change, Illinois will also be phasing out the official print version of Illinois state case law.
For more information about the movement towards vendor neutral citation formats, check out UniversalCitation.org, a group whose “aim is to provide the organizational infrastructure needed to facilitate the adoptions and use of a uniform set of media and vendor neutral citations that can be used for all American court decisions.”