The Devil has a form and its name is OSCOLA

So you’re doing your first essay – or any Law school essay, for that matter, and now it’s time to reference. (Top Tip: Reference, as you go, never leave it till the end. I know people who have left it, and it made their life hell.)

Nonetheless, gone are the days of nice and easy Harvard referencing. Instead, you’ve been told you need to use OSCOLA, which doesn’t sound like it’s from this planet, as it is. And I’ll be honest, I’m not sure it is from Earth – more like the fiery depths of hell.

OSCOLA was the bane of my existence. The key word here being was. Not anymore – mainly because I refused to put myself through the torture of figuring out OSCOLA, after that first and dreaded Civil Justice Essay.

Enter technology, the knight in shining armour. After doing that first essay back in fall 2016, I knew I never wanted to deal with OSCOLA ever again, and set off to find a solution. As it turns out, I did find a solution, and I’m going to share it with you, so you never have to suffer through OSCOLA again.

The answer comes in the form of this beautiful website called citethisforme.com , formerly known as RefMe. And it does OSCOLA for you. It’s like magic.

First things first, you’ll need to sign up and with your Student / University email address, if you want access. After that, you’re in and you can let Just Cite This For Me, start doing all the work.

Really. That’s it. Just select OSCOLA as your preferred footnote and bibliography system and your good to go. This website makes it easy as pie.

The best part is you can create different projects, storing your different references for different works separately. It makes the website super handy when you are working on multiple essays or dissertations at the same time.

For Books, all you have to do it enter the ISBN from the barcode on the back, or from the copyright page, that is usually around 3-4 pages in from the front. Just Cite This For Me will pull all of the other information from the internet, such as the Title, Author etc. and generate you both a footnote and bibliography reference.

Again, with websites or news articles, all you do it pop in the link and out pops the handy reference, everything ready to paste. If you’re using the link to a news article, it can even extract the article title, author, and the date when it was written.

Even with journals, you can usually just search within the website for the Author or Title and find the exact article your looking for, no hassle involved. And if not, most journals online come with a handy DOI number, which you can paste into the journal search on Just Cite This For Me, and like with the ISBN’s for books, the website will do all the work and information extraction.

So if you ever feel like you’ve had enough of figuring out OSCOLA for yourself, then definitely check out citethisforme.com . It is such a lifesaver and will genuinely transform the way and ease with which you pen you legal essays.