AGLC4 mistakes that cost marks (and how to avoid them).

Every Australian law school teaches AGLC. Every marker reads it. A meaningful share of the discretionary marks on a problem question, a case-note, or an essay sit in the citation footnotes. Most students never lose marks on the substance of the citation, only on the punctuation, the italics, and the pinpoint convention. What follows is the operating set of mistakes the marker actually pulls a half-mark for, in the order they show up.

Mistake one: the comma after the year, in a reported case.

A reported case is one published in an authorised report series. Commonwealth Law Reports, Federal Court Reports, state Supreme Court reports. The AGLC4 form is the case name, then the year in round brackets, then the volume number, then the abbreviation of the report series, then the starting page. There is no comma after the year:

Commonwealth Bank of Australia v Barker (2014) 253 CLR 169

Common error: writing Commonwealth Bank of Australia v Barker, (2014) 253 CLR 169 with a comma after the case name. There is no comma between the case name and the year. The year is in round brackets when the volume number does the work of telling you which year (volumes are numbered continuously and the year is metadata, not part of the citation lookup).

This is the single most common AGLC4 mistake. Markers see it daily.

Mistake two: square brackets vs round brackets on the year.

Square brackets mean the year is essential to the citation. Round brackets mean the volume number alone tells you where to find it. The rule:

• Square brackets when the report series numbers its volumes by year (so the year is the lookup key): [2019] HCA 18
• Round brackets when the report series has a continuous volume sequence (so the volume number is the lookup key): (2014) 253 CLR 169

Mixing them up is a half-mark. The rule of thumb: HCA, FCA, NSWSC, VSC and other neutral-citation forms use square brackets. CLR, FCR, ALR, NSWLR, VR and other authorised report series use round brackets.

Mistake three: italics on the case name, but not the v.

The case name is italicised. The v is italicised. Everything else in the citation is roman. So:

Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1

The (No 2) is italicised because it is part of the case name. The (1992) is roman because it is metadata. The v has no full stop after it. Lawyers write v not v. or vs.

Mistake four: the pinpoint format.

When you cite a specific paragraph of a judgment, the pinpoint goes in square brackets at the end:

Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, 580 (Lord Atkin)

Older AGLC editions used a comma plus the page number. AGLC4 prefers paragraph numbers in square brackets for judgments where the judgment is paragraphed (everything from the High Court since around 1998 onward, and most state Supreme Courts since the early 2000s). For older judgments that paginate rather than paragraph, use page numbers as above. When in doubt, check whether the judgment uses paragraph numbers and follow what it does.

Multiple paragraphs use an en-dash: [580]–[604]. Not a hyphen, an en-dash. The marker will check.

Mistake five: short titles.

AGLC4 lets you use a short title for a case after the first full citation. The first time, use the full citation. From the second mention on, italicise the short title only:

First mention: Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, 580 (Lord Atkin) ('Donoghue').
Later: As Lord Atkin held in Donoghue [1932] AC 562, 580...

The trap: students put quotation marks or italics inconsistently on the short title. Convention is single quotes around the short title at the point of introduction, then italics whenever the short title appears subsequently. The case-name italics are consistent across both.

Mistake six: legislation citation.

Legislation is its own form: the short title is italicised, the year is in italics inside the title, and the jurisdiction is in round brackets:

Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) s 181

Common errors: forgetting to italicise the year inside the title (Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) with the year in roman is wrong); using the abbreviation sec or § for section (use s); and putting the jurisdiction outside the closing bracket. The pinpoint to a paragraph within a section uses (1)(a) rather than para 1(a).

What CaseSharp does about it.

Every authority page on CaseSharp generates an AGLC4-correct citation in two clicks. The case name italicised, the year in the right brackets for the report series, the pinpoint paragraph with an en-dash where appropriate, and the short title introduced in single quotes for the second mention. Copy as plain text, paste into your footnote, format check finished.

AGLC4 is a long rulebook. Most of what makes you lose marks is in the first 40 pages. The rest of the rules are for very specific edge cases that almost never appear in undergraduate or PLT writing. If you commit the six rules above to muscle memory you will pick up most of the marks the citation system has on offer.

Sources.