<p>“If I was writing a professional report at work and my employer found one of my sources was an online gaming site or an otherwise unreliable/frivolous source, my report would not only be tossed into the trash, I’d be immediately fired for turning it crappy work”</p>
<p>That’s not been my experience. Young lawyers write memos and portions of briefs all the time. I’ve written them and I’ve supervised them. If I were supervising a first-year lawyer who wrote an otherwise strong memo correctly citing 5 relevant, controlling cases and then one off-the-wall unreliable source like Wikipedia, I’d roll my eyes, give the associate a talking-to, and tell him never to do that again. Maybe your field is less forgiving than mine, but the law firm world is a pretty tough place, and even so, firing someone for one bad cite would be seen as brutal. I’ve never heard of that happening at any firm.</p>