In a law assignment, a legitimate reference completely acknowledges the origin of a legal rule, opinion, or fact using strict legal citation style. Conversely, an accidental plagiarism flag occurs when you use someone else’s analytical structure, verbatim phrasing, or unique legal rationale without proper attribution or quote marks, even if you had no intention to cheat. In addition, patchwriting or word switching is also accidental plagiarism because you only change a few words to synonyms while keeping the original sentence structure. A law assignment helper UK recommends not omitting quotation marks around texts you copied, even if you have footnoted a book.