CALI's Pre-Law Blog

25 Aug, 2006

Another great reader submitted question today:

• I've heard the Blue Book and ALWD Citation Manual are two different citation systems. However, others have said the ALWD Citation Manual is simply a user-friendly guide to the Blue Book. The Blue Book is confusing, so if I can use the ALWD Citation Manual to comply with the Blue Book rules, that would be a great option. If you could clarify which of these views is correct, I would be very grateful. Thank you.

Differences between ALWD and Bluebook
Of course these are not the same. ALWD is for legal citations, Blue Book is for pricing your used car....

I kid.

In reality I understand the differences to be minor, but ALWD Citation Manual (say it: "ALL-WOOD") is not just a user-friendly version of The Bluebook.

Bluebook is maintained by law students at top law schools. It was the first on the legal citation format scene of the two and was the standard for many years. It contains one citation method for law reviews and another citation method for all other types of documents.

The ALWD manual, the newer of the two systems made in response to what the ALWD people viewed as deficiencies of the Bluebook system, is maintained by a group of law professors. ALWD, according to its website, "contains one system for all legal documents, making no distinction between law review articles and other types of writing."

Darby Dickerson, author of ALWD Citation Manual, points out some of the stylistic differences between the latest versions of ALWD and Bluebook in this powerpoint presentation. Also see Dickerson's comparison chart.

My Experiences with Legal Citations
Based on my experience, your school's legal writing program chooses to follow either ALWD or Bluebook. You then must conform perfectly to every last comma, space, and capitalization based on that format or face losing points on your legal writing paper.

If you participate in a law review or another journal, you will be doing a bunch of cite checking. A lot of cite checking involves making sure that the author's cites match the format. That format may or may not be in the format which you learned for legal writing.

And then this happens when you get into practice: "The realities of professional practice in many settings, particularly at a time when digital distribution of legal materials is displacing print, lead to dialects or usages in legal citation neither manual includes"--(quote from this article by Peter Martin, posted on LII...I feel like I should format this online scholarly article reference to match proper citation form considering the subject of this blog post...nah).

I don't have enough real world legal experience to know for sure, but I hear that perfect format is not nearly as important in actual practice as it is in law school. Does anyone have something to add about legal citation in practice compared to citation in law school?

Links
The above mentioned article by Peter Martin goes to great lengths in its discussion of legal citations. Greater lengths than you may be willing to read about. Still an extremely informative article.

CALI lesson based on Bluebook citations.

CALI lesson based on ALWD citations. (actually authored by the ALWD manual's author, Darby Dickerson).

Article written when ALWD first decided to publish the manual.

A good FAQ on legal citations posted at Case Western Law School's legal writing website.

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*I am a law student. That means I don't have all the answers. I may be lacking knowledge in certain areas, namely the real world practice of law. But I have done a lot of research into the law school process as a whole and I am currently living through law school. I am also surrounded by a lot of smart and experienced people with unique insight into the law school world who either work at CALI or with whom CALI has close relationships. I hope that you seek others' opinions and insights in addition to mine in order to make an informed decision.