Legal Research

Let's face it.  The Bluebook can be a baffling, frustrating experience for first-time cite-checkers.  Our wise colleague, Mary Whisner, at the University of Washington's Gallagher Law Library, has a helpful essay in the Law Library Journal on Bluebook woes, "The Dreaded  Bluebook," which is a "must read" for anyone who has ever thrown a Bluebook against the wall in sheer frustration.  In this essay, Mary reveals one of the tips that I often recommend to newbie cite-checkers -- when in doubt about how to cite to a particular authority, use Lexis or Westlaw to search the footnotes of existing law review articles to find out how other editors are citing the authority. For example, if I need to figure out how to cite to a  Congressional Research Service report entitled, "Federal and State Laws Regarding Pharmacists Who Refuse to Dispense Contraceptives," I would search the JLR database on Westlaw or the ALLUS database on Lexis with the following search:

federal /2 state /5 pharmacists /2 refuse /2 dispense /2 contraceptives

From there, I can browse the footnotes of the articles appearing in my search results to see how editors are handling this CRS report citation.  Of course, as Mary notes, you may find that different law reviews cite the authority in different ways, but you can usually decide which conforms most closely to the Bluebook rules and go from there. 

The most important point made in Mary's essay is this -- don't be afraid to ask the law librarians for help with the Bluebook's rules.  Some of us have toiled as student editors ourselves, and we have lots of arcane Bluebook knowledge that we would love to put to good use!