Legal research and writing relies heavily on citations, indicating where certain legal principles and rules can be found. Thorough legal research requires that you track down and verify citations. Concise legal writing requires you to properly cite your sources, often using specific citations formats. This page lists various resources to help you with these tasks.
Always verify with local court rules, a journal's publications guidelines, or your course's style guide to ensure you are using the correct citation style for your purpose.
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is the most common authority for legal citation. Published by the law review editors of four Ivy League law schools, The Bluebook provides citation styles for most United States and international law sources. It contains sections for citing material in court filings as well as in published articles.
The ALWD Citation Manual is an alternative to The Bluebook developed by the Association of Legal Writing Directors. It is similar to The Bluebook but contains more examples of usage, and is intended to be more intuitive than The Bluebook.
The University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation is commonly referred to as The Maroonbook and is a more common alternative to The Bluebook. Developed by The University of Chicago Law Review, it relies more on general guidelines than formalistic rules, and encourages users to take a common sense approach to citations.
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 18th edition by 