Overview of the ALWD Citation Guide
Mastering the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th Edition
The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation is one of the two primary citation guides taught in law school and used in legal writing. The Association of Legal Writing Directors originally developed the Guide. Publication started in 2000. The purpose of the Guide is similar to that of the Bluebook — to give a consistent method of citation to cases, statutes, administrative codes, and other primary and secondary sources. It also helps in grammar and style, both for in-text citations and endnotes and footnotes. The first edition (2000) was a major break from the Bluebook (20th ed. 2015), then in its 16th edition. This change helped editors, judges, and lawyers give and get information more quickly and effectively. Further, the ALWD Guide helped show that citation is important to the legal process and scholarship . It helped justify decent citation practice. The Guide emphasizes using digital technology, which lawyers must use. It lets citations be searched more easily and more productively than without proper citation. The 6th (2012) and 7th (2016) editions improved further on the legal citation methods of the 5th (2007) and earlier. There’s a greater focus on helpful visuals and on using online legal information to check and link legal citation to points made in legal writing. The Guide went from using the traditional, expert-oriented, non-legal writing method of citation to using a focus on the reader (or, more accurately, the audience). It also gives more attention to how presenting the legal law and information links to the ethical responsibilities of legal writing.
Highlights of the Seventh Edition
Mastering the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th Edition
The new edition has been out for about a month now, and maybe you’ve had a chance to take a closer look at it. As a bibliophile and a citation buff, I’m pretty stoked about it. If you haven’t seen, or haven’t had a chance to thumb through, the new copy, here’s a little taste of what’s changed in the 7th edition.
Economy and Efficiency: The most exciting thing in this edition is the new format. It’s a smaller, paperback version that lets these amazing citation rules fit in your bag. Even better, the book is smaller and more compact, and it’s spiral bound and fully indexed. No more turning to the back of the book and finding yourself 20 pages away from where you are. You can find the Rule you need using the index, which is alphabetized by source types, and the spiral binding lets you lay the book flat. Don’t forget to #alwd7.
Rule 10: A little more focus in the case law section lets you find what you need more quickly. There is a brand new table of authorities, which helps you used proper citation format, and a new section on how to cite various online and print databases. There are also new rules for citing cases from Pacific Territories and Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. There is a brand new chapter on citing administrative codes and rules! Whoo-hoo!
Rule 13: Mentions of research platforms have been added, and new rules governing spaces between elements and parentheses in citations have been added as well. The publication chapter has been updated to include e-books, blogs, and social media, and now includes an example of how to cite a database.
Rule 14: New rule about citing databases. Now students can cite Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg, and Bloomberg BNA. Formatting changes and enhancements have been made to the Table of Legislative Material, Administrative Codes and Rules, and Treaties portions of this rule. Ahhhh, the Treaty Rule is now much much more user friendly.
Rule 18: Formatting rules have been revised and expanded upon. Additionally, the new edition clarifies that "the same as" subrules apply to abbreviations of all court system names and not just the highest. The subrule for indicating the law school on a certificate has been moved to this rule.
Appendix C: The Citations Supplement has been moved from the end of Chapter 8, that illustrates different citation formats. Note that the 7th edition has been expanded to include how to cite to supplemental materials, states that table of cases should be single spaced and the font size has been increased, and improved formatting and use of examples to explain the citation formats being discussed.
Applying the ALWD Guide to:
Whether working on a course exercise or preparing a real-world client matter, the ALWD Guide helps ensure we are using readable and accurate citations across all legal documents. In these examples, we put the Guide to work so you can see how specific citation rules translate into practice.
Briefs
Outside of academic settings, the majority of legal writing is conducted via two types of documents: research memos and briefs. Both should use the same formatting and rules; however, citations in briefs navigate the added complexity of case styles. (Note: style dictates whether a case name is italicized or underlined.) In Table 6, the ALWD Guide provides a handy chart showing how to turn a citation to a case into a cite to that case in court.
Memoranda
Court filings are not always the end game, so other documents must be carefully considered. Like briefs, memos frequently assert and support arguments, so they should often follow the same citation rules. Other types of documents, however, are outside of the scope of this unique type of legal writing. From credit agreements to notices of rescission, financial documents have their own complex set of citation rules. Just as you should check with your jurisdiction to ensure you’re following the court-specific rules, you should also consult your court’s or agency’s specific rules for these non-brief, non-pleading documents.
Altering the Citation Format
Thanks to progress in how we cite to cases, electronic legal research has made citation in legal writing significantly easier, causing the formatting for even the most seasoned professionals to fall apart sometimes. One special trick to remember is that abbreviations are asymmetrical. Where words are shortened in one part of a citation, they should be spelled out in full elsewhere. In Table 7, we see some examples of how awkward this can be if we don’t use ALWD rules. Similar irregularities abound in history, so the Guide gives you rules for those unique situations as well.
Pleas and Judgments
Any legal discussion of a case would be remiss not to include citations to a court’s judgment, plea, or order. In fact, as we see in Table 9, the Guide has separate rules for these special circumstances. The Guide gives us good advice here: if the resource you are consulting does not conform to or outright conflicts with these rules, table that resource until further research ("Further Research")) confirms it.
Quoting from or Citing to Cases
We are fortunate to have many cases available online. Sometimes, however, the website hosting a case uses a citation format different than the one recommended in the Guide. Be sure to enable the "full citation" option, as shown in the example below. If you encounter a special site where the "full citation" option is not available or the case is only viewable in brief, always cite to the original reporter finding. Only as a last resort should you rely on an alternative version of the case.
The Bluebook Compared to the ALWD Guide
Although the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation was developed as an alternative to the Bluebook, the two guides are complementary and the ALWD Guide uses much of the same approach as the Bluebook. In particular, the ALWD Guide will refer to Bluebook rules rather than stating the equivalent ALWD rules in detail. At the outset, the ALWD Guide acknowledges that "[t]he citation standards in the Guide do not always mirror rules in the Bluebook," noting that "[t]he ALWD Guide offers some citation rules that are not found in the Bluebook and it omits some Bluebook rules." The Guide also makes that distinction clear on the flyleaf of the book, indicating that the ALWD Guide contains "Many Bluebook rules, some modified and some not , but does not contain many of the Bluebook’s forms and rules."
Authors and scholars working in academic institutions and law firms use both the ALWD System and the Bluebook. It is essential for law students to learn the ALWD System despite the fact that some publishers may prefer to have all references formatted according to the requirements set by the Bluebook. The Bluebook is a set of rules, and it gives different advice in areas where there are multiple solutions, often leaving the choice up to the writer. In contrast, the ALWD Guide aims to provide an accurate and absolute answer in the form of a citation rule, rather than a general approach according to which each author can choose to solve the issue at hand.
Tips and Tricks of the ALWD Pro
When it comes to mastering the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th Edition, going through the guide to learn the rules is not enough. You must also practice what you learn to reinforce your understanding and increase your confidence in finding the right answer. One of the best ways to practice – especially if you are working alone, as many of us are now – is to time yourself carefully while looking up citations. (Add your own favorite stress-inducing music here if needed.) Be strict with yourself about the time, and after a while, the answer will start to spring out at you because you have trained your brain to jump to the right information. Whenever I teach legal citation, we end up playing a rapid-fire version of Who Can Do It Faster? My students love it, but I’m pretty sure my colleagues hate it when we walk through a law school.
Another great way to practice is to look up some of your own citations that you use regularly in student work products (frankly, you are going to be looking at those cases a lot going forward). Next time you find yourself going to a case site, check the citation conventions. You might be surprised by the differences between what you think it should look like and what it actually looks like. That is a great way to reinforce what you have learned by catching the mistakes when they are fresh in your mind.
If you need an even more targeted way to practice, there is a tool that can help you: The Citation Rollercoaster is a quiz program developed by law librarians at UChicago Law School Library to help students get better at legal citation using ALWD. The basic program has a few dozen questions, and like the best game shows ever, you will get immediate feedback about whether you got the question correct or not. You can also click Add Similar Items if you mastered it on the first try, which throws in other cases that have the same unique elements. At the end, you can see how you did and add additional ones to the mix if you want more practice.
You can also use the Citation Resource Page, which has a formatted set of links according to the kind of resource you want, to practice your legal citation. I find the paycheck bad check citation practice particularly funny. I also recommend using the ALWD citation index for case names, and the U.S. Reporter for federal reporters to find using ALWD. I also liked bookmark places that have both Westlaw citation tools and ALWD citation tools for single documents to practice compounding.
The worst thing you can do is to not practice at all. You need to have an active mind working on building the right habits and finding the right answers, so using each of these tools will reinforce the good habits you have learned and root out the bad ones as well.
Where to Locate Other Resources
The best place I have found to learn about the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th Edition is the ALWD guide home page. Lots of great information there. The page contains links to: Another source of information on the ALWD Guide is legal writing web pages maintained by professors. One such page is The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation by Professor Justin D. Bonifaz of Creighton University School of Law. Another is the Legal Writing Handbook 3rd Edition: An Analytical Approach (2007) Page. This page is maintained by Professor Linda Friedman Benoit of Vermont Law School. Both pages contain a lot of useful information about the ALWD Guide .
The best source for finding the online workshops is the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation Demonstration site. If you are a student taking a class that requires you to learn the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, regularly check your professors’ web pages for descriptions of their on-line workshops. If your professor does not maintain a web page for class information, drop him or her an email and ask for a sheet with links to on-line lectures and assignments.
Another source of information would be to ask you professors for help. Give them a call or stop by their office and ask for guidance.
The last source of information would be to contact the ALWD Guide editors directly. Their page has email addresses for each author.