ALWD Guide to Legal Citation: An Introduction
The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, now in its seventh edition, serves as the authoritative source for legal writing and legal research in the United States. It provides an unrivaled in-depth look at citation standards and legal research processes, both for print and electronic resources. It is written specifically for law students, legal practitioner, and scholars. The ALWD Guide is also an approved citation guide for many legal journals and law reviews across the country.
ALWD is an acronym that stands for Association of Legal Writing Directors . Founded in 2000, ALWD began as a collaborative effort of several leading legal scholars and legal practitioners. The organization was founded as national forum for legal writing scholars and teachers. One of their main goals was the establishment of a uniform citation system for legal materials. They published their first legal citation manual in 2006. The first version earned two American Association of Law Libraries’ Excellence in Marketing Awards.
The latest edition of ALWD Guide to Legal Citation was published in 2017; it can be found in our library’s 3rd floor Reference collection.
ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th Ed., What’s New!
The 7th edition of the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation offers significant changes which reflect the trends in technology, law and publishing among other things. This book is more than a citation manual-it is a complete legal writing textbook. There are new sections that address paras, footnotes, speech citations, OELAWN citations, and a new section on how to cite to E-Books. There is also a section addressing the new federal court style manual as adopted by The Supreme Court of the United States. This new section makes this the most current citation manual available for attorneys and law students. There have also been revisions to the appendix covering abbreviations. The glossary has been updated. The new edition is bigger and covers many more aspects of legal writing than previous editions.
The Importance of Proper Legal Citation
Think about all of the time you spend reading. You have limited time. You need to know that what you read is something you can trust. You need to be able to cite it.
You cannot write a motion without law. You cannot write a brief. You cannot stand in court or at a tribunal without law. And every time you quote or reference something you’ve read, something you can only cite to if you’ve properly referenced it, you are effectively presenting a fact to the court or tribunal you want them to adopt as true.
You don’t want to do this with sloppy citations. When one state court or tribunal quotes or cites a standard in a case, the lawyers shudder at the thought that it might be different in the other state’s court or tribunal. They know that even the best legal minds can and do make mistakes. But mistakes like the citation of a standard can be the type of mistake that does not get caught on appeal and results in the court or tribunal relying upon the wrong standard.
A standard of citation does exist for legal citations whether you know it or not. The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation was published specifically to provide a uniform system of legal citation primarily for legal writing professors to ensure that their students could properly cite while writing and researching. But the ALWD Guide is useful to practitioners for the same reason. It provides a trusted source so that lawyers and judges alike can refer to a single source to help them get things right.
Navigating the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation PDF
The ALWD Guide is also available in PDF format, giving you the perfect opportunity to reduce that pile of loose pages and start referencing your citations electronically. You can also load it onto tablets and phones, making it an easy-going tool for you to use on the go.
Like the print version, the PDF is divided into chapters on case citations, constitutions, statutes, secondary sources, etc., with even nested sub-chapters for when you get into the nitty-gritty. The PDF is organized so you can jump from chapter to chapter depending on what you need – so if you don’t use federal and state court documents often, you can easily skip that section or search for the citation you need. The Table of Contents at the beginning of the PDF lets you know everything contained within and helps you jump to what you need, making research and citation collection a breeze.
The base of each page contains an address from Wolters Kluwer, the publishers of the ALWD Guide, going to the underlying chapter numbers. So if you take a lot of notes within the ALWD Guide, you can easily go back and forth from page to page via the search function on your word processor.
Common Legal Citation Errors and Concerns
Failing to use proper short forms. As shown in Example 1 of the section on short forms, citing to the same source a second time over the course of a document may be done by replacing the party’s name with "PP:" (the plural for a party’s names) or using a short form. It is a common mistake to use both short forms. Always choose one format and stick with it for the entire brief. Incorrectly using short forms. The rule in Rule 9.2 allows short forms only when the full citation has been provided immediately before the first short form. It also sets out the particulars that may be used in the short form. For case law references, "citations must include the significant reporter volume number, the volume number, and the reporter page number, and always the name of the reporter." ALWD Guide at 237. Inconsistent short forms. Many people craft short forms on their own, instead of relying on those in the ALWD guide. For example, one may come up with a short form: Determin’s. But the ALWD guide recommends using Determination’s. ALWD Guide 2006, Rule 9.2, Reporters, cmt. b.
Using abbreviations. Avoid abbreviations as much as possible. Instead of writing "determ’n" or "det." use the words "determination" in your citations. Invalid citation. Be sure that all citations are valid. For example , http://web2.westlaw.com/westlawgate/default.wl?d2=16797&RS=I. (Note: Westlaw may have discontinued this link.) This database link would appear invalid because the page number must be included, if there is one, and the paragraph number of the item being cited must be included. Putting "w" instead of "page number" is also incorrect. That said, there are some sources of law that do not require page or paragraph numbers when accessed on a website. This includes statutory codes, administrative codes, and most Internet articles and encyclopedias. Sources of law that do not require page or paragraph numbers: Sources of law that do require page or paragraph numbers: It is important to verify that the source you are using does not require page or paragraph numbers, in order to prevent a citation and authority to the error). Overusing short forms. The ALWD Guide advises that authorities "referenced more than five times in any work are subject to special short form practice" and "usually can be referred to by the final initials of the party." If authority is only going to be referenced as short form and not again in full, you should use that authority in the first citation in full and include the abbreviation in parentheses after it. This way, the authority is still easily identifiable, and you avoid the confusion of differing short forms.
Comparison: ALWD vs. Other Legal Citation Guides
The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th Edition is not the only legal citation manual in existence. The ALWD Guide has a consultative history with the Bluebook dating back to their common roots in the Harvard Bluebook. However, it has been a while since the two have shared an edition.
The ALWD Guide takes a more descriptive approach, such as the Redbook and Chicago Guide, instead of prescriptive like the Bluebook. The ALWD Guide accepts more types of authorities than the other guides. For example, it allows abbreviations of cases, while the Bluebook prefers that no abbreviation occur if it can be avoided. The ALWD Guide and the Yellow Pages reject mandatory abbreviations and italicizes case names. These guides do not issue any rules for typeface. The ALWD Guide claims that all rules are based on research in legal practice as opposed to "in-house" writing. The Bluebook, Redbook, and Chicago Guide have guidelines for typeface. The Bluebook has a section on typeface. The ALWD Guide has no such section.
The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation is similar to the Chicago Guide and the Redbook in that it has one system for federal and 50 state jurisdictions and one for law-review articles and one for court documents. However, the Chicago Guide and Redbook allow "multi-state" citations. The ALWD Guide does not. State-specific differences are not font-locked in the Bluebook.
The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation is very similar with regard to citations for web sources with the Bluebook. The Chicago Guide has its own unique style for web sources. The Redbook has no special sections for citations for blog posts.
The Bluebook has a useful section on citation for unpublished works. The Redbook has similar rules. The ALWD does not have a rule on citations for unpublished works. The Bluebook has sections on appellate and trial citation formats. However, the ALWD Guide has no separate sections for these types of citation formats.
The ALWD Guide to Legal Citation states that coordination, capitalization, and punctuation rules for cases in institutional publications are governed by the publisher or by agreement among the publisher and the ALWD Guide. The ALWD Guide supplies blanks for victim, offender, and action when citing to a case.
Therefore, the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th Edition defines the difference between it and other guidebooks.
Legal Writing Tips and Tricks الكتب
In addition to adopting the ALWD format, you can also observe some simple rules in legal writing that will help in your presentation. First, remember that your reader will likely not know what is in your head that has not been committed to paper. Details of law and fact, as well as procedure, are important to present on the page in a clear manner. You may think that sources or cases are known and can be assumed by the reader, so are not necessarily important to include. But these details can be crucial to establishing authority for your argument and grounding even the most compelling legal writing in the framework of established precedent.
Second, take your time with your draft. Properly represent yourself by taking the time with your legal writing to reflect a polished product your client will be confident in.
Third, proofread your work in advance of submission. Basic grammar and spelling issues are easily avoidable pitfalls. A polished, professional legal document is essential to successful legal writing.
Additional Resources
For those seeking to build upon the fundamental skills taught in the ALWD Guide, there are now several online resources available. CALI remains the most comprehensive, though generally for law school faculty, deans, librarians, and students. It contains a variety of programs and exercises vetted by the best legal writing professors and works in conjunction with the book so the ALWD Guide for 2Ls and 3Ls when used in conjunction with the AWRW updates is a great tool due to the extensive list of references in the guide to the CALI exercises and updated materials.
While at Georgetown Law, Dan Barnhizer (co-author of ALWD Guide, 1st – 3rd Editions) presented a daylong Writing Workshop for Faculty ("WF2") on the pedagogical and practical side of legal research and writing to new and current professors of legal writing. His methodology and classes were well received and they were published in advanced legal writing by experience (2016),. These seminars were later developed and expanded upon by the AWRW team and are set to be released in May 2019. Details can be found at: workshops.aals.org
An interesting look at tips for legal writing teachers using the ALWD Guide as a teaching tool is A Problem Solving Approach to Teaching Legal Writing by Shannon D. Vargo (forthcoming in Spring 2019). It focuses on how law faculty can teach legal writing in a way that focuses on real world NLP skills and actual practice. This is similar to the approach taken by Craig B. Neilsen in What You Need to Know (and Practice) to Be a Lawyer , What Matters Most for Students and Faculty, and The New Normal for Legal Practice and the Role of Legal Writing/Critical Thinking Faculty (not yet published) while a legal writing professor and writing coach.
Of course, there are the recent Podcasts by the AWRW team. These podcasts include interviews with Professors Wallace, Jojie, and Vargo on adapting and expanding writing and teaching skills beyond the book and into the classroom, online, and practice plans. They then explore how the ALWD Guide for 2Ls and 3Ls can expand your legal writing pedagogy.
Directly related is the AWRW crafted workshop toolkit and faculty resource guide for online writing and research to help you create and expand your materials, understand your student’s backgrounds, and the psychological hurdles to legal writing. These include interview and exams for a variety of legal writing programs as well as a conference document library. These tools are under development and will be posted to the AALS site during Summer 2019 for public use.