Part 6 of the new books series focuses on a guide to mastering ALWD citations.

ALWD Companion: A Citation Practice Book
By Coleen M. Barger and Brooke J. Bowman
Law Reserve KF245 .A453 2010

The ALWD Companion: A Citation Practice Book by Coleen Barger and Brooke Bowman is a workbook of citation exercises meant to help students master legal citation.  The book begins with basic citation guidance, and then addresses citing to specific legal sources.  Exercises cover primary sources, including federal and state constitutions, statutes, cases, and regulations, as well as commonly used secondary sources, such as law review articles, treatises, court rules, and court documents.   Exercises in the book progress from basic to intermediate to expert levels and each begins with references to particular ALWD rules.   A chapter at the end of the book also addresses Bluebook citation rules, and the differences in citation format between ALWD and Bluebook.

Speaking of Bluebook. . .

The Bluebook Blues
Court of Appeals Judge Richard A. Posner lambasts the current edition of the Bluebook in his 2011 Yale Law Journal article titled The Bluebook Blues, describing it as “a monstrous growth, remote from the functional need for legal citation forms, that serves obscure needs of the legal culture and its student subculture.”  Read Judge Posner’s humorous and common sense article about legal citation on the Yale Law Journal’s webpage here.