Top Law Schools

Please discuss strategies for studying and learning the rules of the Blue Book here. My class's law review write on competition entails a blue book exam. Students must find all the errors located in an essay and correct them. Obviously knowing BB to the letter will be helpful for an exam like this.

ICWs, if your school didn't already make you do them.

Go through some articles from your school's law review and stop at each citation to figure out why they did what they did.

You won't be able to learn the BB in a short amount of time, but you can train yourself to spot issues. For example, when there are two or more citations in a string cite, you should immediately think order of authorities (Rule 1.4). Whenever you see a case name in a citation, you should think about abbreviations (Table 6). etc.

I would be very careful about consulting outside sources -- it may be against your write-on competition's rules. (I know it is for ours.) I think the best way to learn the BB is to practice, although looking at other law review articles may help.

steve_nash wrote:I would be very careful about consulting outside sources -- it may be against your write-on competition's rules. (I know it is for ours.) I think the best way to learn the BB is to practice, although looking at other law review articles may help.

Uh, how would you bluebook without consulting an outside source, to wit, the Bluebook?

Renzo wrote:

steve_nash wrote:I would be very careful about consulting outside sources -- it may be against your write-on competition's rules. (I know it is for ours.) I think the best way to learn the BB is to practice, although looking at other law review articles may help.

Uh, how would you bluebook without consulting an outside source, to wit, the Bluebook?

I was referring to looking up law review articles, websites, etc. on the Bluebook -- not the manual itself.

steve_nash wrote:I would be very careful about consulting outside sources -- it may be against your write-on competition's rules. (I know it is for ours.) I think the best way to learn the BB is to practice, although looking at other law review articles may help.

i dont think they meant during the comp

also talk about rules with a friend in an elevator during finals just to psych people out. at least that's what at least 2 people at my school did. DURING finals, wtf

underdawg wrote:

steve_nash wrote:I would be very careful about consulting outside sources -- it may be against your write-on competition's rules. (I know it is for ours.) I think the best way to learn the BB is to practice, although looking at other law review articles may help.

i dont think they meant during the comp

also talk about rules with a friend in an elevator during finals just to psych people out. at least that's what at least 2 people at my school did. DURING finals, wtf

That's epic. <<calls friend & gets in elevator>>

Renzo wrote:

underdawg wrote:

steve_nash wrote:I would be very careful about consulting outside sources -- it may be against your write-on competition's rules. (I know it is for ours.) I think the best way to learn the BB is to practice, although looking at other law review articles may help.

i dont think they meant during the comp

also talk about rules with a friend in an elevator during finals just to psych people out. at least that's what at least 2 people at my school did. DURING finals, wtf

That's epic. <<calls friend & gets in elevator>>

No need to call. Fake the phone call.

Study the Blue Book? Waste of time. Just familiarize yourself with the samples in the cover and use the index to look up anything that doesn't fit within the normal template (I'm telling you, the Blue Book has an amazing index).

At least once read through the first ten rules. It will give you an idea about what to look for. Anything beyond that (and maybe even rule 10) is specific stuff that you will end up looking up anyway. Reading the first set of rules will give you an idea of what exactly should be where and when you should be wary of tiny formatting things that won't necessarily pop out at you when you just look at specifics.

I don't see any need to memorize anything, either. Tab the important sections for quick and easy reference and then use the index for everything else.

Disclaimer: I had an insane amount of tabs in mine, but thanks to the ICW exercises, I started to know whether a relevant rule was in the front or back of the book, which made it easier to find the important section in the sea of tabs.

IzziesGal wrote:I don't see any need to memorize anything, either. Tab the important sections for quick and easy reference and then use the index for everything else.

Disclaimer: I had an insane amount of tabs in mine, but thanks to the ICW exercises, I started to know whether a relevant rule was in the front or back of the book, which made it easier to find the important section in the sea of tabs.

What's ICW? I'm a 0L.

Interactive Citation Workshop. Online exercises for Bluebooking.

You might take a gander at Understanding and Mastering The Bluebook by L. Barris (2007) if your library has it. I found it useful for citation correction assignments in my certification course, and composing sample memos, briefs, etc. I wouldn't buy it sight unseen as it may be too verbose for competition preparation or otherwise not to your liking. It's also just short of 100 pages, so you could probably just xerox it.