How did you learn Bluebooking? Forum

[Sls17]

I cannot figure out Bluebooking for the life of me. I can never find the right rules and I always mess something up! Short of memorizing the entire 500+ page book, I'm not sure what strategies to utilize to figure this out.

Are there any tricks/tips/helpful online guides/resources/anything? I need some sort of crash course or easy cheat sheet!

[Johann]

use the index.

[BVest]

helpful online guides?

legalbluebook.com

[banjo]

As a 1L, just focus on citing cases and statutes. You don't need to bother with unpublished manuscripts and all that nonsense until you're on a journal (don't do one).

[sd5289]

By doing it.

I also echo the advice of concentrating on statutes (Rule 12) and cases (Rule 10). Also get familiar with introductory signals (Rule 1), and the tables in the back on U.S. Jurisdictions (Table 1), case name abbreviations (Table 6), and court name abbreviations (Table 7).

[girlrunning]

1. Do the ICW exercises on the Lexis Website.
2. Tab your bluebook (I basically "read" the whole thing to tab it correctly).

Now that I'm on law review, I use the online Bluebook a lot (since I'm mostly searching for really obscure stuff), but found it easier to use and learn the tabbed Bluebook during 1L.

[jbagelboy]

i never opened my bluebook once as a 1L. the journal write-on assignment had specific instructions so it didn't require the "bluebook" per se

the first time I used it was at my 1l summer job since the associates wanted shit blue booked, but that was basically just cases

journal itself forced me to use my bluebook to look up obscure citation directions. but yea I just use the index. you never "learn" it.