Understanding and Mastering The Bluebook

The Bluebook® provides the rules for legal citation, but it can be intimidating and frustrating to use. With its simple building-block approach, this survival manual teaches how to understand and master the essential rules for legal practitioners. Rules are fully described and illustrated using:

• Clear explanations and illustrations of the basic components of legal citations;
• Step-by-step instructions for building citations to the most common authorities cited by legal practitioners;
• Detailed guidance for citing legal materials to both print and electronic sources;
• Examples, comparison charts, illustrations, and bullet-point explanations designed for quick mastery of basic Bluebook citation rules;
• Tips, hints, and cautions to help users avoid common citation errors;
• Cross references to the controlling Bluebook rules; and
• A user-friendly format gathering The Bluebook's scattered rules for each authority into one place.

For readers interested in further practicing their citation skills, Linda Barris created Mastering The Bluebook Interactive Exercises, an online learning tool. The exercises coordinate with Understanding and Mastering The Bluebook, Fifth Edition, and The Bluebook, 22nd Edition (both out summer 2025). Each copy of Understanding and Mastering The Bluebook, Fifth Edition, includes a discount code for 20% off the purchase of Mastering The Bluebook Interactive Exercises.

Extensively revised and reorganized throughout to better assist students in learning legal citation and to reflect the changes in the updated edition of The Bluebook®, this edition includes:

• Cross-references with specific pages numbers added throughout;
• An expanded and restructured chapter on case citations;
• Tables to guide students to the specific rules for case names;
• Additional examples of subrules;
• Updates to the chapter on electronic sources to add the new Lexis case citation format;
• Treatment of a new signal ("contrast");
• Modified rules for books and periodicals with multiple authors; and
• Discussion of the new Bluebook section covering state administrative rules and regulations.