Legal Research & Writing : Week of October 31

• This is the final citation lab. :(
• We did full cites, then short forms, now it's the bluebook. The handbook is still really useful (tells the whys of stuff).
• The bluebook was written for law reviews. 9/10ths of the time you won't be citing for a law review-- you'll be writing court documents and memoranda. So the back cover will be helpful more frequently than the front one.
• You will never use large-and-small caps outside of a law review.
• Page 20 of handbook: when do you cite? Whenever you refer to a point of authority or law.
• The bluepages are new, and they're for non-law-review stuff. This means that the indexing isn't quite as awesome. But they are short, which is nice.
• There are 21 rules. Rule 10 is the biggest; rule 12 is second.
• Note that some courts (e.g., WI Supreme Court) have their own stylistic overlays on Bluebook style

---

• Digests are an arrangement of concise topics and subjects in a case. Correlating with headnotes. Lexis and West have their own digests (Lexis calls them "Callahans"). We're going to work with West's digests.
• West tracks over 14K subjects and subdivisions.
• The key number has a subject designation and a number. The key number is random-- it doesn't tell you anything except which headnote. All headnotes within the same general subject matter are grouped under the same key number.
• The key number system helps find points of law: persons, crimes, etc.
• The 7 categories are subdivided into 450 subcategories.
• For the exercise, a few sentences is sufficient.