Customer Reviews

Understanding and Mastering The Bluebook: A Guide for Students and Practitioners

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have required Barris' guide for my class for the past few years, and as a result, the students' citation has been the best I have seen in my ten years of teaching. The guide makes the very complicated Bluebook much easier to understand. It allowed me to use less class time to cover citation because it gives the students a step-by-step approach to citation which is easy to follow. I would recommend this book to every first year law student (and those who never really understood the Bluebook), and I would strongly suggest that every LRW professor require this book for their course.

This book is an absolute must for the entering first-year law student, the new law review member, or even the new associate. My students have been using this book for three years in my legal research and writing class. Each year they have consistently praised the book as the best text assigned for the course. Most of my students have stated that they simply would have been lost trying to navigate the Bluebook without this supplement.

The book is clear, succinct, and straight to the point. It offers students a brief narrative on the most crucial Bluebook rules along with examples, important notes, pointers, and reminders geared toward addressing students' most frequent mistakes. This book makes explicit for the law student what the Bluebook requires them to surmise.

This book is an absolute must for law students and practitioners alike. It provides an easy to use, user friendly step-by-step approach to creating correct citations in both scholarly citation style and practitioner's style. Every type of publication is listed with examples, helpful tips, tables, charts and sample exercises. I have had projects in law school that would have been impossible without it. It has been essential to my legal education.

This is the best book ever for learning Bluebook citation. I like its format, illustrating how each rule works. Although a previous reviewer found a couple of mistakes in the book, they are really minor (a couple of misplaced commas), and the book is so helpful this shouldn't stop you from buying it. It's a must have book for anyone trying to learn citation and for practitioners who want a quick reference guide.

This is the most user friendly bluebook guide ever.. it is 100X better than Interactive Citation Workbook for The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 2007 Edition If you're a 1L looking for a great introduction to the bluebook this is it.

Many of my students told me this is the most helpful book they bought all year. It really makes the Bluebook manageable. I highly recommend it for Legal Writing professors, as well as practitioners.

This book is essential for all 1L's out there. If you have ever opened The Bluebook, you know how complicated and confusing it can be. This amazing book gives step-by-step instructions for building citations and there are all sorts of examples, sample exercises, tables, charts, etc that allow you to gain confidence while learning how to "master" the Bluebook.

Just a quick review.

This book is golden. The Official Bluebook is flawless..no doubt about it..but it's totally unusable.

There are no real explanations (and us students don't read in boring scripty commentsy style that the Bluebook uses).

This book, in clear form, explains how to use the Bluebook Rules...

If the Bluebook was re-written in normal english..this would be it...(Plus it has a ton of cross-refs, to help you refer back to the actual bluebook at all times).

As the other review said..YES it's 22 bux for a small spiral bound book..But think about it this way...

You already spent way more on the actual Bluebook and you won't use it properly unless you get this thing anyways..This book is concise with no BS.

Kill the grade curve..Get this book.

I gotta get back to writing...I was just so glad I found this book I thought I would write a quick review. (and yes i know I'm writing crappy..but this is a web review so I'm just doing this quickly!)

Understanding and Mastering The Bluebook: A Guide for Students and Practitioners

I bought this book to help me teach bluebooking to our firm's paralegals, and it will be a good resource. But it contains too many mistakes to be useful as a text. Here are some examples:
1. On page 13, the author states that a case cite in mid-sentence is not followed by a comma unless it is part of an independent clause that would ordinarily require a comma. This is contrary to Rule B5.3 of the Bluebook. The elements of the citation other than the case name must always be "set off" by commas (i.e., before and after) if they are mid-sentence.
2. The definition of "E.g." on page 90 is incorrect, and the "example" makes no sense. "E.g." means "for example," so you would never use it in the middle of a string cite.
3. On p. 93, the author says to combine "See + e.g.," as "See e.g.,". While it is true that the signal "see" does not require a comma, "e.g." must be set off by commas ("See, e.g.,"). See Rule R1.2(a) of the Bluebook for examples.
4. The comma after "accord" in the example on page 90 appears to be a typo - the author clearly knows better.
It's a great start, so I hope there's a second edition in the works.