On Wednesday, February 5th, a sizeable group of law librarians, paralegals, and other CALL members joined the CALL Continuing Education Committee for a “Legal Citation Workshop.”

Clare Willis, Research Librarian and resident Bluebook expert at the Chicago-Kent Law Library, offered useful tips on navigating the Bluebook and locating the most helpful rules on common US citations. She also addressed the Internet citation rules, the white pages, the blue pages, and the index while giving helpful examples.

Be sure to consult her helpful guide to Bluebook citation, which was used as a resource in the citation workshop, at: http://uiuc.libguides.com/law-bluebook

Next, Heidi Kuehl, Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Librarian and Coordinator of Educational Programming at Northwestern’s Pritzker Legal Research Center, gave an overview of the Bluebook rules for treaties, UN documents, international case law, and foreign documents.

Heidi pointed toward free websites for research from the United Nations (http://www.un.org/en/documents/) and EISIL (from the American Society of International Law – http://www.eisil.org/), which guide researchers toward essential elements of Bluebook citation.

Finally, Philip Johnson, Instructional and Student Services Librarian at John Marshall Law School’s Louis L. Biro Law Library, gave a summary of the new Illinois neutral case citation rules (Rules 6 and 23), and fielded questions about formatting from the audience. John Marshall provides a comprehensive tutorial on the new citation rules at
http://library.jmls.edu/reference-tutorials.php.

After the presentations, the attendees discussed nuances of the Bluebook, ALWD, and neutral citation rules, and had an open question and answer period that was enjoyed by all. Keep an eye out for other CALL Continuing Education events!