MBE average score falls to 33-year low | Posner: Bluebook '560 pages of rubbish' | Bryan Garner remembers Scalia | Courts rethinking use of cash bail

The Top Stories of the Week
April 1, 2016

Multistate Bar Exam average score falls to 33-year low

Mar 31, 2016, 2:53 pm CDT

A Message From American Bar Endowment

Why Do Pro Bono?

Mar 15, 2016, 11:31 am CDT

Posner says Bluebook is '560 pages of rubbish,' suggests changes to improve jury trials

Mar 29, 2016, 6:15 am CDT

Bryan Garner's tribute to his friend and co-author Antonin Scalia

Apr 1, 2016, 2:50 am CDT

Court systems rethink the use of financial bail, which some say penalizes the poor

Apr 1, 2016, 4:40 am CDT

A Message from Abacus Data Systems

This Is What Forward-Thinking Law Firms Are Doing

Mar 28, 2016, 10:55 am CDT

Law grad can cancel bar-study loan in bankruptcy, judge rules

Mar 28, 2016, 7:14 am CDT

Student admitted by mistake can't compel law school to award LLM degree, appeals court says

Mar 28, 2016, 5:45 am CDT

North Carolina AG won't defend suit over transgender bathroom law

Mar 29, 2016, 2:30 pm CDT

Clients are mad as hell--but also really vague

Mar 31, 2016, 8:30 am CDT

Cop turned bodycam on during 'hallway deposition' with defense lawyer, sparking outraged response

Mar 28, 2016, 5:00 pm CDT

Some law firms use 'Moneyball' approach to assess lateral hiring

Mar 30, 2016, 5:45 am CDT

Is association of office-sharing lawyers liable for member's alleged malpractice?

Mar 28, 2016, 6:15 am CDT

Law allowing pretrial freeze on assets untainted by crime violates Sixth Amendment, SCOTUS rules

Mar 30, 2016, 9:51 am CDT

Supreme Court splits 4-4 in challenge to mandatory union dues for public employees

Mar 29, 2016, 9:30 am CDT

F-word settlement refusal doesn't require tossing lawyer from case, federal judge rules

Mar 31, 2016, 9:11 am CDT

Question of the Week

We want to hear from you

The Bluebook: Tell us how you really feel, readers

Judge Richard Posner's disdain for The Bluebook has been well-documented. In a 2011 Yale Law Journal article, he admitted not having ever read it in detail. And that was an older, 511-page edition. The current 20th edition, released in May 2015, is 560 pages.

"560 pages of rubbish," is how Posner puts in a 2016 Green Bag article.

Even legal writing authority Bryan Garner has admitted he finds the frequent, seemingly arbitrary updates to The Bluebook "irksome" at times.

"Things shift from edition to edition--every five years or so--in response to nothing but the itch of a new crop of law students to leave their mark on their venerated citation guide," Garner wrote.

So this week, we'd like to ask you to tell us how you feel about The Bluebook. Love it or loathe it? Do you use the current edition--or an older edition--in your legal writing? Do you find it easy to use, once learned? Or do you use an altogether different system of citation?

Answer in the comments.

Read the answers to last week's question: How much did you pay in law school tuition?

Featured answer:

Posted by The Beard: "I paid for tuition $450 per year at Duke Law in 1958-1960. Of course, the dollar was almost worth a dollar back then."

In The Magazine

From the April 2016 Issue

How artificial intelligence is transforming the legal profession

Some law firms travel outside law practice to avoid their 'Kodak moment'

This Week's Featured Blawg

From our Blawg Directory

InHouseOwl

InHouseOwl provides insights to corporate counsel on best practices for employee legal training.

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