Should I use ALWD or Bluebook for law school?

Check with your legal writing professor. Many law schools use ALWD for first-year legal writing because it is easier to learn; some use the Bluebook. Either way, ALWD says the resulting citations are the same, so learning one teaches you both.

Will courts accept ALWD citations?

ALWD's own position is that the citations the Guide produces “are identical to legal citations advanced in the twenty-first edition of The Bluebook,” and that practitioners and scholars will find them “indistinguishable from citations that result from using other citation manuals.” Many courts simply require a nationally recognized citation form. If your court has a local citation rule, check it: ALWD's Appendix 2 collects jurisdiction-specific rules and is free online.

What does ALWD stand for?

Association of Legal Writing Directors. The full title of the book is the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation.

How do I cite online legal databases like Westlaw or Lexis?

Cite the print reporter where one exists; database citations are for sources with no print equivalent. Because the identifiers are specific to your case, the shape is shown as a template: [Case Name], No. [docket no.], [year] WL [number], at *[page] ([court] [Month Day, Year]).

Are ALWD and Bluebook citations the same?

ALWD says yes, against the 21st edition of the Bluebook. The seventh edition's Appendix 8 carries callout numbers “after some of the sentences” in Rules 1–40 and Appendix 6 that “cross-reference the information in the text of the Guide to the corresponding rule in the twenty-first edition of The Bluebook.”

How to Cite in ALWD Style: Legal Writing Citation Guide

This guide covers how to cite sources in ALWD format — the teaching-focused legal citation system whose output matches the Bluebook.

The Official Source

The facts about the book on this page come from the Association of Legal Writing Directors' own pages for the Guide (about, FAQs, author), read today via the Internet Archive because alwd.org returns HTTP 403 to automated requests.

The current edition is the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, 7th edition (2021), written by Professor Carolyn V. Williams of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, and sold through Wolters Kluwer. ALWD describes the Guide as having "streamlined the citation rules into 40 guidelines."

Because the Guide itself is not free to read, the formats below are demonstrated with real, verified authorities rather than asserted as quotations from it. Every case was checked in CourtListener today; every pinpoint page was checked against the official United States Reports scans hosted by the Library of Congress; the law review article was checked in Crossref; statutes were checked against Cornell LII and California's own legislative site.

What ALWD Is For

ALWD was written by legal writing professors to make citation easier to teach and learn. Its distinguishing features, in ALWD's own words:

"The citations that result from using the Guide are identical to legal citations advanced in other legal citation manuals, but the Guide is written with teaching and learning in mind."
"The Guide seamlessly integrates the citation rules used in practice-based documents with those used in academic footnotes" — one set of rules rather than separate practitioner and scholarly sections.
"In addition to clear explanations, the Guide provides abundant illustrations and examples of proper citation formats."

It also has "a descriptive table of content, a Fast Formats Locator, and sidebar 'tips' along the way." Two appendices — Appendix 5 (periodical abbreviations) and Appendix 2 (jurisdiction-specific citation rules) — are free online under Student Resources.

Citations in Context

Legal citations appear as citation sentences or citation clauses, not as parenthetical references as in APA or MLA.

Citation sentence (supports the whole preceding sentence):

The Court held that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).

Citation clause (supports part of a sentence):

Although the Court upheld the stop and the protective search, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30 (1968), later cases have narrowed the doctrine.

Embedded citation (woven into the sentence):

In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), the Court established the familiar warning requirements.

Citing Cases

A case citation gives the case name, reporter information, pinpoint page, court and year.

U.S. Supreme Court (the court is implied by the reporter, so no court abbreviation):

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).

Federal court of appeals:

Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202 (2d Cir. 2015).

Federal district court:

Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc., 954 F. Supp. 2d 282 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).

State court of last resort:

In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal. 4th 757 (2008).

Key formatting points:

Italicize case names (or underline them) and keep the choice consistent
Abbreviate "versus" to "v." with a period
No space between consecutive single capitals: U.S., not U. S.
Do not superscript ordinals: 2d Cir., not 2ᵈ Cir.

Citing Statutes

Statute citations give the title number, code abbreviation, section symbol, section number and — where relevant — the date.

Federal statute (U.S. Code):

42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Multiple sections:

18 U.S.C. §§ 1961–1968.

State statute, with the publisher of an unofficial code in parentheses:

Cal. Penal Code § 187 (West 2024).

Cite the official code where one is available.

Citing Constitutions

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
Cal. Const. art. I, § 7.

Citing Secondary Sources

Law review article:

Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890).

Add a pinpoint page after the first page when you are citing a specific passage: 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193, 195 (1890).

Book. The pinpoint page sits between the title and the parenthetical, so it is shown here as a placeholder rather than an invented page:

Richard A. Posner, Economic Analysis of Law [page] (8th ed., Wolters Kluwer 2011).

Multi-volume treatises follow the same book pattern with the volume number in front of the author's name. Check the volume and section against the set you are actually holding — those numbers move between editions, and the Guide's Appendix 5 will give you the right abbreviations.

Short Citations

After a full citation, use short forms.

Id. (the immediately preceding citation):

Id. at 496.

Short form for cases:

Brown, 347 U.S. at 495.

Short form for statutes:

§ 1983.

ALWD vs. Bluebook

Feature	ALWD	Bluebook
Organization	40 integrated guidelines	Separate practitioner (Bluepages) and academic sections
Teaching approach	Plain-language explanation	Compact reference
Result	Identical citations (per ALWD, to the 21st ed.)	—
Primary audience	Law students, practitioners	Law review editors, practitioners
Bluebook cross-reference	Appendix 8	—

Common ALWD Mistakes to Avoid

Spacing errors: no spaces between consecutive single capitals (U.S., F.3d), but spaces elsewhere (S. Ct., F. Supp. 2d).
Superscripting ordinals: write 2d Cir., not 2ᵈ Cir.
Forgetting pinpoint citations: give the page that actually supports your proposition — and check it, rather than reproducing a pinpoint you found in someone else's brief.
Inconsistent typeface: pick italics or underlining for case names and stay with it.
Overusing Id.: break long strings with a short-form case citation so readers can follow the source.

Citation Tools for ALWD

ALWD's free appendices — Appendix 2 (jurisdictional rules) and Appendix 5 (periodical abbreviations) at alwd.org
Zotero — free reference manager with legal citation support
Westlaw / Lexis — "Copy with Reference" produces a citation you should still check
Wonders — research workspace for organizing sources across a long project

Sources for This Page

Association of Legal Writing Directors. "About the Guide," "Guide FAQs" and "Author" pages, alwd.org — the edition, author, publisher, 40 guidelines, Fast Formats Locator, Appendix 8 and the "identical citations" claim quoted above.
Case Western Reserve University Law Library. "ALWD — Legal Citation." https://lawresearchguides.cwru.edu/citations/ALWD — corroborates the 2021 seventh edition and Appendix 8's mapping to the Bluebook's 21st edition.
CourtListener for Brown, Terry, Miranda, both Authors Guild decisions and In re Marriage Cases; the Library of Congress United States Reports scans for the pinpoints at 347 U.S. 495 and 392 U.S. 30; Crossref (DOI 10.2307/1321160) for Warren & Brandeis; Open Library for the eighth edition of Posner; Cornell LII for 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 18 U.S.C. § 1961; leginfo.legislature.ca.gov for Cal. Penal Code § 187.

Wonders helps you find and organise the secondary literature for a legal project and exports it as RIS or BibTeX or to Zotero. It does not format ALWD citations: ALWD has no CSL style, so it is the one English style guide on this site whose page carries no citation generator, and cases, statutes and other primary sources have to be written by hand from the guide either way. The wider picture: an AI research tool for law students.