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."