Week Thirteen, Part 5 - Legal Research: Goodbye to the Bluebook

The wind whips around me as I walk from Notre Dame Law School toward DeBartolo Hall. I shudder and zip up the collar on my sweatsuit.

Today is the first of six final exams: Legal Research. Next week comes Legal Writing. Then at semester end, we will be tested in our substantive classes: Contracts, Torts, CivPro, Crim. It’s survival of the fittest!

I study the flashcards in my hand. Each one shows the proper Bluebook form for a different type of citation.

• Federal appellate cases: Valdez v. Black, 446 F.2d 1071 (10th Cir. 1971).
• State statutes: Minn. Stat. sec. 176.301 (1986 & Supp. 1987).
• Encyclopedias: 62 Am. Jur.2d Premises Liability secs. 431-46 (1990 & Supp. 1995).
• Law review articles: Richard A. Posner, Goodbye to the Bluebook, 53 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1343 (1986).

A mountain bike whizzes by, inches from hitting me. Negligence, I think. Sue all the bastards.

By 4:00 pm, the 150 or so 1L’s have assembled every other chair in the DeBartolo auditorium. It’s my second time here. Two months ago, I heard Phillip Johnson’s presentation, “Darwin on Trial: You be the Judge.” I wish I’d been created as smart as he: first in his class at U. Chi. Law, clerkship for Chief Justice Earl Warren.

The teachers for Legal Research file in: Dean Roger Jacobs, Patti Ogden, Dwight King. I imagine them as academic predators, looking to snare the weakest and dumbest of the 1L herd. They distribute the tests and we begin.

The exam has 100 questions: 50 true/false, 40 multiple choice, ten legal citations with a mistaken element. We have one hour to finish. Since there’s no fact pattern, the test feels more like undergrad.

About a third of the problems are straight-forward: mandatory v. persuasive holdings, research method options, cite differences between West and Lawyer’s Cooperative Publishing. The rest require some thought.

After 50 minutes I’ve gone through all the questions once. There are ten answers, however, I’m unsure of. I eliminate the obvious distractors and make the best choice from what’s left.

Walking out, it feels great to be done. Goodbye to the Bluebook! I think I’ve earned a B. If I had guessed on fewer questions, then I’d be hopeful for an A.

In sum, I’m proud of what I learned and feel confident in my ability to research a legal issue. For the first time in my life, the subject matter is more important than the grade. Perhaps I’m evolving into a higher-order student.

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