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So, I have thought a lot during my teaching career about the Bluebook. I wrote down some of my thoughts here and here, and even co-authored a book and some online exercises here. So, when I saw a headline on my feedly feed today that reads "Is The Bluebook About To Be Killed Off?" that was link teaser I couldn't ignore.

Almost 15 years ago, the Association of Legal Writing Directors attempted to kill off the Bluebook with the ALWD Manual. Like the Maroon Book before it, the ALWD did little to knock the student-edited Bluebook off its lucrative pedastal. The newest challenger is not a competitor, but its own Tenth Edition. (As an unabashed collector, I have my own copy, pictured here.)

According to ATL, Professor Christopher Sprigman (NYU) has sent a letter to the holder of the Bluebook copyright, the Harvard Law Review Association, asserting that the copyright of the Tenth Edition (1958) has fallen into the public domain. Furthermore, Publicresource.org is planning on making electronic copies of the Tenth Edition available to everyone.

Will the availability of the 124-page Tenth Edition kill sales of the Nineteenth or the upcoming Twentieth Edition? Hard to say. Most folks who practice law or who produce legal scholarship have already internalized the basic rules found in this volume. I would hazard a hypothesis that law graduates turn to the modern edition for the hard questions, the esoteric sources, which the Tenth Edition doesn't cover. Another reason I pick up the Nineteenth Edition is to check the appendices -- what's the form of the statutes in [insert state here]? The Tenth Edition doesn't have those appendices, listing every reporter and statutory publication in every jurisdiction ever. That is why the Tenth Edition is only 124 pages long. I also pick up the modern edition to see if I need to abbreviate words in my case name, etc. according to T.6. The Tenth Edition "Table 6" is embedded into Rule 1:1:3 and basically one short page. But, if you are dealing with a "steamship" or a "Telegraph," it can really help you out.

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So, I have thought a lot during my teaching career about the Bluebook. I wrote down some of my thoughts here and here, and even co-authored a book and some online exercises here. So, when I saw a headline on my feedly feed today that reads "Is The Bluebook About To Be Killed Off?" that was link teaser I couldn't ignore.

Almost 15 years ago, the Association of Legal Writing Directors attempted to kill off the Bluebook with the ALWD Manual. Like the Maroon Book before it, the ALWD did little to knock the student-edited Bluebook off its lucrative pedastal. The newest challenger is not a competitor, but its own Tenth Edition. (As an unabashed collector, I have my own copy, pictured here.)

According to ATL, Professor Christopher Sprigman (NYU) has sent a letter to the holder of the Bluebook copyright, the Harvard Law Review Association, asserting that the copyright of the Tenth Edition (1958) has fallen into the public domain. Furthermore, Publicresource.org is planning on making electronic copies of the Tenth Edition available to everyone.

Will the availability of the 124-page Tenth Edition kill sales of the Nineteenth or the upcoming Twentieth Edition? Hard to say. Most folks who practice law or who produce legal scholarship have already internalized the basic rules found in this volume. I would hazard a hypothesis that law graduates turn to the modern edition for the hard questions, the esoteric sources, which the Tenth Edition doesn't cover. Another reason I pick up the Nineteenth Edition is to check the appendices -- what's the form of the statutes in [insert state here]? The Tenth Edition doesn't have those appendices, listing every reporter and statutory publication in every jurisdiction ever. That is why the Tenth Edition is only 124 pages long. I also pick up the modern edition to see if I need to abbreviate words in my case name, etc. according to T.6. The Tenth Edition "Table 6" is embedded into Rule 1:1:3 and basically one short page. But, if you are dealing with a "steamship" or a "Telegraph," it can really help you out.

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