Guide for Law Journal Students

This guide is intended to assist student members and editors of law journals at UW Law with finding sources for sourcing-and-citing (S&C) assignments and offers advice about checking citations in accordance with The Bluebook. For information and advice on writing and publishing Notes or Comments, see our Writing for & Publishing in Law Reviews guide.

For additional assistance, you are encouraged to contact the Research Services librarians at lawref@uw.edu.

The University of Washington School of Law publishes four student-edited law journals. Law students serve on a journal for two academic years. For more information about journal membership, please click here.

So many citations; so little time! How should a someone gathering sources approach his or her first assignment to retrieve cited materials?

The following checklist itemizes steps for locating and collecting cited material.

• Read the article.
• Browse the footnotes.
• Identify citations to unfamiliar types of material, nonlegal sources, other unusual material, and foreign language sources (especially for countries and languages outside of the Gallagher Law Library's collection strengths).
• Consult a reference librarian (lawref@uw.edu) for assistance in deciphering odd citations and identifying and locating items found in step 3.
• Search for books and other treatises using library catalogs, in the following order:
• UW Libraries + Summit. Covers more than 30 academic libraries in Oregon and Washington, including the Gallagher Law Library and the UW Libraries. UW faculty, students, and staff may directly request items that are not available in the Law Library from Summit. You should be able to request an item from a Summit library directly from the catalog. 
• WorldCat. Covers thousands of academic, public, law firm, special, government, and corporate libraries around the world. Fill out the Interlibrary Loan Online Borrowing Form to request these types of materials. 
• Check out books and initiate retrieval requests--Make sure you check the Info Desk Policies and ILL portions of this guide!
• Consult a reference librarian about books not found in any catalogs in step 5.
• Submit interlibrary loan requests for books not available from sources in step 5.
• Search for interdisciplinary and/or nonlegal periodicals in the UW Libraries Catalog, by title of the periodical. Also consult the E-Journals list.
• Search for law reviews and other legal periodicals in HeinOnline, by citation or the title of the law review or periodical.
• Search for court reporters and other primary legal sources in:
• Westlaw: PDF images of cases found in the National Reporter System
• HeinOnline: PDF images of the Code of Federal Regulations, the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, the U.S. Code, and other titles
• Retrieve materials requested from Summit and interlibrary loan.