My Review of The Bluebook: The Reviews Are In!

Well, our long national nightmare is over. The Spring 2017 volume of the Journal of Legal Education has hit the digital newsstands; this volume includes my review essay on the latest edition of every lawyer’s favorite citation guide, The Bluebook. Early reviews of my essay have been uniformly… mediocre:

“[David Ziff] reviews the Bluebook”
—Ryan Calo, UW School of Law

“Why?”
— Cristian Farias, Huffington Post

“Everybody knows The Bluebook sucks. What this article presupposes is—maybe it doesn’t?”
— Ron Fisher, Latham & Watkins

“I nearly puked but I’ll still read it”
—Sasha Moss, R Street Institute

“Scariest thing I’ve seen today… by far!”
—Eric Segall, Georgia State University College of Law

“Anyone who wrote a 27 page book review of the Bluebook is not to be trusted.”
— Jim Tyre, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Okay, so maybe those reviews are not great. But I’m pretty sure they were offered in the playful spirit shared by the essay itself. Seriously. I figured I couldn’t take myself too seriously while writing a 27-page book review of a legal citation manual. So while I certainly intended the essay to raise some important issues, I also tried to make it a fun read. I hope you enjoy it!