Legal Definitions - ALWD Citation Manual

The ALWD Citation Manual, often shortened to the ALWD Manual, is a comprehensive guide that provides rules for how to properly cite legal sources in American legal documents. "ALWD" stands for the Association of Legal Writing Directors, the professional organization whose members, who are experts in legal writing, created and maintain this manual.

Published as an alternative to other citation guides, the ALWD Citation Manual is designed to offer a single, consistent system for citing all types of legal materials—such as court cases, statutes, law review articles, and books—regardless of whether the citation appears in a formal court filing, a law journal footnote, or an academic paper. Its primary goal is to simplify the citation process by providing clear, unified rules for all legal writing contexts.

Here are some examples of how the ALWD Citation Manual is used:

• Law Student Preparing a Brief: Imagine a law student drafting an appellate brief for a moot court competition. This brief requires precise references to numerous court decisions and legal statutes. The student would consult the ALWD Citation Manual to ensure that every citation, from the name of the case to the volume and page number of the reporter, is formatted correctly according to professional legal standards. This ensures clarity and credibility for the judges reviewing the brief.

• Paralegal Drafting a Legal Memorandum: A paralegal is assisting an attorney by preparing a legal memorandum that analyzes a specific point of law for an upcoming case. This memo needs to cite several secondary sources, such as law review articles and treatises, in addition to primary legal authority. The paralegal would refer to the ALWD Citation Manual to correctly format these diverse citations, ensuring that the attorney can easily verify the sources and that the memorandum adheres to accepted legal writing conventions.

• Legal Scholar Writing an Academic Article: A law professor is writing an article for a legal journal discussing recent developments in environmental law. This article will include numerous footnotes citing a wide range of sources, including government reports, international treaties, and scholarly publications. The professor might choose to follow the ALWD Citation Manual because its unified system allows for consistent citation formatting across all these different types of sources, simplifying the writing and editing process and ensuring that all references are clear and easily traceable for readers.