Want To Work In-House? Burn Your Bluebook

Locating the proper Bluebook citation is far less important than locating the right answer as fast as possible.

Bluebook Legal BluebookDuring law school, between law review, moot course, and the school’s legal writing curricula, students understandably begin to think the Bluebook is as important as the Bible.

In fact, the similarities are striking. Strict Bluebook adherents revolt at the idea of updating it and they scream blasphemy at the mention of using a short-form citation. After all, why would any self-respecting student want to use a 10-word citation when there is a perfectly good 50-word version of it out there to use instead?

Admittedly, I was no exception to believing this Bluebook gospel.

The night before my first day on the job as an attorney, I carefully packed my Bluebook in my briefcase and was ready to dazzle my future co-workers with just how worn and highlighted my book had become. Surely the sheer volume of pages I had tabbed would impress them and allow me to bond with even the most senior attorney in the office.

But then, a strange thing happened. Despite having my Bluebook prominently displayed on the corner of my desk, not a single one of my colleagues asked me about it. And worse yet, after spending a full month on the job, I had yet to move my Bluebook from where I unpacked it.

While I initially began to question the quality of my colleagues’ legal education, I slowly began to realize, when working in-house, locating the proper Bluebook citation is far less important than locating the right answer as fast as possible and relaying it in terms everyone can understand.

Fast forward to my current role as a manager of other attorneys and law students, and this still holds true. Unless I am filing something with the court, you can bet I skip over your perfect citation and trust you found the right source of authority on your own.

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Besides, one of in-house’s primary roles is to take often confusing legal jargon, be it a new federal regulation or a contract laden with legalese, and translate it into plain speak our non-attorney colleagues can act on. As in-house counsel for a hospital organization, I regularly interact with and advise fellow JDs, GEDs, MBAs, MDs, RNs, and folks with no initials after their name at all.

When I write a memo the whole department needs to see, it is paramount the entire spectrum is able to understand it. You can bet even my brain surgeon colleagues will not understand an attorney’s use of Id., et seq., and the always fun to draw § symbol. Which is why after years of working in-house, I made the painful decision to remove my Bluebook from its prime real-estate position on my desk and place it in one of my cavernous and dark desk drawers.

I recently had the pleasure of hosting a very bright law student for their summer clerkship. He was smart, well spoken, and editor of his school’s law review. The first assignment he completed for me was legally flawless, except that his use of Bluebook-perfect footnotes pushed what should have been a two-page memo onto four pages. And while four pages may not seem unreasonable, given the key audience described above, you can bet their eyes had glazed over long before they hit the third page.

Despite my continual coaching, by the time he ended his clerkship, the best we could do was to get him down to three pages. A victory to be sure, but not enough to secure him an offer for post-graduation employment. While I have no doubt this particular student will go on to a long and successful career in the law, it will be as a judicial clerk or a federal litigator, not in the in-house world.

I know the Bluebook is not going anywhere anytime soon, and nor should it. It has its place in judicial opinions and allows those who understand it to quickly locate a cited source of authority. However, if you ever dream of working in-house, go ahead and burn your Bluebook now and start to focus on writing for the masses. Besides, on the rare occasion we ever need to use it, I am still waiting for the day I can dig it out of my desk drawer.

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Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at stephenwilliamsjd@gmail.com.