Winning Research Skills - Westlaw

Chapter 2
A Westlaw Citation
If an opinion is not published in a reporter (e.g., an unreported opinion or a very recent
opinion), the citation will consist of a Westlaw citation. Each Westlaw citation consists of four
parts: the year of the decision, the letters WL (identifying Westlaw as the place the document is
located), a unique document number, and the jurisdiction in which the case was decided. You
can use the Find service to retrieve a document when you have its Westlaw citation.
year of the decision located on Westlaw unique document jurisdiction of
number
decision
1999 WL 172968 S.D.N.Y.
Parallel Citations
As we noted earlier, you will often find a string of citations after the case name. A citation to the
same case published in a different reporter is called a parallel citation. Parallel citations are
different citations to the same case, not to different stages of a case.
There are several ways to find a parallel citation if you know only one citation:
■ West’s reporters and Westlaw provide the official citation if it is available, along with citations
to other reporters.
■ You can easily find parallel citations by using the KeyCite citation research service on Westlaw.
KeyCite is discussed in detail in Chapter 12.
■ If you know the name of the case, check the Table of Cases in the digest that covers the
jurisdiction where your case was decided, and you will find all of the parallel citations. (Digests
are discussed later in this chapter.)
■ When you have an official citation to a reporter that is not a West reporter, and you want to
identify the parallel citation to the West reporter, use the National Reporter Blue Book.
Rules for Citations
All of the rules for writing and deciphering legal citations are compiled in two primary sources—
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation and the ALWD Citation Manual. Although much
of their content is similar, these publications do differ in a certain respects. You should become
familiar with both resources. A sample page from The Bluebook is shown in Figure 2.6.
16 Winning Research Skills