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LL.M. HANDBOOK 2011-2012You should be familiar with the way in which law reports are cited. Such citations are amatter of firm convention, which you should follow exactly. You can always check the formof a reference to a particular series of reports by consulting the Legal Journals Index, heldin the Squire Library.Two additional conventions should be noted. First, if a case is reported in more than oneset of reports, there are two alternative ways to cite it. You could list all the references, butthis can be an unnecessarily lengthy process. Instead, it is more usual to just give onereference, to the most “official” set of reports in which the case appears. This is a matter ofstrict hierarchy, starting with the Law Reports themselves (A.C., Q.B., etc.), then movingdown to the Weekly Law Reports, then to specialised reports which give the judgments infull (e.g. Family Law Reports, Industrial Relations Law Reports, Housing Law Reports) andto the All England Reports, then to periodicals which give abbreviated case reports (e.g.N.L.J., Legal Action) and finally to reports in the newspapers (Times, Independent, etc.).The other convention worth noting is the use of round and square brackets. Strictly, squarebrackets around the date in a citation should be used if the date is an essential part of thereference, and round brackets should be used if it is not. For example, with cases reportedin the Law Reports, the date is necessary for finding the case, since the volumes are notnumbered sequentially but by year (if at all). Therefore square brackets are used:Bloggs v Inland Revenue Commissioners [1997] 1 Q.B. 354.In some other reports, the volumes are traced by volume numbers which are sequentialfrom year to year. Here the date is not a necessary part of the citation at all, but the year inwhich the case was decided (not necessarily when it was reported) is given, this time inround brackets, for example:Bloggs v Bloggs (1996) STC 87.Different publications adopt different “house styles” with regard to matters such as whetherfull-stops are included in reference abbreviations (i.e. whether to write A.C., All E.R.,W.L.R., etc., or AC, All ER, WLR . . .). You may choose which style to adopt; you may, forexample, follow the conventions used in the Cambridge Law Journal (see the Notes forContributors given each year in the November issue). Whatever you do, the guidingprinciple, as always, is to be consistent.AbbreviationsIt is perfectly acceptable to use the well-known legal abbreviations which are in commonuse without any explanation (e.g. Q.B., All E.R., M.L.R., C.L.J., etc.). However, if you wishto use abbreviations which are less universally found in British legal publications, such asabbreviations of the titles of journals, or of the names of organisations, you should indicatewhat the abbreviation stands for. This can be done by using its full name the first time yourefer to it, followed by the abbreviation in brackets. Another option is to place a Table ofAbbreviations at the front of your thesis/essay. If you do so, this should be placed after thetitle page but before the Contents page.30