Research Assistant Training Guide : Unfamiliar Citations

Your first stop to find articles. Click HERE to access it. 

Tip: the title of the journal and the volume number or year are really all that you need. Sometimes, putting in anything more can actually make it more difficult to find what you need.

The Bluebook is also an excellent source for abbreviations. T.1 for United States materials (particularly if you know the jurisdiction), T.2 for foreign materials, T.7 for reporter abbreviations, and T.13 for journals are particularly helpful.

Here are some strategies that may help you with incomplete or incorrect citations. 

1. Search secondary sources, particularly books and law review articles, on Lexis or Westlaw. If the item has been cited in a scholarly or professional publication, chances are that it appears with a full, correct citation. This approach is particularly useful if you have an unusual word or name as part of the citation, and have a general idea as to what the subject is.

2. Search case law on Lexis, Westlaw, or Bloomberg. Perhaps the authority you are looking for has been cited in an opinion.

3. Google it! Particularly for very old materials (which may show up in the text of Google Books) and for very new materials, which may not have made their way into Lexis or Westlaw yet, or been cited in a published journal or case opinion, Google can really be your friend.  

If you have spent over an hour trying to figure out what a particular citation means, something is wrong. Take a deep breath and talk to one of the reference librarians here at our library!

If you are looking for a journal article, use the Citation Linker found at the top of the database page.

For everything else, the library catalog should generally be your first stop. The library catalog does not just have records of the print materials in the library – it can also tell you where to find items in many of our online collections.

LLMC Digital is a great resource to find older United States cases and statutes. 

For older English and Welsh cases, use HeinOnline’s English Reports. You can look up a case by name, by English Reports (E.R.) citation, or by nominative citation (Bing., Wils. K.B., etc.).

Hein also has older federal cases, state and federal statutes, and archival/superseded versions of federal regulatory and legislative information.

Both LLMC Digital and Hein are available to on-campus users and to anyone off-campus with a UT NetID and password.

If you are searching for a book and our library does not have it, you can check to see if another library nearby has it using Worldcat. or you can put an interlibrary loan request directly through the law school Portal.