Legal Citation Formatter
Authority
Enter the case name or statute title, the reporter or code title, the volume, the first page or section and the court and year. Authors are ignored for legal material, and nothing is looked up.
Formatted citation
Fill in a case name or statute title — the citation appears as you type.
Table of authorities
Add a citation above — cases and statutes are grouped here as you go.
Scope
The formatter implements the Bluebook case and statute patterns the citation engine covers: case name, volume, reporter, first page, court and year; code title, section and year. Signals and the Id. and supra short forms are offered around them.
This tool is not legal advice and not a citation checker. Bluebook’s reporter-abbreviation tables, jurisdiction-specific rules, signals-in-depth and tables of authorities formats vary, and the simplified table here groups cases before statutes. Verify every citation against the current edition before filing.
The legal citation formatter writes a case or a statute in Bluebook 21 form, adds the introductory signal and the Id. and supra short forms, and groups the citations you add into a simplified table of authorities.
What is Legal Citation Formatter?
Legal citation has its own book, and this legal citation formatter implements the part of it that a single entry needs. Enter a case — case name, volume, reporter, first page, court and year — or a statute — code title, section and year — and the formatter writes the Bluebook 21 citation. Around the citation it offers the two things a brief needs next: the introductory signal that tells the reader how the authority is being used, and the short forms for a later reference.
Signals carry meaning in Bluebook style, and the tool lists the common ones — See, See also, Cf., But see, Contra, Accord, E.g., See generally — so you choose rather than guess. The chosen signal is prefixed to the citation, and the page prints the signal on its own so you can see what it thinks you picked. Short forms matter just as much: Id. is for a source cited in the immediately preceding note, and a supra form names the earlier note, so the tool builds "Id. at 460." or "Smith, supra note 4 at 460." from a note number and an optional pinpoint page.
The table of authorities is the feature that turns a pile of citations into a section a reader can use. Citations you add are grouped with cases first and statutes after, alphabetised inside each group, and the whole table can be copied as plain text. It is a simplified table: real tables of authorities break out constitutional provisions, regulations and secondary authorities, and page numbers depend on the finished document, which this tool cannot know. The page states that plainly.
Keeping the authorities in one place also makes the citations consistent: change the reporter abbreviation once and the group reflects it, and the same case cannot appear two ways in one table. When a citation is long or an entry is awkward, the short-form panel builds the second-reference form so a brief does not repeat the whole string each time. Signals and short forms are the two places legal writing is most often inconsistent, and printing them beside the citation is what lets a reader — and you — check them at a glance before the document goes out.
Everything is computed from the fields you type. There is no lookup, no reporter-abbreviation table and no network call, which is exactly why the output is checkable against the current edition rather than merely plausible. The tool formats the case and statute patterns the citation engine implements; it does not cover signals in depth, jurisdiction-specific rules or the full Bluebook apparatus.
This is not legal advice and not a citation checker, and the page says so twice. Bluebook rules are detailed and change between editions, reporter abbreviations vary by jurisdiction, and a citation that looks correct can still fail a court's own requirements. Use the formatter to get the mechanical shape right and to keep a consistent table of authorities, then verify every entry against the current edition before you file. Where the rule is subtle, the answer is in the book, and the tool points you there rather than inventing a rule.
How to use Legal Citation Formatter
- Choose court case or statute and fill the fields: case name or code title, reporter or section, volume, page, court and year.
- Pick the introductory signal that matches how you are using the authority.
- Read the formatted citation, its in-text form and the short form.
- Add the citation to the table of authorities; cases and statutes group automatically.
- Copy the citation or the table, and check every entry against the current edition.
When to use Legal Citation Formatter vs related tools
Use the legal citation formatter when the source is a case or a statute and you need the Bluebook shape, a signal and a short form. For the academic styles the Citation Formatter covers APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 17 side by side, and when the legal citations sit in a document whose references also include articles and books, the Bibliography Builder keeps the non-legal sources in one list.
When a case or statute is already in your notes and you only need the second-reference form, the short-form panel here builds Id. and supra directly; the Footnote Formatter handles the note layout if the citations are footnotes.
Privacy & Security
This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.