Citation Management for Law Students

Before you start creating citations with Zotero, set your preferences to automatically generate citations in Bluebook format.

There are two ways to create citations with Zotero:

• Select one or more items from your library, and simply drag and drop the items into an open document. 
   
• If you are using Zotero for Firefox, download a word processing plugin from Zotero. If you are using Zotero Standalone, this plugin is automatically installed. The plugin will add a Zotero toolbar to your word processor, allowing you to quickly add citations to your document while you write.  See this short video from Zotero to see how it works:

Review your citations:

It's important to review your citations to make sure they comply with the Bluebook format. Zotero does most of the hard work for you, but sometimes it makes mistakes. For a comparison of proper Bluebook citations and Zotero citations, see this chart from the Georgetown Law Library:

Edit citations:

To edit citations, select an item in your Zotero library. Manually edit the item information by typing directly into the fields listed under "Info" in the right column. By editing the citation information in Zotero, you will only have to make the changes once.