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OSCOLA (Law) Referencing Guide

OSCOLA Law referencing guidance

Understanding Legal Citations

Instead of referring to a case or journal article by its full details, lawyers use abbreviations and legal citations:

  • All reported cases will have a case citation (or law report citation) which you need to use for referencing purposes.

  • Cases since 2001 also have a neutral citation which does not refer to a particular law report but instead to the year and court in which the case was heard. This is an electronic reference for the case.   

  • Journal names are referred to by an abbreviation rather than listed the full title (e.g. Crim LR for the Criminal Law Review

You can check legal abbreviations in the Law Library using Raistrick's Index to Legal Citations or online via: