Adapted from an article by Sarah Hollingsworth, University of Washington

You've just joined a journal, and an editor has handed you a list of what appears to be gibberish and asked you to find the sources that go with the citations. To the uninitiated, this task is no mean feat as it requires, first and foremost, an ability to decipher the arcane code of legal citation — before you can even begin looking for the book or journal article or statute or treaty or.... And even if one is well past the liminal stage of connecting the dots between and among rule of law, source of law, and citation, recent events have conspired to make the once mundane task of deciphering obscure legal abbreviations a bit more complicated. Examples of such events include the judiciary’s expanding acceptance of non-traditional sources of authority; the continuing proliferation of decision-making public agencies with their ubiquitous, mind-numbing acronyms; the global trend toward professional specialization, including the evolution of specialty vocabularies; and, of course, the ever-increasing ability of courts and practitioners to obtain Internet access to previously inaccessible sources of "authority."

The bad news is that all of these factors (and more) go into the mix of making legal authority these days something of "a moving target" (See, Christina L. Kunz et.al., The Process of Legal Research xxiii (5th ed. 2000)) and thereby rendering the task of finding and hitting the mark, citation-wise, a bit more of a challenge than it used to be. The good news, however, is that there are a number of finding aids located here in the Law Library that index and describe legal abbreviations, common and uncommon alike. In an effort to brighten up your source-cite blues, here are some in-the-trenches resources that may come in handy for anyone who is facing a long list of citations.

Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations: A Reference Guide for Attorneys, Legal Secretaries, Paralegals, and Law Students (M. M. Prince ed. 5th ed. 2001) (KF 246.B46 2000 at L5, Reference Stacks and Reference Desk).
This no-frills, workhorse of over 30,000 legal abbreviations was compiled and edited by career law librarians. More decoder than dictionary, its entries are limited to American and English legal abbreviations that are compiled without benefit of cross-references, creating repetitive minutiae. In spite of its minor detractions, however, this unpretentious reference tool does exactly what it says it will do—it helps make sense of the ubiquitous letter symbols found in American legal literature. A note of caution: Bieber’s Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations comes with a companion volume, Bieber’s Dictionary of Legal Citations (KF 246.P73 1997 at L5, F/I Reference and Reference Stacks). While there are many situations where the latter volume may be useful, the decryption of legal abbreviations will not, in all likelihood, be among them. Bieber’s Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations (4th ed.) is available online through Lexis-Nexis® in the Library, LEXREF, and File, BIEBLA.

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (M. M. Prince co-ord. ed. and Editors of Colum. L. Rev., Harv. L. Rev., U. Pa. L. Rev., & Yale L.J. comp. eds., 17th ed. 2000)(KF245.B58 2000 at Reserve, Reference Stacks, Reference Desk and F/I Reference —14 copies total!).
The Bluebook remains the undisputed gold standard for formatting and analyzing legal citations, despite sustained efforts to find a more manageable alternative. Criticized by many for its unwieldy format, The Bluebook nonetheless serves as a particularly useful resource for decoding abbreviations for early state official reporters (see Table 1, for U. S. jurisdictions listed alphabetically) and legal periodicals (see Table 13). When attempting to decipher a citation, a logical (and surprisingly helpful) place to begin is with the first entry, Abbreviations, in the index. Copies of older editions are located in the classified stacks.

The United States Government Manual, Appendix A: Commonly Used Abbreviations (JK 421.U55 2001-02 at Reference Desk and online).
Appropriately shortened to USGM, this small paperback is one of several "fast and easy" sources to search when you need to find the name of a federal agency or hearing board. Appendix A of the current edition contains a straightforward list of agency-related abbreviations and acronyms arranged alphabetically. Thus, sample entries include:

A handy link to the free USGM is also embedded in Morris, the Law Library's catalog, morris.law.yale.edu; otherwise, this useful government publication can be viewed at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/gmanual/index.html in its entirety.

World Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations (Igor L. Kavass & M. M. Prince, eds. 1991/2001)(K89 .K38 1991 at Reference Desk and F/I Reference).
The World Dictionary is a four-volume, loose-leaf tome that undertakes three discreet tasks. The first is a list of abbreviations, arranged first by language group and then by continent or country, found in legal literature around the world. The second comprises a collection, set out in Appendix A, of abbreviations and sigla found in legal documents written before 1607. Obviously intended for use by serious scholars of law, history, and history of law, this section of the World Dictionary includes legal abbreviations found in Roman, medieval, civil, canon, and English common law. The third undertaking, the results of which can be found in Appendix B, is a compilation of legal abbreviations by subject, which remains a work-in-progress. To date, legal abbreviations have been compiled for the subject areas of Environment, Maritime, Military, Taxation, and United Nations; although this scope of coverage by subject is still quite narrow, the depth of coverage on the subjects reported to date is noteworthy.

Black’s Law Dictionary (Bryan A. Garner, ed. 7th ed. 1999)(KF 156 .B53 1999 at L5, Reserve, Reference Desk, F/I Reference, Rare Book Reading Room and Reading Room).
This guide would be incomplete without mentioning the classic, Black's Law Dictionary, which contains (in addition to its 24,000 legal definitions) a separate list of abbreviations commonly found in American legal references. For those who have not yet discovered this bit of trivia, multiple copies of Black’s Law Dictionary have been placed atop the reference shelves throughout the Reading Room. Additional copies, together with older editions dating back to the second (1911), can also be found at the given call number location in the L5 stacks. The first edition (1891) is at AB B55 and D B56 19891 in the Rare Book Room. The 7th edition is also available on Westlaw® in the database, Black’s Law Dictionary, using the identifier, BLACKS.

Abbreviations Dictionary (Dean Stahl, ed. 10th ed. 2001)(PE 1693.D4 2001 at Reference Stacks).
This dictionary of abbreviations includes a greater number of international, cultural, scientific, geographical, and historical sources, and correspondingly fewer, expressly American legal abbreviations than any of the other resources listed here. Thus, it may be especially useful in analyses of international law references, as well as in cases where a citation abbreviation remains stubbornly illusive. While this sleeper’s lists of dysphemistic place-names and bafflegabs may be unlikely sources of answers to thorny problems in citation analysis. Two older editions of the Abbreviations Dictionary are in the collection at the call number noted above: the ninth at the Reference Desk and the seventh on the Lower East Side.

Acronyms, Initialisms & Abbreviations Dictionary (Mary Rose Bonk, ed. 22nd ed. 1997)(P 365.A28 1997 at Reference Desk).
This three-volume set purports to cover "all fields of human endeavor" from aerospace to transportation "and other fields." This is a good source if you've looked in all the law-specific dictionaries. It may also be the most helpful for deciphering abbreviations that are not citations.