Finally, check!

• Jurisdiction: United States

Section 66. Finally, check!—Check every citation, quotation, and record reference. Check every citation, quotation, and record reference! Check every citation, quotation, and record reference! Regardless of your own intrinsic accuracy, errors are bound to creep into your manuscript. Sometimes it is your fault and at other times it is your stenographer's, but mistakes will slip in either way. The name of a case will be incorrectly rendered, digits in a citation will become transposed, a word in a quotation will be garbled, a line will be left out of a quotation, a record reference or two or three will be completely wrong. Most usually the final typed manuscript will contain a combination of these common errors.

So—when you get the first set of printer's proofs, whether galley or page, check each citation (and every part of it), every record reference, and every quotation whether from record or from decision, against the original reports and the original record! This is a must. It is standard operating procedure in the U. S. Solicitor General's Office and on the better law reviews. (The former employs two full-time checkers who do nothing else.) You, as a private practitioner—or as a lawyer in...