Real authors are probably going to laugh at this—at least a little bit. A new edition of the excessively venerated Chicago Manual of Style is going to be out shortly, and a preliminary look indicates that it is even less satisfactory for lawyers than its predecessor. What this says about the relationship between "lawyers" and "writers" is not very complimentary, but probably all too accurate.
The real problem with CMS is that it originates at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago, in a display of unbounded arrogance all too similar to Apple's decision to make the format of 3½" floppy disks in early versions of the Macintosh both physically and virtually incompatible with existing format standards, absolutely refuses to have anything to do with the Blue Book. Instead, the University of Chicago published its own Maroon Book—which, so far as I have been able to determine, has been adopted by nobody else. Although I do not defend the Blue Book as necessarily right in all (or even many) particulars, it is nonetheless the standard. I could do just as well with getting rid of the stupid volume-title-page-incomprehensible abbreviations format that the Blue Book uses for citations, and the typographical conventions that make a law review article appear almost as a book would in the rest of publishing. However, I cannot accept the particular alternatives offered by the Maroon Book and that were adopted in the 14th Edition of the CMS, such as not requiring an unambiguous designation of what court issued a decision or a citation of the codified (and thus official) form of a legislative act. The Blue Book's system is clunky and illogical; the Maroon Book/CMS system leaves out critical information.
At least CMS will begin paying some attention to electronic citation, as The Chronicle of Higher Education remarks. On the other hand, the blanket condemnation of footnotes is ridiculous, IMNSHO. I've done quite a bit of editing of academic texts. In those fields in which citation is important—such as, for example, legal writing, either academically or in practice—citation-only footnoting is much less intrusive than a string citation to four or five cases or other sources (particularly if it includes parallel citations) in the middle of a sentence, or even in the middle of a paragraph. It is all too easy to lose the train of thought in the middle of that string citation. Compare these two versions of the same paragraph:
In order to determine whether the Iowa guest statute should apply to this case, we must first examine its purposes as articulated by the Iowa courts…. These purposes are: "to cut down litigation arising from the commendable unselfish practice of sharing with others transportation in one's vehicle and protect the Good Samaritan from claims based on negligence by those invited to ride as a courtesy," Rainsbarger v. Shepherd, 254 Iowa 486, 492, 118 N.W.2d 41, 41, 1 A.L.R.3d 1074 (1962); to prevent ingratitude by guests, Knutson v. Lurie, 217 Iowa 192, 195, 251 N.W. 147, 149 (1933); to prevent suits by hitchhikers, id.; [and] "to prevent collusion suits by friends and relatives resulting in excessively high insurance rates," Hardwick v. Bublitz, 253 Iowa 49, 54, 111 N.W.2d 309, 312 (1961).
In order to determine whether the Iowa guest statute should apply to this case, we must first examine its purposes as articulated by the Iowa courts…. These purposes are: "to cut down litigation arising from the commendable unselfish practice of sharing with others transportation in one's vehicle and protect the Good Samaritan from claims based on negligence by those invited to ride as a courtesy,"1 to prevent ingratitude by guests and to prevent suits by hitchhikers,2 [and] "to prevent collusion suits by friends and relatives resulting in excessively high insurance rates."3
1. Rainsbarger v. Shepherd, 254 Iowa 486, 492, 118 N.W.2d 41, 41, 1 A.L.R.3d 1074 (1962).
2. Knutson v. Lurie, 217 Iowa 192, 195, 251 N.W. 147, 149 (1933).
3. Hardwick v. Bublitz, 253 Iowa 49, 54, 111 N.W.2d 309, 312 (1961)
Pfau v. Trent Aluminum Co., 55 N.J. 511, 263 A.2d 129 (1970). Leaving aside the inept writing, the second example is far clearer, both as to what it means and as to the sources relied upon for that meaning. The CMS invocation against footnotes, however, forces the first version (which is the version taken from the actual decision).
As authors, you should now begin to understand why lawyers seem so anal retentive about their (almost always bad) writing. Just wait until we try to tell you exactly how many spaces belong after a period!