Cases published after 2001 will have a neutral citation which must be used.
Cases are numbered consecutively throughout the year and the abbreviation (UKHL, EWCH) indicates which court the case was heard in rather than a law report series.
If a case is subsequently reported in a law report, use a comma to separate the neutral citation from the law report citation.
Below are examples of how to reference a case with neutral citations as a footnote and in the bibliography.
Format:
Name of case in italics │ [year] │ court │ case number, [year of publication] │ OR (year of judgement) │ volume │report abbreviation │ first page.
Example of a case which has been subsequently reported in a law report series:
NRAM Ltd v Evans [2017] EWCA Civ 1013, [2018] 1 WLR 639.
The only difference is that case names are not italicised, pinpointing is not used and there is no full stop at the end of the reference.
Cases identifying parties by initials only should be listed under the initial.
NRAM Ltd v Evans [2017] EWCA Civ 1013, [2018] 1 WLR 639
Square brackets [ ] are used when the year is crucial to identify the law report volume (for example when there is more than one volume published per year.)
Round brackets ( ) are used when the year is not necessary to identify the law report volume (for example if there was only one volume published per year.)
The most important law series (The Law Reports, Weekly Law Reports, Lloyds Law Reports, All England Law Reports) all have more than one volume per year so they will always need square brackets.