Reported judicial opinion
Original research draft · October 2026
Working pattern
[Case name], [volume] [reporter] [first page], [pinpoint] ([court] [year]).
Capture from the source
Issued name; reporter identity; deciding court; date; writing; supporting page
Check before you use it
Open the opinion and distinguish the reporter's first page from the page supporting your sentence.
Common error: A correct first page identifies the case but does not locate the proposition.
Completed example
Constructed training facts only. TRAIN Rep., Northmere Court of Appeals, the parties, pagination, and discussion are fictional. This example teaches source identity and locator construction; it supplies no real legal authority or holding.
Harbor Lantern Company v. Oriole Workshop, 8 TRAIN Rep. 120, 126 (Northmere Ct. App. 2025).
Read the supplied source facts
Fictional packet TRAIN-O01 contains the training opinion Harbor Lantern Company v. Oriole Workshop, issued by the fictional Northmere Court of Appeals on February 12, 2025. The fictional TRAIN Reporter prints the opinion in volume 8 beginning on page 120. Page 126 discusses the notice that the parties exchanged; page 127 discusses a different issue. The viewer labels the document's cover as page 1, making printed page 126 the viewer's page 9. The training assignment asks for a citation to the discussion of notice, not for a summary of the decision's outcome.
Why this works
Keep both page numbers because they perform different jobs. The first identifies where the opinion begins in the reporter; the second locates the discussion used by the writer. The fictional court designation remains necessary because the TRAIN Reporter alone does not identify that court. The year comes from the decision, not from the date the researcher downloaded the training packet. A citation ending at page 120 would identify the right document while leaving the reader to search for the supporting passage. A pinpoint to page 9 would use the viewer's numbering system instead of the reporter's printed pagination.
When the facts change
If the sentence relies on the notice discussion continuing from printed page 126 through printed page 127, use 126–127 only after reading both pages. If page 127 instead concerns an unrelated issue, retain 126. When moving from this fictional reporter version to a slip opinion, locate the passage again and use that version's own page numbers; do not transfer 126 mechanically.
Apply the receiving court or publication’s requirements. These working forms do not establish citation permission, precedential weight, or support for a legal proposition.