LAW Students' Scholarly Writing

The majority of law journals in North America are student-edited as serving as a student editor is considered part of the overall law school learning experience.  In Canada, having a student editorial board does not necessarily mean that the law journal does not undertaken an anonymous (blind) or peer review process in the selection of articles for publishing.  Most of the Canadian law journals are, in fact, peer-reviewed or refereed notwithstanding they are edited by students.  This is a significant different between Canadian and American law journals, as very few American law journals are peer-reviewed or refereed.

If your current or future employment requires or values peer-reviewed publishing, please check the individual journal's submission policy on their website or contact the Editor-in-Chief to determine if it is a peer-reviewed or refereed journals.

While most, if not all, law journals welcome submissions from students, one Canadian journal, Appeal:  Review of Current Law and Law reform, by the University of Victoria focuses on the writings of current law students and recent graduates. 

There are a wide variety of legal publications that you can write for.  Consider your intended audience and the subject matter of the article when selecting the type of publication.  The publications listed below are not scholarly legal publications; rather, they are informative in nature, designed to keep their audience aware of changes to the legal profession. 

Authors frequently use journal rankings to measure the quality of the publication.  Unfortunately, there are very few websites or databases that provide rankings for law journals.