Law Review
22/11/08
Coming in 2009
ELSA London plans to launch an online law review in order to showcase the outstanding academic work which is produced by London’s best law students. We had hoped the website would be ready by October 2008 but, unfortunately, the website designer Laurence Gillian from, One Cow Media, took our money and then stopped answering the phone. In other words ... we were ripped off.
We already have the basic design thanks to the design talents of ex-Kingston student, Gareth Clubb, and we are currently in discussions with our sponsors Lexis Nexis to see whether they can build the back end for us. So far Lexis Nexis seem willing to help so, all things being equal, things should start moving along now. Apologies to all those who submitted essays and are still waiting to hear from us. The law review is still going ahead, don't worry!
What can you expect from the law review?
All essays, articles, comments and case notes published in the law review will have either gained a First, a Distinction or have been marked Outstanding. We will publish these works because we believe in celebrating excellence. Also, we hope that those essays which are selected for publication will be used by other students as an educational resource - giving full credit to the author and citing the law review if referred to in your own essays.
In keeping with ELSA’s spirit of breaking with tradition, – we are the first truly intercollegiate association of London law students! – we do not want our law review to be stuffy or pretentious. We also do not want it to be exclusive. Therefore, we will welcome top class submissions from any student currently registered at any London university or law school. ELSA members will also be entitled to submit essays for consideration, whether they study in London or not.
Selected essays will be uploaded on a bi-monthly basis and their authors will be notified. We also plan to send out a newsletter to subscribers informing them whenever new articles have been uploaded.
We hope that users of our online law review will feel able to make comments about the essays and articles as we strongly believe in peer review. If you disagree with a position taken by an author, please post your comment for the author and others to see and hopefully respond to. In this way, we hope to stimulate genuine academic debate among law students.
We may not study at the same institutions but this is no longer a barrier to us exchanging ideas and sharing our opinions!
Update 11/12/08
Following a second meeting last week with our latest corporate sponsors, LexisNexis, ELSA is pleased to confirm that they have agreed to help with the development of the much delayed ELSA London Law Review website. The LexisNexis developers are capable of giving us whatever we want but require a clear and precise brief. This will be worked upon during the Christmas hols. The only problem is that it will take some months to get the site completed. Realistically, we are looking at the first draft in March / April. Then we need to hone it and iron out bugs etc. The site might be ready by June but this would be a ridiculous time to launch. Therefore, with regret and apologies to the editorial team and those who have submitted essays already, the law review website will not be launched until the start of 2009/10. Having said that, we do still have the option to upload work to this, our main ELSA website until then. This is something we can do immediately and with minimum effort and is, in fact, what we used to do in 2005.
