Hi,
I al in my first year but would like to try start publishing as soon as possible. Could someone with law experience help me and give advice where to try/where not to try?
Thanks

What can you possibly publish in the first year? Lit review? Is that what they want in Law?

My other half is doing a PhD in law and in the process of putting together an article with his supervisors.. I would suggest that you talk to your supervisors to get some help and advice on getting work published.

Thanks for suggestion. m.

Periodically, journals and universities team up and have special editions devoted to postgraduates. Are you familiar with the law journals in your law topic? Go on their website and read their submission guidance. Check to see if anyone has a call for papers out in a legal symposium that will result in publication of accepted papers. Does your subject matter appeal to a wider audience than legal academics/lawyers? Can you publish in a journal in a related discipline?

What do you want to write about? What have you got to say? To whom? Those sorts of things are important when you try to locate journals--you want to be sure that your areas of interest match that of the journal.

Given that there are 10 zillion journals....it should not be hard to find. Then there is the bepress website...check them out to see if they are a match in terms of your interest.

Do you have professional experience in a particular policy area prior to beginning your law studies? How far are you into your law degree? If you're early in your law studies, you probably won't be looking to publish in law review journals. You could try writing articles for legal newsletters published by your nearest law institute.

Or, look at writing case notes for publication in law reviews, for the latest significant court cases, or book reviews.

Woops, didn't notice that you said you're in first year.

In that case it's hard to publish in law-related publications so soon into your law degree unless you already have professional experience in a particular area of the law prior to beginning your law degree. I believe you really need to go through the breadth and depth of your law studies before gaining basic legal experience and understanding to write at the standard required for a law review journal.

Those are sound words of advise, RogueAcademic. The understanding of law from an academic v. practitioner point of view can be quite varied as well--so it depends on who the target audience of the publication is.

Wait a minute.. this is a postgrad forum, when you say you're in first year are you talking about being in first year of your LLM or PhD?

Wait a minute, it is a postgrad forum but PhD Life category. So answering your question- PhD

Well I managed to have two articles published in Journals while I was in my honours year undergrad Law degree, and received a lot of positive feedback on both, so it can be done as long as you've really done your homework to back up what you're discussing.

As for how to go about starting to publish in legal journals, I'd always suggest emailing the editor of whatever journals you are interested in, aim at the top and work your way down from there if rejected. Start by submitting a short synopsis to find out if the editor might be interested in what you propose writing about (around 200 words or so). Don't be frightened of speaking to the editors.

I have some pre PhD publications--so I think dependent upon the audience you seek and the topic, it is possible to get publications early in PhD work, if you are so inclined. American law journals are not as heavy into theory as European ones, at least in my estimation, so those might be a good target. I still think a great route in is to look for a symposium on your topic, which will publish accepted papers. Then you can both present and be published.

I'm also doing law, it's not easy, at least not to get in journals of meaningful quality, it's well worth teaming up with your supervisor or someone else in your school to co-write. Also have a clear idea of what journals your targeting, beyond simply what their subject area is, legal journals often have pretty clear formats/lengths that they want. It is hard, a good start is to get a paper into a good conference and get that published as part of a collection.