Karen Sloan writes the web-only report, "Tired of mile-long law review articles festooned with footnotes? Here's a Web-based, user-friendly alternative," for National Law Journal.
Are you interested in legal issues but shudder at the thought of wading
through massive law review articles riddled with footnotes?
A new Web site — www.legalworkshop.org — just might be the answer. The
site aims to bring content from some of the most prestigious law
reviews in the nation to a wider audience by offering condensed version
of articles translated from scholarly language into plain English, and
at no cost. Launched this week, the site includes user-friendly
versions of articles that appear in seven different law reviews,
including the Stanford Law Review, New York University Law Review,
Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Review,
Northwestern Law Review and University of Chicago Law Review. Other top
law schools also are seeking to participate in the project, according
to organizers.
The site doesn't include the full-length articles that appear in the print versions of the seven law reviews, nor does it include the abstracts of those articles. Instead, the authors of the original articles write a shorter, more accessible version of their work to be posted on the site.
"Our goal was to provide free legal scholarship in a format accessible to laypersons," said New York University Law Review Managing Editor Matthew Lawrence, who helped launch legalworkshop.org.
The idea for the site came about in 2006, when student editors were looking for ways to make their law reviews resonate online, according to former Stanford Law Review President Edelheit Ross. At the time, editors at Stanford Law Review envisioned a Web magazine that included content from a number of top law reviews. Law review editors at Stanford and NYU then took on leading roles in creating what they called an "online legal scholarship magazine." Unlike print law reviews, readers can post comments on the Web site's articles.
One impetus for the project was the concern that law reviews have been losing their readership and their influence on the shaping of public policy. "The problem is that most law reviews make little effort to reach nonacademic audiences," said Stanford Law student Michael Montaño, who led the development of the site. "And because they still effectively help professors gain tenure — 'publish or perish' is here to stay — there is little incentive to innovate. But as a profession we owe it to the public to produce work that is relevant to society as a whole."
The site doesn't include the full-length articles that appear in the print versions of the seven law reviews, nor does it include the abstracts of those articles. Instead, the authors of the original articles write a shorter, more accessible version of their work to be posted on the site.
"Our goal was to provide free legal scholarship in a format accessible to laypersons," said New York University Law Review Managing Editor Matthew Lawrence, who helped launch legalworkshop.org.
The idea for the site came about in 2006, when student editors were looking for ways to make their law reviews resonate online, according to former Stanford Law Review President Edelheit Ross. At the time, editors at Stanford Law Review envisioned a Web magazine that included content from a number of top law reviews. Law review editors at Stanford and NYU then took on leading roles in creating what they called an "online legal scholarship magazine." Unlike print law reviews, readers can post comments on the Web site's articles.
One impetus for the project was the concern that law reviews have been losing their readership and their influence on the shaping of public policy. "The problem is that most law reviews make little effort to reach nonacademic audiences," said Stanford Law student Michael Montaño, who led the development of the site. "And because they still effectively help professors gain tenure — 'publish or perish' is here to stay — there is little incentive to innovate. But as a profession we owe it to the public to produce work that is relevant to society as a whole."
I'm adding Legal Workshop to the Essential Law Blogs in the left-column.
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