Where to Publish Legal Articles (Guide for Ambitious Law Students)

If you are thinking of pursuing a career in academia after your law degree, you should definitely try to get your first journal article published before graduating. Although it might seem like too distant a dream to come true, plenty of LLB students have in the past managed to get their first publication. The key is to submit your essays-turned-articles to the right legal journals which accept submissions from law students. This article contains a few suggestions on where to publish your legal articles.

Your University’s Law Review

The law review at your university is the first obvious choice when looking for a platform to publish your first legal journal article. Law reviews are typically run by law students with the support of lecturers. Most of them accept articles for publication only from the students at the university by which they are run, so the competition is very low. 

​If you are not very confident about the quality of your writing, then approaching the law review at your university is the best option to start with. But if your university does not run a law review, you should submit your article to one or more of the journals below.

Legal Issues Journal

The Legal Issues Journal accepts publications from students all over the UK on a variety of law and law-related topics, including law and genetics, law and justice, law and philosophy, law and medicine, business law as well as issues related to equality. The journal also accepts commentaries on recent news in the legal profession as well as future trends affecting the legal world.

​It publishes original papers, case comments, short reports, debates as well as book reviews. In case you are interested in looking through the previous articles selected for publication, you can find them on the journal's website. The volumes are published twice a year, in January and July.

King’s Student Law Review

The King’s Student Law Review is run exclusively by students at the King’s College London. Despite being tied to a specific university, this review accepts publications from students enrolled in law degrees at universities all over the UK. Articles from previous issues of the review are available here.

The KSLR accepts publications in a variety of legal areas other than legal philosophy. Submissions are accepted in the form of an article, a case note, a book review or a letter to editors. Submission guidelines, which must be followed by all students seeking publication in the KSLR, are available under this link.

IALS Student Law Review

The IALS Student Law Review is run by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London. It accepts publications from LLB students all over the UK, provided that they are in the form of a short (up to 6,000 words) or long (up to 10,000 words) article, a note, a book review or a case note. The latest legal articles published in the review are available here.

The journal particularly encourages publications in areas such as company law, comparative law, European criminal law, law and humanity and a few others. Many of those areas are highly specialised, so that you are unlikely to have studied them during your LLB. But you might still be able to submit a publication to the IALS review on any area of law which you studied during your degree as long as it discusses law reform.

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