As much as we prefer to present your work in the best way possible, we also work under tight deadlines on a voluntary basis (none of us are paid to do this), so our first priority is consistency, clarity and sufficiently fit for publication. This means that we strive to ensure that the article is publishable before we spend any time on making it better. You can help us focus on making your article better by following some of the simple guidelines below. They are designed to prevent us from getting fits and being annoyed at you (“Happy editors means your work gets published!”).

Guidelines for Text

• Write Simply, be Understood. Juris is not a forum to espouse deep, complicated theories. Our standard is a “reasonable year 1 law student” and we push our writers to make themselves understood. This also means to some extent that we are wary of writing in a way that scares year 1s and the general public into believing the law to be an overly-complicated monster. If you have something deep and profound to say, why not contribute to our Journal?
  • We want references. If you have quoted a VIP, a line from a case or a newspaper article, we want to know how to get it and how our readers can too. Statistics are good too.
  • Avoid Redbook/Carswell/Bluebook Style Citations. We already publish a journal, so we don’t need the detail for Juris. This will only scare off some of our less legally-trained readers. Citations for your references are a matter of discretion and restraint (enough to inform). If you aren’t sure, our editors will help.
  • No Footnotes/Endnotes. These devices generally introduce an unnecessary complexity into the writing, so we usually do not want them.
  • We observe our Word Limits seriously. A one page article is about 650 words. We generally edit letters to fit the space and publish them in full online.
• No fancy fonts, text styles or mind-boggling paragraphing and indentation tricks. In our experience, headers, body text, bullet points, bold and italics are the only things most writers need for Juris.
• We recommend you “Save As” Microsoft Word Documents (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf).

Guidelines for Graphics/Photos

• We publish in Print and Online, therefore graphics and photos should be suitably high-resolution in order for it to look nice on both mediums. As a general rule, JPEGs should be at least 800 KB in size, although this is not conclusive.
• We encourage contributors to give our designers ideas on how to spruce up their articles. This can include tables, graphics, diagrams and little boxes of interesting quips/facts. If contributors opt to defer to our team, we reserve the right to present the article in any way we like.
• File formats such as JPEGs, TIFFs, PNGs are preferred.
• You are encouraged to take your own photos, however graphics should be attributed if they are not yours.