JURIST (Web: jurist.org) is an award-winning legal news service powered by law students from around the world. In addition to our Web presence, JURIST is available on a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, and we have developed our own apps, available for both Apple and Android devices.
Powered by close to 100 law student volunteers from over 30 law schools on six continents, our global staff works under the direction of several US- and Canada-based law faculty and professionals. We are headed by University of Pittsburgh law professor and Canadian Rhodes Scholar Bernard Hibbitts, an Oxford University and Harvard Law School graduate. In 1996, Professor Hibbitts hand-coded the early iterations of JURIST’s website in raw HTML in his spare time from teaching and scholarship. 26 years later, JURIST is a flourishing non-profit. We are a unique and entrepreneurial-minded environment, and our leadership understands the importance of fostering personal and professional growth opportunities among our staff.
Our North American law students hail from Pitt Law and various other law schools in the United States and Canada. As of 2022, these schools included Harvard Law School, UCLA Law, UNLV Law, Vermont Law, UCalgary Law, and uOttawa Law. In Europe, current JURIST staffers come from law schools in the UK, Ireland, and lately Ukraine; in Africa they work from Kenya and Uganda; in Asia, they come from India, Afghanistan, and Myanmar; in Australasia they operate from both Australia and New Zealand. JURIST has also recently added South American law student staff at PUCP in Lima, Peru.
JURIST’s work and dedicated staff have been featured by major US and international media, including CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBC Radio in Canada, and the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper in Tokyo, Japan. JURIST news reports and commentaries have been republished and/or cited many times in law school casebooks, law reviews, and in testimony before Congressional committees; several have figured in briefs to US federal appellate courts and even SCOTUS.
JURIST’s mission is to engage law students in the most important issues of their time, giving them an opportunity to document and defend the rule of law while preparing them for success and leadership in later professional and public life.
Law student staff serving as JURIST news writers, correspondents, and commentary editors gain familiarity with major legal issues as they develop, build in-demand legal research and writing skills in a dynamic technological environment in real time, and collaborate with a diverse range of national and international colleagues while sharing their work with a worldwide public of lawyers, legal academics, policymakers, activists, and ordinary citizens.
In the spirit of public service and by way of providing legal news and information to all, JURIST is open-access across all formats and is paywall- and subscription-free to the over 1.5 million users around the globe.
OPEN CALL FOR UCALGARY LAW STUDENT APPLICANTS
Our Canadian contingent is headquartered in UCalgary Law, where our Canada Bureau Chief Heidi J. T. Exner operates. Heidi oversees Canadian student news and commentary writers and editors, correspondents (including our Chief Canada Correspondent out of uOttawa), and our operations activities.
We are currently expanding our Canadian contingent and seeking law students who share our passion for legal journalism.
Think this could include you?
If showcasing your writing on a global stage sounds intimidating, not to worry! Most of our staff start with little or no experience. Successful applicants are selected for their potential, and they are in the best of hands once they begin! We have a wonderful training and onboarding program, and a network of leadership and peers from which you can develop and fine-tune your legal research and journalism skills.
JURIST Canada’s Faculty Lead is UCalgary Law’s own Professor Robert Hamilton. If you are a 1L and haven’t met him yet – you will! He is a friendly face in some of your Foundations courses, and he also teaches Property Law.
Our Canada Bureau Chief is also a UCalgary Law 3L, Heidi J. T. Exner, and she has been with JURIST’s Canadian contingent since Day 1. She is knowledgeable and friendly, and she is also here to guide you through the application process and answer any questions you might have. Heidi can be reached at adelheide.exner@ucalgary.ca.
Our current round of recruitment is open until Friday, September 30, 2022, at midnight (Mountain Time).
To apply: visit jurist.org/apply.
Please acquaint yourself with our work prior to applying to ensure you can envision your name in the JURIST bylines. In addition to checking out our news and commentary feeds, we have prepared a Canadian “Highlight Reel” which we will circulate alongside this article via email. This infographic “reel” demonstrates an array of types of reporting our Canada staff have contributed thus far. These include news and commentary writing and editing, long-form explainers, live on-the-ground correspondent video coverage of breaking news, interviews with informants, and even attendance and coverage of a press-only telecast with Barack Obama! We are only just beginning, so opportunity truly abounds.
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