Date Available

5-5-2025

Year of Publication

2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Education

Department/School/Program

Educational Policy Studies and Eval

Faculty

Dr. Jane Jensen

Faculty

Dr. Eric Thomas Weber

Abstract

Many law students in their second or third year enroll in student-led, high-impact co-curricular programs such as law journals, moot court teams, and trial competition teams. Law journals particularly demand significant portions of students’ time and energy, especially for students holding Editor-in-Chief positions on a journal. Much has been written about law journals as institutions or about their utility in modern legal education; but little is known about the actual expectations and experiences of the students leading them. Few, if any, studies exist examining the student experience in law journal leadership. How student editors spend their time running their journal and what is expected of them by their peers, their institutions, and the scholars who publish with them is largely unexplored.

This qualitative study of several student editors of law journals seeks to fill this gap and answer the following research questions: In what ways do students benefit from participating in high impact practices like law journals? How are students selected to participate in high impact practices like law journals? What are the important factors influencing students to pursue a leadership position in a law journal? What is the experience like for those students in law journal leadership positions?

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2025.27

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