Publications
Shidler Journal for Law, Commerce and Technology
Click here to see the current issue of the Shidler Journal.
On July 1, 2004 the Shidler Journal for Law, Commerce and Technology officially published its first issue on the World Wide Web. The first issue featured stories about:
- How online businesses can minimize their exposure from online pricing errors;
- What all online businesses that collect date of birth information from their customers need to know about their potential liability under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act; and
- What law firms that send out newsletters can do to reduce their risk of violating the CAN SPAM Act.
This new journal is unique among U.S. law school sponsored law journals because it focuses on cutting edge technology law issues, presents them in a concise, user-friendly format and is distributed electronically. This new format was developed by Professors Ramasastry and Winn to set the journal apart from the dozens of other conventional student-edited law journals at other law schools with an IP or technology law focus. This journal is designed to appeal to practicing lawyers with stories with a pragmatic rather than academic focus, that provide clear discussions of emerging technologies as well as legal issues.
The pilot phase of the “eJournal” started in June 2003 when Sean Malcolm agreed to serve as acting Editor-in-Chief and Jeana Kim agreed to serve as acting Managing Editor of the fledgling enterprise. Six 2L J.D. students – Kendall Bodden, Kristin Bryant, Ben Groebner, Kevin Michael, Nicole Nyman, and Paula Royalty – and one IP LLM student – Jembaa Cole, joined the eJournal as staff members in Autumn 2003. During the pilot, the content for the first few issues of the journal were developed by the staff members working with Sean and Jean as well as Professors Ramasastry and Winn. An editorial board of respected national experts in IP and tech law areas assisted the eJournal at two points: in helping to develop a list of possible article topics, and in providing feedback on completed articles before publication.
In June 2004, the six JD student staff members took up positions on the student editorial board and participated in the law journal write-on competition to recruit ten new 2L staff members. In 2004-2005, the 3L student editors helped the new staff members produce articles suitable for publication as well as edit submissions from outside authors. Because target length for eJournal articles is so short - 2000-3000 words, the average length of an article in a publication such as the National Law Journal, rather than 20,000-30,000 words, the average length of a conventional law review article – it should be easy for attorneys in practice to submit memos they have written on cutting edge issues with minimal revisions to make them into articles of general interest to other attorneys.