Leading the Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal

Date 2023-2025

Role Editor-in-Chief

Skills Editorial Leadership, Team Management

Visit the OUULJ website → Read the 13th Edition Read the 14th Edition Read My Foreword

My involvement with the journal spanned two years in distinct roles. In 2023 as General Editor, I set the vision and ran the day-to-day, securing sponsorships, selecting and editing articles, and representing the Journal within the team and in external meetings. In 2024 as Editor-in-Chief, I guided the next team, represented the journal as a figurehead, and worked to ensure the good ideas stuck through smart recruitment.

Key Initiatives

Across two years, I focused on three things: raising the journal's profile, consolidating our institutional identity, and making legal scholarship more accessible.

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Raising Profile

Going transatlantic

I wanted to give our editorial board international exposure and create connections beyond Oxford. So we established a partnership with the Columbia University Undergraduate Law Review—board members from both journals paired up to co-write articles together. It expanded the Journal's presence beyond the UK and created room for cross-jurisdictional collaboration.

Bringing in the big names

The Journal always hosts an academic writing workshop for first-years interested in submitting to the journal, but it felt small-scale to me. In 2023-24, we invited Peter Mirfield, Editor of the Law Quarterly Review (UK's leading legal journal), to speak at the workshop. The room was packed and the workshop was a standout feature of the Law Faculty term calendar. The 2024 team continued the tradition by inviting Hayley Hooper, the new LQR Editor.

Bespoke invitations

Each year, the Journal hosts a publication evening to celebrate that year's edition. It's a prestigious affair— in both 2024 and 2025, Supreme Court justices were in attendance. The norm was to send out email invitations but for 2023-24, we designed custom printed invitations and hand-delivered them to our guests of honour. Small touch, but it signaled that we took the event—and their attendance—seriously. View invitation

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Consolidating Institutional Identity

Building the knowledge base

When I joined as General Editor in 2023, the Journal severely lacked documentation, with most of the information passing via word-of-mouth. So across two year, we built a knowledge base: one Google Drive for all our archive materials, templates for emails and documentation and handoff guides explaining key processes and containing contact lists. The goal was simple: the next Editorial Board shouldn't have to waste time rediscovering things we'd already figured out.

Bringing the podcast into the fold

When I joined, the OUULJ podcast operated as a largely independent entity. In 2023-24, we worked to integrate it within the Journal's ecosystem: the podcast became part of the Journal's core offering rather than a side project. Then in 2024-25, we secured our first-ever dedicated podcast sponsor. Now it's financially sustainable and strategically aligned with the OUULJ.

Strategic positioning with the Law Faculty

In 2023, Oxford got a new Dean of Law: John Armour. The team met with him and invited him to join our Honorary Board— he said yes, which gave the journal credibility at the Faculty level. Then in 2024-25, when the Faculty was consulting on plans for the new law building, I made sure to advocate for two things: a dedicated OUULJ workspace and a proper podcast recording facility.

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Accessibility

Free journal copies for contributors

A physical copy of the Journal costs £50 or more. In my first year, this posed a significant barrier to those who would have liked to own a copy but couldn't afford it. In 2024-25, with an extra injection of sponsorship funds, we were able to make a change: your first copy was free. It was about recognition— making sure the people who built the Journal could actually own a piece of what they had created.

The welcome guide

I realised that we had no presence during law induction week— the exact moment when first-years are most enthusiastic about getting involved in the wider community. So we created a welcome guide: a simple document explaining what the Journal was and how to get involved. We got it circulated via the Faculty mailing list to every law student. In 2024-25, the team took it even further— we created a dedicated OUULJ mailing list and regularly published notices in the weekly Faculty newsletter. We went from invisible during induction to having a consistent presence in students' inboxes. View guide

Explainer for publication evening

The topic of discussion at the 2024 Publication Evening was the complicated case of Guest v Guest and the equitable principle of proprietary estoppel. Realising that not everyone in the audience would know the case, we wrote a 2-page primer breaking it down: what happened, what the legal issues were, why it mattered. We handed it out at the door and made it accessible via QR code. A simple solution which helped ensure everyone could follow the conversation. View primer