Welcome to JURIST's Hotline, where you can publish your insights on legal news as it happens.

We've designed this service to do two things:

1. to give lawyers, law professors, policy experts, and people caught up in legal events a platform where they can quickly and easily share legal news views with others without having to maintain their own weblogs or websites;
2. to provide JURIST's readers with expert legal commentary that might complement and even match the pace of our continuous Paper Chase legal news coverage

Scholars who have their own blogs are welcome here too. We hope that Hotline can help those of you already blogging to bring some of your original perspectives on legal news to the attention of a new audience.

If you have comments on a legal news development, just e-mail JURIST@law.pitt.edu for passwords to this blog and you'll be online in minutes. You can say your piece and be on your way. Frame your remarks so that they can stand alone as independent contributions that can be easily understood and referenced later.

The idea here is succinct analysis rather than continuous discussion – two or three off-the-cuff paragraphs, perhaps, that summarize your thinking or reaction for busy professionals. If some readers (or other contributors) want to discuss what you say, they can leave comments on your post, and of course you're welcome to comment on those comments or on other posts (by leaving comments on those) at any time. Otherwise we hope you'll keep your passwords and sign in again next time you have a few minutes and a perspective you'd like to share.

Publishing your insights on legal news on JURIST is a simple and efficient way to enhance the visibility of your ideas and your law school while contributing to public discourse and education. Tie the latest legal news development into an article or book you're writing or have just published (and cite it!). Pen a couple of paragraphs as a trial balloon for a talk, paper or a more formal op-ed down the line. Or use a local event, lecture or speech to lead into an analysis of a current issue making legal headlines. Be relevant, but be creative.

And don't be shy. This is an open forum and a big tent – entire law school faculties can come in to show their stuff. If the University of Chicago law faculty by itself can power an excellent blog, consider what we might do together.

All Hotline posts will be clearly credited by the contributor's name and institution, and will be carried as they come in not only here, but on JURIST's heavily-trafficked front page. Once we've reached a critical mass they'll also be archived by category here and on our 100+ legal news topics pages, where we hope they'll complement other permanent JURIST research resources like our legal news archives, legal documents and video collections, and our popular full-length Forum op-eds. What you contribute will be accessible there in context.

One last reminder… Hotline is a serious legal news blog on a serious legal news website. Please stay on topic. Please be courteous and avoid vituperation. JURIST reserves the right to decline, edit or remove submissions.

And now it's all yours. E-mail JURIST for passwords and have your say on the latest legal news now.