FAQ

What is JURIST?
JURIST (http://jurist.org) is an award-winning online legal news service powered by a global team of over 100 law student reporters, editors, commentators, correspondents and content developers from 50 law schools in 25 countries across six continents.

JURIST’s mission is to educate and empower law students by engaging them with the most important events and issues of their time as those develop, preparing them for responsible leadership in later professional and public life as they report on the rule of law in crisis around the world. JURIST is the first and only global organization of law students collaborating across borders around the clock. Almost seventy percent of JURIST’s staff are women.

JURIST is headquartered at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where it was established in 1996. JURIST’s North American law students hail from Pitt Law and several other law schools in the United States and Canada; in 2022-23, these include Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Boston University Law, Fordham Law (New York), UNLV Law (Nevada), Vermont Law, Pitt Law, UCalgary Law and the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. In Europe, JURIST staffers and correspondents come from major law schools in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and lately Ukraine; in Africa they work from Kenya, Uganda and Ghana; in the Near East, they file from Israel, Iraq and Iran; in Asia, they come from Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar; in Australasia they operate from both Australia and New Zealand. JURIST has recently added South American staff at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) in Lima, Peru.

JURIST is produced as a public service, and uses the latest Internet technology to track important legal developments and explain them rapidly and clearly in a widely-accessible format.  JURIST delivers its content on the Web, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and via an iPhone app. Since 2008, JURIST has been a 501(c)(3) independent non-profit corporation. JURIST is led by three professional staffers working in Pittsburgh and Boston under the direction of Pitt Law professor Bernard Hibbitts.
What makes JURIST unique?
JURIST is the world’s only law school-based legal news and commentary service. JURIST covers legal news stories based on their substantive importance rather than on their mass-market or commercial appeal. JURIST is completely open and accessible, putting no registration or subscription barriers in the way of its readers. Befitting its academic roots, JURIST puts particular emphasis on quickly locating and presenting primary source materials – the judicial decisions, legislation, testimony, reports and releases behind the legal news – so readers can evaluate those directly for themselves.
Who reads JURIST?
Lawyers, judges, policymakers, law professors, law students, librarians, journalists and members of the general public from the US and around the world read JURIST on a regular basis. Tens of thousands of readers follow JURIST on social media and subscribe to our email digest service.
How large is JURIST’s audience?
JURIST’s website draws over 1.5 million users yearly from virtually every country and Internet domain in the world. Our largest Web audiences are in the US and India. JURIST has over eleven thousand Twitter followers and sends its daily email digest to nearly four thousand subscribers.
Who writes JURIST?
All of JURIST’s news content is written by its in-house law student staff. JURIST also publishes informed commentary on current legal developments by law professors, policymakers, activists, practicing lawyers and law students from around the world.
Can I write for JURIST?
All JURIST news articles are written in-house by our staff writers. JURIST welcomes Commentary and Features submissions on current legal topics from law professors, policymakers, activists, practicing lawyers and law students.
Does JURIST welcome news tips?
Certainly! If you think there’s a legal development we should know about or should be covering, email us at news@jurist.org. We also welcome primary source documents related to stories in current legal news. Feel free to send us decisions, reports, press releases, etc. that you think might interest our readers in the US or and abroad.
What are JURIST’s guidelines for Commentary submissions?
Commentary submissions should
    • be original and previously unpublished
    • offer an opinion about a legal development or event that has occurred in the last 1 to 3 months;
    • be 1,000 to 1,500 words long;
    • use hyperlinks instead of footnotes;
    • be submitted as Word or Google documents

Send Commentary submissions to commentary@jurist.org, including “submission” in the subject line to expedite processing. Regardless of whether we accept or reject a piece, we strive to review and respond to all submissions within a few business days of their receipt. Please note that mere correspondence or an expression of interest does not constitute acceptance of a piece. JURIST reserves the right to reject submitted pieces.

Republication of JURIST’s articles must include (1) a note stating that the piece originally appeared on JURIST; (2) a full citation (author name, article title, publisher, date of publication); and (3) a link to the original article. We encourage you to seek editorial permission before reposting.

How can I join JURIST?
JURIST recruits law students from around the world on a rolling basis, although most US recruitment takes place twice a year (in August and January). Watch for announcements on JURIST and our social media platforms at those times. If you’d like to join JURIST at some other time, please apply directly at http://jurist.org/apply.
Why do law students join JURIST?
Law students join JURIST
    • to gain experience in the online-oriented legal research and writing techniques they need to develop for 21st-century careers;
    • to hone their ability to effectively find and evaluate information online;
    • to keep up with ongoing national and legal developments that they may not be exposed to in their classes;
    • to serve the informational and educational needs of the public, pro bono;
    • to have fun and make connections working with JURIST staff from other law schools across the US and around the world!
How did JURIST get started?
University of Pittsburgh law professor Bernard Hibbitts and a law student assistant created the website that would become JURIST in 1996, as Law Professors on the Web. The name JURIST was officially adopted in 1997. It was initially designed for law professors as a clearinghouse of online legal materials authored by other law professors. Under the pressure of high-profile national and international events in the late 1990s and early 2000s that created online demand for authoritative legal information and documentation, JURIST rapidly evolved beyond its original directory-library-archive model and its internal academic orientation into a dynamic and externally-oriented news and research service designed to bridge the knowledge gap between the legal academy and the public.
Has JURIST been recognized for what it does?
JURIST has won multiple awards and distinctions over the years from legal and media institutions ranging from the American Bar Association Journal to the International Academy of the Visual Arts that runs the W3 digital excellence competition. In 2006, JURIST won the Webby People’s Voice Award and has been recognized in subsequent rounds of the Webbys, what the New York Times has called “the Internet’s highest honor,” for excellence in the presentation and delivery of online content. Over the years JURIST has been hailed for its coverage and commentary in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other traditional media in the US and abroad. JURIST content is regularly cited in law reviews and has been cited in Congressional testimony and amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court.
How is JURIST funded?
JURIST is supported by funds provided by the University of Pittsburgh and a variety of charitable donors, as well as by generous in-kind technical support from Justia.To learn more about how you can support JURIST, its mission and its students, click here. To donate to JURIST directly, click here.
How can I contact JURIST?
The best way to get in touch with JURIST is by email. Visit our contact page for more information on how to reach various JURIST staffers. Our mailing address is:

JURIST Legal News & Research
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
3900 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15260