From welcoming a new pre-law director to debuting a new legal curriculum for literature students, UTD’s pre-law programs have kicked into high gear over the past year — the latest addition being the university’s first-ever undergraduate law review. The journal, student-run and organized, launched fall 2024. It aims to provide students across all degree paths an opportunity to publish academically, hone their research skills and contribute to the legal field.
A law review is a scholarly journal, often run by a university, where contributors submit analyses on current issues and emerging subjects in law. Finance and accounting seniors Zachary Thomas and Jawad Karim and CITS senior Nithya Eluri co-founded the review and serve as president, editor-in-chief and vice president of administration of the review, respectively. Thomas said other students have previously attempted to create an undergraduate law review, but the amount of work necessary to create one led many to give up before its inception.
“There are two reasons why I started [the review],” Thomas said. “The first reason is I got to participate in the Archer Fellowship at UTD … During this internship, I fell in love with the research aspect of [law], so I wanted to instill that in JSOM specifically, but then I realized we have an amazing pre-law department. But we didn’t have an undergraduate law review. I wanted to create something where students can learn how to research and write. The second reason is I wanted to develop our pre-law program – I wanted to give students the opportunity to learn skills they will need to get into law school.”
Thomas said he proposed his idea earlier this year during the spring semester to professor and program head of the literature department Charles Hatfield, who was introducing a new course on legal research and writing. Thomas thought the course could be extremely helpful in guiding potential law review writers. Throughout the summer, Thomas and 19 other law review board members worked together to create a curriculum for the course and plan accordingly for the fall semester. Thomas said he eventually wants to match UTD’s law review with the prestigious reviews of Columbia, Virginia and Harvard University.
“How well the students write, how [good] our publication ends up being is going to be a direct reflection of how well we can teach these students,” Thomas said.
The review allows students from any academic discipline to make submissions. Thomas said he encouraged his pre-med friends struggling to secure research opportunities to write about policy relevant to their career, so they can get published and use their publication as leverage for more opportunities. Eluri said that while the review prioritizes a legal aspect in all its published papers, the team behind it hopes to attract a wide variety of students, interests and topics. Karim said that the review aims to publish on a semesterly basis with the goal of publishing in spring 2025.
“Our goal is to keep everything interdisciplinary — educating and motivating students across UTD regardless of their career interests or background,” Eluri said. “We want them to come and join us, write for us, [and] bring us their insight.”
Thomas said he encourages students to actively keep up with the review even if they do not plan to submit anything, so they can stay informed about current issues and policy matters relevant to their careers and fields of study. Karim said he recommends students interested in the review to start reading legal cases, and if they encounter a difficult topic or gap in knowledge, the team behind the review will assist them in understanding.
“We want this to be accessible to anyone, anyone can join and write something,” Karim said. “Running an organization and being able to engage people with really complicated topics and challenging tasks, I think that’s probably the most important thing I will take from this experience.”
For students wanting to get involved with the law review, Thomas said to express interest and be active with the organization. The UTD undergraduate law review website is under construction; the organization can currently be contacted on Instagram at @UTDULR.
“No matter what your major is, what your background is, what your interests are, you can find a place in the law review,” Thomas said. “You have the ability to make whatever you want out of it.”
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