Welcome to the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, also known as JOLT! We are a student-run journal and law & technology community made up of over 150 students annually. This page is meant to help you navigate our organization and learn how to get involved. If you have any questions, or want to get in touch with someone from HLS, you can reach out to the Editors-in-Chief, Jessica Zhao and Alex Rafferty (jolt@mail.law.harvard.edu). We'd love to talk with you and answer any of your questions!

1L Students

As an incoming 1L, the paired Subcite and Digest experience is the best way to get involved with the journal. As a subciter, you will attend 4 hours of our mass subcite weekend, where you will check the text and footnotes of an article and perform substantive, grammar, and bluebooking edits. As a Digest contributor, you will either write or edit a short online piece about a recent issue in tech law to be featured on this site. If you have questions about getting involved as a 1L, you can reach out to the Operations Editor, William Locke (jolt.ops.editor@gmail.com), or the Digest Executive Editor, Anastasia Pyrinis (joltdigest@mail.law.harvard.edu).

Once you have subcited for the journal, you will be eligible to apply for several other positions, including Line Editor, Production Editor, and the Submissions Committee. You’ll also be eligible to run for elected positions in the spring semester.

Transfer Students

As an incoming transfer student, you can choose to either participate in the paired Subcite and Digest experience, or apply to be a Line Editor. Line Editors manage a team of subciters to edit a portion of an article, pull the cited sources, and participate in additional rounds of editing with the article team. If you are interested in applying to the Line Editor position as a transfer student, please reach out to the Operations Editor, William Locke (jolt.ops.editor@gmail.com).

LLM Students

As an incoming LLM, you can choose to either participate in the paired Subcite and Digest experience or apply to the Submissions Committee. Submissions Committee members read and review scholarship that is submitted to JOLT and help us select articles for publication. If you are interested in applying to the Submissions Committee, please reach out to the Submissions Editor, Ray Lefco (jolt.submissions@gmail.com).

How can I get to know the JOLT community?

Sign up for our newsletter to learn about JOLT’s numerous events, including panel discussions with students and outside speakers who discuss law and tech topics. You can also join our mentorship program, where you'll be paired with other law students of all years with similar interests to learn more about this school, the legal profession, and JOLT. Additionally, you can join our Slack to stay up-to-date on the latest tech law news and campus chatter. We have channels for class advice, job searching, law and tech news, and more!

What else can I get involved with?

If you're looking to get more involved in JOLT before the end of the fall semester, there will be several opportunities to do so. First, you are welcome to attend Technical Edits, so that you can learn more about how a piece evolves during the article editing process. Second, you can join the Submissions Committee, where you will read and give an initial recommendation on articles submitted to JOLT, including whether or not you think we should publish them. Finally, you can apply to be a Production Editor (1L only), where you will be in charge of getting articles print-ready.

In the spring semester, there will be additional opportunities to get involved. Beyond Line Editor and Article Editor applications, which open on a semester basis, we select new masthead members via election and appointments each spring. These positions are announced in the JOLT newsletter. Masthead members have substantial responsibilities in running JOLT as a journal and a student organization, and these positions allow you to know the JOLT community more deeply. To help you understand the available JOLT positions, here is the JOLT organizational structure.

(You can view a larger version here.)

What do the colors mean?

The green roles are open to everyone, and are the best way to start getting involved with the journal. Blue roles are roles are also open to everyone, but most require a semester of subciting experience first. Orange roles are normally held by 3Ls, and purple roles by 2Ls.