How Does One Create a Law Student Online Publication?

  The Student Appeal is an online law journal that publishes legal articles and editorials discussing, law and policy issues, law school, and "Day in the Life" pieces highlighting different legal careers available to JDs. Editor-In-Chief is Sarah Eli Mattern, a recent law school graduate and now a Foreclosure Attorney with Brevard County Legal in Rockledge, Florida. I asked her to write a guest blog article about how she "parented"  The Student Appeal.  

I am all for students and lawyers thinking "out of the box" and creating resources for communication, and honing their research and writing skills. Certainly, social media (see, what Sarah says about Twitter which I highly recommend to all law students) now provides new opportunities for law students to engage and participate in the exchange of ideas as their promote and, hopefully, further their own careers ( I hope that all readers will take a look at The Student Appeal (I have other similar blogs, etc listed here on my own link list and I recommend them all highly) and get involved! ... and while you're at it -- please read my own article "Day in the Life of a Law School Career Counselor!"

----------------------------

The story of The Student Appeal included finding authors, building a website, and marketing the heck out of an idea.

Getting Articles

Soliciting my first paper was an adventure. I didn't even have a website; I didn't have readership; I didn't have anything to prove that I was capable of publishing someone else's paper. But when I approached some colleagues whose work I respected about publishing with me, most of them responded positively. (Business Tip: Make sure you've perfected your pitch before you make it!) All of the sudden, I went from having nothing, to at least having things to put on the site. I am forever thankful to Christine J. Lomas, Esq., Luis Zavala Esq. and Brianna Lennon, Esq. for believing in my idea.

So, now that I had articles, I needed a place to put them.

Building a Website:

The only thing I knew about The Student Appeal when I started planning for the website was that I wanted the website's colors to  be purple and green. Unfortunately, for me, that's not a lot to go on.

I partnered up with long-time friend, Dawson Henry, to build the site. (Business Tip -- Choose a business partner with different skills than you, make sure they bring something new to the table). Four months later, we had an "operational" site.

Website development is a process, I call our site "operational" because when we launched, it looked similar to its current incarnation, but over the last year, Dawson and I have tweaked it making it more functional (Business Tip -- Never stop looking critically at a "finished" product -- you can always perfect). It was more important to me that we launch quickly, rather than try to make everything perfect before starting.

Marketing a Company:

As a new company, I evaluated what was the best way to grow our readership. I had heard that Twitter was a good marketing tool, but had never used it. I read some articles on social media marketing and went to it. I believed that if enough students found out about us, that they would want to publish with us. So, I followed every law student, attorney, and legal information "tweeter" I could find. This process took weeks. When I took breaks from studying for the bar exam, I tweeted. I focused on providing relevant tweets for lawyers and law students, posting about our articles and any other article which I thought our readers would benefit from reading.

Twitter is not a quick marketing tool. But I realized that Twitter is about connecting with people and providing people with information. If someone goes to Twitter knowing that he/she is providing a service, then Twitter can be a very rewarding platform.

I celebrated when we had 50 followers, 200 followers, 1000 followers. Lat fall @StudentAppeal was ranked #25 in the Top 80 Twitter Feeds for Law Students  


Business Tip -- Celebrate the milestones).  I celebrated them too!


It took my business partner and me six months to build the website and collect and edit our first articles. It's taken me a year and a half to grow our library and readership to where it is today. Everything starts with an idea, but without execution, it never goes anywhere. I hope The Student Appeal continues to grow over the next year and a half into the company I believe it can be.