First student editors for Waikato Law Review

For the first time since its inception in 1993, the annual Waikato Law Review has two student editors.

The Law Review is annually published and features a range of articles from legal academics, practitioners and emerging academic authors and reflects Te Piringa - Faculty of Law's founding goals of examining the law in context, professionalism and promotion of biculturalism.

Last year the Review was restructured to express the faculty's foundation goals and promote its unique scholarship qualities, which resulted in a new editorial committee being created.

The new committee includes Professor Margaret Wilson, Dr Robert Joseph, Gay Morgan and Joel Manyam, who join the 2011 Co-Editors in Chief Juliet Chevalier-Watts and Kate Diesfeld.

On top of the new committee the Law Review also created the role of volunteer student editors to support and assist the editorial committee as well as provide research and analysis for a new section of the review; the New Zealand Jurisprudence Annual Review.

Student editors Amelda Schrenk and Erika Roberson said they initially applied for the roles in hope it would benefit their CVs after they graduated, but never thought they would be working closely with former Law School Dean, Speaker of the House, President of the Labour Party and Attorney-General Margaret Wilson.

“It involves researching the law in depth, it’s not just checking facts and footnotes,” says Amelda.

“For anyone thinking about volunteering in the future, what they will learn from the law is huge. It’s about the experience for me the foremost. There is no way you could walk away from this and say ‘I haven’t learnt anything’.”

“Getting to work this close with Margaret Wilson is quite amazing,” says Erika. “This semester the work we’re doing is research based but the editing of the Jurisprudence Annual Review is up to Margaret. Next semester we will do some editing, as you would traditionally expect in this role; that will be great experience as well. It’s all interesting work and we're grateful to have the opportunity.”

The Waikato Law Review is the only Law Review in the country to contain a section examining jurisprudence in New Zealand.

The committee said the selection of Amelda and Erika by the Editorial Committee was a difficult decision and came down to experience, academic achievement, knowledge and commitment.

Student editors can expect to gain legal research and analysis skills and be involved in the editorial process.