Category Archives: Jotwell

JOTWELL, the online journal of reviews of recent faculty scholarship relating to the law, needs a MiamiLaw 1L or 2L to join our editorial team for the summer.

The workload typically runs about 30 hours per week, and is paid at the law school’s research assistant scale. The student editor supports faculty editors both at UM and elsewhere, and has a role that is a blend of a substantive editor and a managing editor.

The ideal candidate will be sensitive to nuance and a careful editor, organized, and will enjoy reading legal scholarship. JOTWELL uses WordPress to publish, but it is easy to learn, so no experience needed.

Grades matter for this job, but a demonstrated ability to organize, to write, and to edit may substitute for grades. The job would start as soon as you are available after your Spring ’23 final exams—May 15 or earlier—and run to about when classes start in August. /UPDATE: If you are doing the writing competition, you could start c. May 24 or whenever that is over./ Once you get up to speed there would be no problem if you wanted to take one or more brief vacation periods during that time, as long as none of them was for a long continuous period.

In addition to the circa 30 hours per week for Jotwell, there is an option to add on some extra hours to bring the work up to about 40 hours per week.  These entirely optional extra hours would be traditional research assistant duties supporting me in my summer research.

PLEASE NOTE: Assuming all goes well, I would hope that the Jotwell Summer Editor will transition into being one of three regular Student Editors next academic year, thus working 7-10 hours per week during the 2023-2024 Fall and Spring semesters (with time off for exams and holidays).  Please indicate in your application whether  you are willing to continue in this role for the next two semesters.

If you are interested, please email the following to me at my email address:

1. Your c.v., aka “your résumé”.
2. A copy (unofficial is fine) of your transcript,
3. If you have a non-legal writing sample, please include that also. Please do NOT send your LCOMM paper.
4. Please state some times when you would be free for a Zoom interview of about 30 minutes in the near future.

Please put “JOTWELL Summer 2023” and your name in the subject line of your email. Also, please ensure that that all attachments to your email have file names starting with your last name.

Jotwell, the online journal of reviews of recent faculty scholarship relating to the law (http://jowell.com), needs a UMiami Law Student Editor for 25-30 hours per week during the summer.

The student editor is a blend of a substantive editor and a managing editor. Jotwell uses WordPress to publish, but the web publishing platform is easy to learn, so no experience is needed.

The ideal candidate will be a current University of Miami School of Law 1L, or 2L, who is organized, a careful editor, and enjoys reading legal scholarship. The job starts soon after exams end but you can have time off once there is enough edited material ready to cover the break. Candidates able to commit to continue working 7-10 hours a week during the 2017-18 academic year will have an advantage.

If you are interested, please email your c.v. and a copy of your transcript (unofficial is fine) to my gmail.com account, which is myfirstname.mylastname@gmail.com (do the substitution). Please put “JOTWELL Summer 2017” and your name in the subject line.

If you have a non-legal writing sample, or a law school paper (other than LCOMM) please attach that to your email.

Each section of JOTWELL is set up with a basically identical wordpress blog. (Don’t ask why, there were good reasons to do it that way when we started.)

Each section forwards posts to twitter via Twitter Feed. The tweets appear at the Jotwell twitter feed. Most of them look terrible — the user photo we run is blown up to show a gigantic close-up of the author’s forehead! But some don’t. They look just like they should. I can’t figure out what’s different about them.

Bonus puzzle: Back in 2011, one Jason Otwell grabbed the “Jotwell” handle on Twitter. He posted once in 2012, once in 2014, and once in 2015. I’d like to ask him if he’d donate the account to us – it would be a good deed and might be worth a charitable donation. But either I can’t locate him, or can’t get him to return my snail mail or email. How do I figure out how to communicate with him?

Happy to learn Jotwell got selected by the ABA for its 9th annual Blawg 100 list.

Jotwell, the online journal of reviews of recent faculty scholarship relating to the law, needs a U.Miami law student editor for the ’15-’16 Academic Year. The ideal candidate will be organized, a careful editor, and enjoy reading legal scholarship. The workload typically runs 8-10 hours per week (maybe a little more right at the start), and is paid at the law school’s research assistant scale, which in most cases is $13/hr. Jotwell uses WordPress to publish, but it is easy to learn, so no experience needed.

If you are interested, please email your c.v. (aka “your résumé”) and a copy (unofficial is fine) of your transcript to me at Myfirstname.Mylastname@gmail.com (making the appropriate substitutions). Please put “JOTWELL 2015-16” and your name in the subject line.