In winter 2011, Jonathan Abel and James Freedman were elected to the student-run Stanford Law Review (SLR) board 
after proposing a compelling plan—to develop an online SLR with timely short-format essays that maintain law review-quality legal analysis. Both journalists before coming to law school, the two had a hunch that there was an untapped audience for legal scholarship presented in this style. They spent last summer working with a developer to build Stanford Law Review 
Online, which launched last November. Very quickly SLR Online has gained a reputation as a go-to website for legal thought leadership, with essays cross-
posted to publications such as the The Huffington Post and Gizmodo and linked to by many more including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, The 
Economist, Popular Mechanics, CNNMoney, and msnbc.com.

“We’ve broadened our audience,” says Freedman, JD ’12, SLR senior online editor. “We may be one of the only law reviews with work showing up on both Google Scholar and Google News almost immediately. Our online essays are read by thousands and, in addition to law blogs, top-flight mainstream publications continually link to our scholarship or cross-post it.”

“We’re honoring the tradition of SLR by innovating,” says Abel, JD ’12, SLR president. “When people like Warren Christopher, JD ’49, were working on it, they clipped articles from newspapers—looking for interesting subjects. The print version continues to include interesting subjects, but the turnaround time can be longer than a year from submission to publication. The online version is immediate, with turnaround of about a week. We can be very timely and so more engaging, reaching a wider audience.”

In addition to receiving a growing number of unsolicited submissions, the SLR Online team proactively reaches 
out to faculty for essays on topical subjects. The team is posting, on average, one new article each week to the site, which is then emailed to
 key publications. Social networking tools are key to the SLR Online mission of gaining a wide audience and, according to Freedman,
 some essays have gone viral. One example is an essay posted in December, “Don’t Break the Internet,” written by Mark A. Lemley
 (BA ’88), William H. Neukom Professor of Law, David Levine, and David Post. It quickly became one of the most cited works in the debate about the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 and the Stop Online Piracy Act. Another essay posted in February, “The Right to Be Forgotten,” by Jeffrey Rosen, professor of law, The George Washington University, was cited in The New Republic and elsewhere. “It’s a very simple model: Post essays that you yourself would like to read,” says Abel.

Learn more about SLR Online and the names of the inaugural online committee.
Check out SLR on Facebook.