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Oliver, Joshua George; Dempster, Finlay T T --- "Editorial" [2023] NZLawStuJl 2; (2023) 4 NZLSJ ix

Last Updated: 7 April 2024

Editorial

JOSHUA GEORGE OLIVER^[*] & FINLAY T T DEMPSTER^[†]
This issue presents a significant milestone in the journal’s history: our long-awaited revival after eight years. The process of rebranding, restructuring and remarketing the journal has been as rewarding as it has been challenging. Naturally, the blank canvas afforded us the ability to think critically about the core purposes of a national law student journal, and what we wished to achieve by reviving the journal. Thus, one of the first things we decided on as a team was a mission statement:

The mission of the NZLSJ is to publish high-quality research by New Zealand law students and to provide opportunities for students to participate in the legal publishing process.
Each year, law students across the country write thousands of essays and dissertations. The vast majority of these pieces are read once, marked and forgotten about; yet so many of these pieces are the product of deep research into interesting and important legal issues. Further, even students who do endeavour to publish their work find there are limited pathways for doing so. Thus, the core purpose of reviving the journal was to provide a platform to publish and disseminate this insightful student scholarship that would otherwise never see the light of day. The other key purpose was to provide opportunities for students to get involved in working for a legal publication. As well as being a great outlet for improving various legal skills, it is a hugely rewarding experience working with a national team of students all passionate about the same cause.
Linking these two key purposes is the importance of our national identity. Existing opportunities for students to publish their work and to get involved in legal publishing ranged from limited at some universities to non-existent at others. The journal is the only New Zealand law journal in which any law student may publish their work on any topic, and for which students at any law school can get involved as board members or editors. This national identity is central to the journal’s purpose, and we hope the journal will grow to become a fixture at our six law schools.
In sum, we hope that the journal’s revival will foster engagement with and participation in legal research among law students from all across the country. As Justice Glazebrook notes in her foreword, this is invaluable, and we believe it adds such depth to a law student’s understanding of and passion for the law—irrespective of whether they go on to work in the industry or not.
This process of reviving the journal has been full of ups and downs, and with any project of this nature, countless moments of gratitude for those pouring their hearts into the journal as we have worked towards bringing it back to life. One of the most enjoyable parts of being editors-in-chief this year has been how many people have supported the journal and its mission. As such, we have many people to thank.
We owe particular thanks to the New Zealand Law Students’ Association, and especially 2023 President, Manraj Singh Rahi. The journal was originally associated with NZLSA, albeit rather loosely. We are pleased to have strengthened this relationship to solidify the longevity of the journal. The journal also nicely compliments NZLSA’s annual competitions by providing an outlet for students to showcase their academic, as opposed to practical, legal skills on a national stage. NZLSA has kindly sponsored the journal’s prize for best article—the New Zealand Law Students’ Association Prize for Legal Writing—which was presented this year to Lucille Reece for her excellent piece on codetermination on company boards and the benefits of implementing the concept in New Zealand. Without NZLSA’s support, none of this would have been possible.
Thank you to Justice Glazebrook for generously taking time from her busy schedule to write this year’s foreword. Justice Glazebrook was the perfect person to write the foreword, as the patron of NZLSA and a strong advocate for youth engagement in the legal sphere. We would also like to thank the wider legal community for maintaining an interest in the journal—it is with this interest that we are able to present this year’s issue and relaunch the journal. We particularly appreciate the academics from across all six law schools who provided peer review feedback on the articles, and the universities, firms and legal institutions who have added the journal to their collections.
Thank you also to everyone who submitted to the journal this year. We were delighted to receive over fifty submissions spanning an enormous range of topics—we had a great time and learned a lot reading all the submissions. Particularly, thanks are due to our authors, who put a lot of work into their pieces during the editing process, and who have set the tone for the quality of scholarship the journal aims to publish.
The journal team is divided into two parts: the Editing Team and the Editorial Board. The Editing Team is charged with maintaining the journal’s high editorial standards and ensuring the articles’ prose and citations are error free. This is a crucial task, and we hugely appreciate the effort and enthusiasm the Editing Team put into their work. Special thanks must be made to our managing editors—Gaige Nortje and George Sabonadière for style editing, and Blair Mumm and Samuel Blackwood for citation editing—who did an incredibly thorough job given the time frames involved. We are pleased that George and Samuel are taking over as co-editors-in-chief next year, and we’re excited to see the journal blossom under their leadership.
The Editorial Board mostly handles the administrative side of running the journal. The entire Board has worked tirelessly to strategically position ourselves back into the law journal market—and we are incredibly fortunate to have had input from a truly national team, with members from each of New Zealand’s six law schools. In many ways, the virtual working capabilities afforded by the post-COVID-19 environment has been a real blessing; it has never been easier to work alongside a team of students from across the country. The whole Board has put a huge amount of time and effort into bringing the journal back to life, and it has been an absolute pleasure working with them all. Thank you to Alexia Elvin, for her incredibly helpful secretarial skills and seamless oversight of the editing process; Amy Ding, for her marketing and design ability in crafting our online posts and presence; Caitlin Montford, for her work as treasurer in overseeing our finances and invoicing, a particularly crucial role in our first year back; James Macey, for his invaluable technical skills, particularly in updating the website and creating journal’s typesetting and interior design, and for his handling of the Sisyphean task of formatting all the documents accordingly; and Jessica Zhao and Lucy Beban, for their willingness as support officers to help out when things needed doing.
Lastly, we would like to particularly thank Megan Crosbie. Megan began the process of reviving the journal as NZLSA’s Education Vice-President in late 2022. Her intention had been to recruit the Editorial Board and leave us to it. But Megan’s passion for the journal was too valuable to let her stand aside, so the Board created a position for her—Operations Manager—from which she has since been the beating heart of the journal. Thank you, Megan, for your tireless work, collegiality, and friendship over the past year.
It has been so special to be a part of the journal’s journey—especially on this re-launch. In line with our vision, and alongside New Zealand’s other student-led journals, we can once again promote engagement with legal research among New Zealand’s law students and offer an avenue for students from across the country to contribute to the exciting legal scholarship of today.

Joshua George Oliver FHEA
Sydney, Australia

Finlay T T Dempster
Wellington, New Zealand

17 December 2023

[*] LLB(Hons), BCom Auck. Lawyer, Allen & Overy LLP, Sydney. Fellow, Higher Education Academy, United Kingdom. I would like to thank my family and partner for their unwavering support, encouragement and kindness—and in particular my late father Richard—this one’s for you. Thanks are also owed to my co-editor-in-chief, Finlay—our work together has been full of synergies, and very rewarding.

[†] LLB(Hons), BSc Wgtn. Law clerk, Crown Law, Wellington. In addition to everyone mentioned in this editorial, I would particularly like to thank my parents and partner for their love and support through university, and Josh as my fellow editor-in-chief—it’s been a pleasure working alongside you this year.