Kawsar Mahmood
Bangladesh Law Review (BDLR) has been introduced to fill the research gap in the legal field“Law Review” commonly stands for a law journal published and run by students of law schools. However, with a view to setting up a common platform for creative legal minds, a group of young legal professionals in Bangladesh have pulled themselves together to advance legal research with the name “Bangladesh Law Review (BDLR).”
In this historical month of March, they are set to unveil the official website of this new online law journal (
www.bdlawreview.org) that offers a flexible outlet especially for students and recent graduates to publish original articles, commentaries, notes, news and debates on timely legal topics. Eminent jurists and recognised authors will also be invited to join the discourse on jurisprudential philosophy and principles.
The founders are mainly proficient legal professionals, but they believe themselves to be life-time law learners. As major contributions are expected from law students and larger readership is based on different law schools from all over the country, the popular appellation “Law Review” is justly embodied in Bangladesh Law Review. Although the name may sound unconventional, but it strongly signifies the purposes of the law review.
Think of any popular law school – Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Stanford, and Chicago – and you hardly find any of them without any associated journal. These journals and/or reviews are as popular and reputed as the schools are.
Although advocacy is all about speaking, it is writing that largely characterises the legal profession. Good writing and articulate speaking require extensive command over the language. Editing, proof reading and source checking trains how to pay attention to details and are essential skills that every profession requires. Law reviews have been, discernibly, serving their respective law students in this regard for a long time.
But unfortunately, in our country, the importance of such law reviews was not felt much earlier until Dhaka Law Review (DHLR) came to exist – the initiators deserve appreciation for their challenging drive with the students of Dhaka University Law Faculty.
Furthermore, as the Bangladeshi education system is failing to facilitate, our law students themselves seldom feel the necessity for research. Moreover, our mainstream law journals are mainly focusing on receiving submissions from awarded authors. Hence, our young professionals and recent graduates are completely underestimated in contributing legal scholarship and advocating policy reform.
BDLR has emerged to ameliorate these big conundrums. It is an avenue for individual development that will eventually culminate into research advancement in Bangladesh. As the legacy of online legal journalism and trend of law review is still in the embryo in our country, BDLR comes to lead on. Looking forward, popularisation of research may be a daunting task, but an easily accessible platform for publication is set to be flourished immediately.
Kawsar Mahmood is Legal Executive, Grameenphone Ltd and Executive Editor, BDLR.
See more at:
http://www.dhakatribune.com/juris/2015/mar/28/new-law-review-agitate-legal-minds#sthash.hUzuVj02.dpuf
