Shift the conversation. Ctrl+Alt+Law is now accepting submissions.
What we publish
Crtl+Alt+Law publish blogs and insights which are topical to Legal Tech and timely. The difference between blogs and insights essentially boils down to tone and content.
Blogs:
Blogs are more often conversational, entertaining and story-driven, so their purpose complements those who have relevant personal stories or would like to make ‘how-to’ guides, for example. Think LinkedIn post, but elevated since fact-checking is still a requirement.
Have you been to a talk recently that you feel has some relation to legal tech? Have you experienced working at start-ups and want to publish what you have learnt? Do you want to make a thought-piece or casual commentary about the field with more excitement or concern than analysis? Do you have any handy tips and tricks as to how other students can code or prompt tools? Consider blogging.
Examples might be:
Experiences: ‘What I learnt at LegalTechTalk 2025.’ or ‘Key legal tech takeaways from interning at XYZ.’ or ‘Why Law students should experience working at start-ups.’
Opinions: ‘GenAI is impacting the critical thinking skills of trainee lawyers.’ or ‘Nothing beats the human touch: client sentiments towards AI will need to change within ‘PeopleLaw’.’
How-to’s: ‘How to build the best legal tech stack.’ or ‘How to prompt GenAI to actually get the responses you need.’
See how the examples are conversational and opinion-driven? Not only will this help create conversation and community, but it’s a low-stakes method to show employers that you value your experiences and are willing to play an active role in using your knowledge transformatively. Blogs present your authenticity by being a reflective medium of communication.
Insights:
Insights often adopt a formal and analytical tone, but this is not necessary to fulfil their purpose. The purpose of an insight is to demonstrate subject-matter expertise, so content is better suited towards analysing market trends, perhaps even to make propositions, or making case commentaries and legal updates.
Stylistically, insights require succinctness and conciseness to communicate complex ideas and propositions which rely upon researched facts and case-law. This is where a conversational tone might require sacrifice for clarity. Fact-finding is integral to insights to facilitate analysis which is more objective and niche than blogs. Footnotes and citations add credibility where due.
Examples might include:
‘Offer, acceptance and consideration: exploring the enforceability of smart contracts’
‘Implications of the Digital Markets Act for UK-based start-ups’
‘A comparative analysis of the cross-jurisdiction regulation of AI’
‘A critical examination of the socio-legal impact of AI-driven legal assistance’
‘Cybersecurity in legal tech: a technical overview’
Insights demonstrate initiative, criticality, expert commercial awareness, effective communication and builds a public, professional brand of thought leadership. Additionally to having a concrete publication to demonstrate these characteristics, the in-depth research conducted may continue holding relevance during interviews. At the least, insights are a method of bridging theory and practice to synthesise course-content and develop fluency.
We welcome submissions which sit on the fence between blogs and insights, but at their core, they must relate to Legal Tech.
Please refer to existing, introductory publications to clarify what Legal Tech is. Crtl+Alt+Law recognise that broader regulatory issues pertaining to tech, data, surveillance, AI etc. are relevant to legal tech. Please consciously relate such broad commentary back to Legal Tech even if this is speculative since the field is still evolving.
Who can submit?
We welcome submissions from all KCL students, even if you are not enrolled on a law-related course. This is to reflect that Legal Tech is a cross-disciplinary endeavour which requires such collaboration.
Editorial & Publishing Policies
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To eliminate bias when selecting publishable works, your submissions will be subject to a double-blind peer review process before being selected. This means that any identity markers will be concealed from reviewers until the selection process is finalised.
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To protect authors and others original content, we only accept unpublished works. If your work is being considered for publication elsewhere, you must notify us of this. In making a submission, you must declare exactly who has written it to confirm that it is your own work or a collaborative effort with other named persons. Where relevant, citations must be used to reflect others’ ideas and works.
As a Legal Tech society, it would be counter-productive to dissuade the use of Generative AI tools during your research and editorial process. We remind you to be conscious that AI is a tool so should not be the sole author of final content. Your voice, originality of thought and criticality is valuable to creating a diverse and representative platform.
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The only personal information that we require in making your submission is your name and KCL email. We do not require any sensitive personal information. We will not share this information with any third-parties outside of the KCL Legal Tech Committee and upon request, with teaching staff. Your name will be used upon publication, but we can pseudonymise or anonymise your identity upon request. Your personal information will still remain as part of our data. This can be removed from our database upon request if you no longer consent to your work being published – you must notify us of this decision prior to being published and not after.
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Authors retain full copyright over their work so may use published material again without KCL Legal Tech Society’s permission. In making a submission, author(s) grant us permission and license to publish their work and exclusively reproduce and/or distribute the work in electronic form, or another medium. This might be in the form of social media posts.
All publications are open to be quoted, downloaded, printed or redistributed freely. Publications may be given to third parties without permission with acknowledgement of the author(s) and to KCL Legal Tech Society.
Formatting
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Abstract and Images
A short abstract or summary of the blog/insight will be required for publishing purposes. It is recommended (but not essential) that you include images in your submission to keep it engaging and dynamic.
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Format
Please ensure your submission is double-spaced, in at least 12pt and in an easily legible font to help our reviewers read through easily. If your work will be chosen for submission, it will be published on our website in a form that the committee and author(s) deem best suited to the submission.
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Referencing
You must reference all sources used in Vancouver style. This is essentially where a bracketed number is used in-text where a reference is required which corresponds to a numbered list at the end of the work containing full details of the source. Please refer to previously published materials for examples.
Please cite all websites, journal articles, books, images etc.
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Word Count
We aim to provide short, digestible blogs and insights for our audience of students to read amongst their busy schedules. Please be conscious of this in making a submission. Our recommended word count is between 1000-1500 words (excluding footnotes), but we will still consider submissions that do not meet this range.
Submission
Please make your submission through this form:
You will be asked to provide the following information:
Category of work being submitted: blog, insight, or unsure.
Title
Full name(s) of author(s)
KCL email – you will be contacted via this email
Current academic year and course (eg First Year, Second Year etc.)
Word Count (excluding references list)
1 short, thumbnail-style sentences summarising your submission.
After you submit
After you submit your work through our form, your work will be reviewed by an editor and a peer-reviewer. After this process, you will be contacted with an outcome. This could be the following:
Your work has not been accepted for submission this semester, and we will justify why. Please do not be discouraged and feel free to submit again in future semesters!
Your work has been accepted for publication but requires some additional work. Our team will work with you via email or another preferred form of contact to optimise your work before it passes to a peer reviewer and is then published.
Your work has been accepted for publication and is ready to be published as is.
