Open Bench Submission Guidelines

What We’re Looking For

Open Bench welcomes submissions from UNH Franklin Pierce students interested in writing about the legal issues shaping the world around us. We are looking for thoughtful, timely, and accessible legal analysis that brings a student perspective to current events and emerging issues.

Our goal is to give students the opportunity to develop their own voices as legal writers while producing work that is well researched, factually accurate, and meaningful to our readers.

Open Bench is particularly interested in articles that examine:

  • Current events and emerging legal issues
  • Recent court decisions and developments in the law
  • The intersection of law with business, technology, fashion, sports, entertainment, culture, and society
  • New or evolving legal questions
  • The practical impact of legal developments on businesses, individuals, industries, or communities
  • Trends in the law and what they may mean going forward
  • Thoughtful analysis of legal issues that deserve greater attention

We are looking for analysis, not case briefs. A strong article should go beyond explaining what happened and explore why it matters.

Articles should have a clear point or takeaway and should be written for an informed reader who may not be an expert in the particular area of law.

Article Length

Keep it concise. Open Bench is designed for timely, accessible legal analysis—not lengthy academic papers. Articles should be written as engaging, focused reads that get to the point without sacrificing meaningful analysis.

As a general guideline, submissions should be no more than an 8-minute read, or approximately 1,500–2,000 words. Shorter pieces are welcome when the topic can be effectively covered in fewer words.

The goal is not to fill a page count. Say what matters, support it well, and leave the reader with something to think about.

Your Voice Matters

Open Bench is a student publication, and we want our contributors’ voices to come through.

Write in your own voice. We encourage students to take a position, ask questions, identify emerging issues, and offer thoughtful analysis. Your writing should sound like you, while maintaining a professional and well-supported approach.

Articles must remain non-partisan. Open Bench does not publish political advocacy or content written to promote or oppose a political party, candidate, or political ideology. Students may analyze politically significant legal issues, but the focus must remain on the law and the substance of the issue.

Being non-partisan does not mean avoiding difficult or controversial topics. It means approaching those topics through legal analysis, research, and evidence rather than political advocacy.

Research & Accuracy

Every Open Bench article must be well researched and factually supported.

Authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy of the facts, legal authorities, quotations, statistics, and other information included in their submissions.

Articles should:

  • Rely on credible and authoritative sources
  • Accurately describe cases, statutes, regulations, and other legal authorities
  • Support factual claims with appropriate sources
  • Clearly distinguish established facts from the author’s analysis
  • Avoid unsupported conclusions or speculation presented as fact
  • Provide sufficient context for readers to understand the issue

Opinions and analysis are welcome, but they must be grounded in facts and legal authority. An author’s conclusion should follow from the research and analysis presented in the article.

Citations & Hyperlinks

Open Bench uses embedded hyperlinks rather than traditional footnotes or endnotes. This approach is modeled in part on online legal publications such as IPWatchdog, which uses hyperlinks to allow readers to access cases, statutes, reports, studies, and other supporting materials directly.

Authors should hyperlink relevant sources throughout the article, wherever a reader would benefit from being able to access the underlying material.

Links should be used for:

  • Court decisions and opinions
  • Statutes and regulations
  • Government documents and reports
  • Academic studies and research
  • News articles and other reporting
  • Statements or interviews being referenced
  • Relevant company, organization, or institutional sources
  • Other materials relied upon to support factual or legal claims

Whenever possible, link directly to the original or most authoritative source rather than a secondary source discussing it.

For example, when discussing a court decision, link directly to the opinion when an accessible version is available. When discussing a statute or regulation, link to the relevant government or official source when possible.

Do not simply include a list of sources at the end of the article. Sources should be incorporated naturally into the article through relevant hyperlinks.

AI & Originality Policy

Open Bench is committed to publishing student voices and original student work.

Submitted articles must be written by the student author. Generative AI may not be used to write, rewrite, or substantially generate an article submitted to Open Bench.

Students may use ordinary tools for limited purposes such as spelling, grammar, or formatting assistance, but the substance, analysis, organization, and writing of the article must come from the student.

AI tools should not be used to:

  • Generate all or substantial portions of an article
  • Rewrite an article into a substantially different voice
  • Generate legal analysis or conclusions presented as the student’s own
  • Create or fabricate citations, sources, quotations, cases, statistics, or other factual material
  • Conduct research that the student has not independently verified
  • Submit AI-generated work as original student writing

Students are responsible for everything they submit. If a source, quotation, case, statistic, or other fact is included in an article, the author must independently verify it.

Open Bench reserves the right to request clarification about an article’s research or writing process and may decline to publish work that does not reflect the student’s own writing and analysis.

Original Work

Submissions should be original work written specifically for Open Bench and should not have been previously published elsewhere.

Students should disclose any significant prior publication or submission of substantially similar work to the editorial team.

Editorial Review

All submissions are subject to review by the Open Bench editorial team.

Editors may provide feedback or request revisions relating to:

  • Accuracy
  • Organization
  • Clarity
  • Legal analysis
  • Sources and hyperlinks
  • Grammar and style
  • Length or relevance
  • Compliance with Open Bench’s editorial standards

Publication decisions are made by the Open Bench editorial team. Submission does not guarantee publication.

Our goal is not simply to correct a paper. We work with authors to help turn strong ideas into thoughtful, polished, and publishable pieces.

The Bottom Line

A strong Open Bench article should be:

Timely. Well researched. Factually supported. Thoughtful. Non-partisan. Original. And unmistakably your own.

If you have an idea but aren’t sure whether it is a good fit, pitch it to the Open Bench editorial team before you start writing. We would rather help you develop a strong idea than have you wonder whether it belongs.