Academic Activities

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Legal Workshops

Let’s go into practice

LLegal workshops are a significant part of ELSA. Participants get the opportunity to actively participate in discussions and lectures on a specific topic or area of law, which are held by our partner law firms.

The workshop is followed by a get-together where students have the opportunity to exchange contacts with lawyers and partners.

Legal Lectures

Expand your legal knowledge and soft skills

By academic lectures and practice days, ELSA Austria gives students of law and business law the opportunity to learn about various legal topics in depth and to have their questions answered by professionals from the field. Legal lectures are held on highly topical subjects such as cyber law.

Legal Insights

Get to know your future employer at lunch

At the Legal Insights, students have the opportunity to get a first insight into everyday legal life, especially at Breakfast@Law events. A Breakfast@Law gives students an insight into the law firm hosting such an event in a cozy atmosphere during breakfast and to network with the partners of the law firm as well as with each other.

ELSA Law Review

A law review is a legal journal on a certain legal topic, usually organized by students for students. With the ELSA Austria Law Review, ELSA Austria’s main objective is to promote the “legal-writing-skills” of students and to give them the opportunity to participate in Austria’s academic and legal-political discourse at an early age. Furthermore, it is a considerable advantage to be able to include in one’s CV a publication in a law journal at the beginning of one’s career or even before that, which is then published by the Federal Ministry of Justice, is available in all university libraries and is sent to all partner law firms.

The origin of this format lies in the Anglo-American area. Most universities in America have their own law review. The oldest was found at the University of Pennsylvania, which was published in 1852. National groups like ELSA Poland, ELSA Slovakia, ELSA Malta, etc. continue with this project. The tradition of the ELSA Austria Law Review (EALR) is not so long – the idea to launch one in Austria was born in 2014. The first edition of the EALR was dedicated to the topic “Internationality and Law” and was presented for the first time at the Federal Ministry of Justice on 27 October 2016. Since then, the EALR has dealt with issues such as antitrust and competition law, the ErbRÄG and reforms, which will soon be presented at the Federal Ministry of Justice.

Procedure of the ELSA Law Review

Phase I: Preparation & Submission of Papers

In preparation, the VP AA of ELSA Austria plans the entire course of the project. This involves defining the topic, formulating and sending out the calls, both for positions on the Editorial Board and for contributions, recruiting professors who teach the relevant area of law or other specialists for the EALR, contacting Verlag Österreich as a publishing partner and the BMJ as a cooperation partner, setting provisional deadlines, revising existing files such as citation rules, etc. , together with the Editorial Board.

Phase II: Review

In this phase, the Editorial Board checks the contributions against the internally defined and formal requirements for the Law Review (compliance with formal requirements, plagiarism check,. . . ). Subsequently, the content of the academic paper is examined by experts in the relevant field (the professors or other specialists mentioned above). All changes, both in form and content, are marked with mark-ups and returned to the authors for correction. The Editorial Board therefore does not make any changes to the text independently.

Phase III: Processing and printing phase

This will include the best of the final finished articles, as well as forewords, editorials, general information, cover, etc. processed into a coherent file, which is then sent to Verlag Österreich for printing.

Phase IV: Publication

Finally, the work should also be worthwhile and the EALR should be publicised. The respective VP AA can then decide whether he/she plans to have a publication ceremony or just send it out to university libraries, partners, etc. to give the EALR a wider reach. The EALR has been in operation since its 2. Edition also regularly included in the e-library of Verlag Österreich. Under the following link all articles of the last EALR editions are available: https://elibrary.verlagoesterreich.at/search?query=&search-what=&search-within=&facet%5Bpath_journals%5D=EALR%20-%20ELSA%20Austria%20Law%20Review%401

ELSA Legal Research Group

The Legal Research Group (LRG) is a project of ELSA International, whereby national groups can participate as research groups. A list of questions is drawn up on a specific topic which needs to be worked out. The working language of this project is English and the aim is to establish an international comparison of laws. Finally, it is the aim of each national research group to submit a “Final Report” with the questions elaborated under national law to ELSA International in time for a legal comparison to be drawn up. More information to LRG (positions, procedure, questionnaire, etc) can be found at https://legalresearch. elsa. org.

For the participation in a national group in the LRG, there is a “selee board”, i. e. different positions apart from the National Board, which must be filled so that a national research group can actually participate in the LRG. This “own board” consists of:

National Cooridinator

The National Cooridinator is responsible for the contact between the national research group and ELSA International. The National Coordinator is usually the VP AA of the respective National Board. However, if such a person is not elected or if another person wants to take over this role, it is also possible for someone else to take over this position.

National Academic Coordinator

The National Academic Coordinator is responsible for internal communication among the National Researchers. His task is to set up internal deadlines and to support the researchers with advice and assistance on content-related questions.

National Researcher

The National Researchers are the people who come up with the above mentioned list of questions. The questionnaire is prepared by ELSA International and can be accessed in advance for all national research groups on the homepage of the LRG.

National Linguistic Editors

The task of the National Linguistic Editors is to ensure the quality of Legal English, because it is an international research project and the working language is English. Thus the National Linguistic Editors are responsible for the linguistic review of the searches.

National Academic Supervisors

The National Academic Supervisor is responsible for researcher content issues. National Academic Supervisors should be individuals with sound and professional knowledge in the particular area where the LRG is concerned with and also be able to provide academic feedback to the researchers on their work.