About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The journal aims to promote and support the development of public legal education and to critically examine and share best practice. For these purposes PLE is interpreted broadly encompassing a wide range of activities aimed at educating members of the public in relation to legal rights and responsibilities affecting everyday lives, including Street Law and other legal literacy programmes. ‘Public’ is defined here to encompass those studying law in a formal setting including undergraduate and postgraduate students and individuals and groups who wish to know more about the law more generally, be it with or without academic credit. The latter may consist of one-off or short courses or public information campaigns aimed at raising awareness of legal issues.

The IJPLE is primarily concerned with-

  • the role of PLE as an instrument for community empowerment, access to justice and societal change;
  • the pedagogy of PLE including design, delivery and assessment;
  • PLE in a comparative context across the civil and common law worlds; and
  • empirical and theoretical research providing an evidence base for the educational and impact claims of PLE in relation to the various stakeholders involved including students, the educational institution and community partners.

Submissions are welcomed from all legal and educational jurisdictions and from allied fields and the journal particularly encourages contributions from early career academics and practitioners interested in PLE.

Peer Review Process

Reviewed articles (of up to 8,000 words each) will be blind peer-reviewed by two reviewers. Feedback from these reviews will be given to the author by the editor. Authors wishing to submit papers as Reviewed Articles will need to remove all identifying details from the paper before submission.

Publication Frequency

The International Journal of Public Legal Education publishes one or two issues per annum in Autumn and/or Spring.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This journal does not charge APCs or submission charges.

Articles are licenced with a CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Licence. 

You are free to:

  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

  • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

  • No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.