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COUNSEL submission guidelines

COUNSEL is the official magazine of the Bar of England and Wales. As the Bar’s own magazine, it is largely written by and for barristers.

We welcome unsolicited articles and ideas for consideration across all sections of our magazine: Legal Personality, Practice Toolset, Justice Matters and Bon Vivant. If you would like to submit an article or précis for consideration, please send to the commissioning editor of the magazine: elsa.booth.1@lexisnexis.co.uk.

If accepted for publication, authors will be e-mailed proofs for their approval and have the opportunity to make corrections prior to press/online publication. 

We ask for an exclusive right to first publication. Copyright rests with the Bar Council and re-publication of article PDFs, unless a variation is agreed in writing, is subject to an embargo and requires written permission. All articles are also posted online – currently free to view – at www.counselmagazine.co.uk. 

Please note, a distinguished Policy and Editorial Board, mainly drawn from the ranks of practising barristers, works with the editorial team on COUNSEL; they may be consulted from time to time regarding publishing decisions and points of law. 

Guidance notes for authors

The majority of articles will be published in the print version of COUNSEL. Depending on production schedules, some articles may be published online first, in addition to print, or online only.

Online, e-newsletter and social media ‘trails’ may be used to highlight and promote the online content and boost the profile of the authors. 

• The word lengths of our articles are 1,200 words (two pages in COUNSEL); 600 words (one page). Longer articles (1,500/1,800 words) by prior agreement. 
• Bar Council or Bar Standards Board guidance should be cited where relevant. 
• Articles should not be advertorial in tone or used overtly as ‘show cases’ for barristers, chambers, firms or organisations. 
• We do not run footnotes: please remove/incorporate footnotes before submitting any articles. 
• Hyperlinks will be converted to short links for print versions of articles.
• Authors should also supply a high-resolution author photograph and short biography of 30-50 words for our contributors’ page (including your Twitter handle if you would like this included in tweets).
• Articles from law students and pupil barristers will not generally be accepted – although this is subject to variation by agreement – unless co-written with a senior member of the Bar. 
• Cases should include full citations, preferably with a neutral or All ER reference. If a case is unreported please provide the hearing date. 
• There must be no reporting restrictions on case reports. 
• Any Article submitted to COUNSEL will be the original work of the Author, prepared without the use of large language models, machine learning models, generative artificial intelligence, or other similar AI technologies. Notwithstanding this, AI services may be utilised to assist in research and other ancillary activities which do not involve actual drafting of the Work. The Author must be the sole owner of all the rights Author grants to the Magazine.

If you would like to submit an article or précis for consideration, please send to the commissioning editor of the magazine: elsa.booth.1@lexisnexis.co.uk