While traipsing about town last week I came upon a new legal periodical, Legal Affairs. The magazine, a non-profit affiliated with Yale Law School, bills itself as "The Magazine at the Intersection of Law and Life." The magazine's take on the law isn't technical; the editors want to explore law in the context of culture and society. To see the general breadth of articles, check out their website. A few articles are online in their entirety.

There is actually quite a wide range of material here -- from a short piece on the recent outline/racism/free-speech controversy at Harvard, to a review of forensic science as science. I particularly liked an article on 19th century trial transcripts subtitled, "Bloated Bodies, Bigamous Love, and Other Literary Pleasures of the 19th-Century Trial Transcript." Generally good writing, but some might feel that the tone strikes a discordant note. At times I felt instead of reading an exploration of an issue someone was attempting to proselytize me, especially in the very short human interest stories.

Unfortunately for this magazine, it does have a lawyerly price tag -- a whopping $8.95 per bimonthly issue (yearly subscriptions are $49.95). To be fair, I must note that there were only 7 pages of advertisements in the entire magazine, including the back and inside covers (and a one-column ad for the magazine's legal counsel alongside the masthead). Then again, it had only 72 pages.

As there is such a yawning gulf between Law Reviews and the legal news that shows up in the paper, I thought this was a nice little addition in between. However, with little monetary incentive to subscribe, I'll pick it up on the newsstand when something interesting catches my eye.