Thanks to being spearheaded by two Oxbridge-educated academics with experience in jurisprudence, Lex Academic is uniquely positioned to offer rigorous legal proofreading, copy-editing, indexing, and translation. Our CEO wrote her Cambridge PhD on Kant’s moral and legal philosophy, while our COO, Professor Constantine Sandis, has spent his career exploring the philosophy of action and legal reasoning. Together, we have guided legal scholars through every stage of the publishing process, from PhD theses and academic book proposals to papers now published in top-tier law journals, including the Cambridge Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Yale Law Journal, Modern Law Review, Law & Society Review, American Journal of Comparative Law, European Journal of International Law, Journal of Environmental Law, Human Rights Quarterly, and The International Journal of Constitutional Law.
Our clients have secured book contracts with prestigious publishers, including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Hart Publishing, Routledge, Bloomsbury, MIT Press, and Palgrave Macmillan, as well as winning competitive grants with the European Research Council, the British Academy, and other esteemed funding bodies. We understand the highly competitive nature of legal academia and have decades of experience steering legal scholars toward publication and career success. Our service is entirely discreet, with all work anonymised before being assigned to a specialist editor. We appreciate the unique nature of legal writing and strive to balance an academic’s distinctive style and voice with the demands of rigorous, clear, and authoritative scholarly communication.
With an esteemed team of over 100 rigorously tested legal and law editors, Lex Academic is the only author services company that assigns your manuscript to a specialist who understands jurisprudence, legal frameworks, and terminology relevant to your research. Whether you are working on constitutional law, human rights, criminal law, international law, environmental law, legal theory, or interdisciplinary areas like law and economics, your work will be handled by experts in the field.
All our editorial work is finalised in-house by PhD-educated professional copy editors who ensure your work is immaculately formatted for your target publication. Our powerful combination of academic legal expertise and the most exacting linguistic standards constitutes a proven formula for getting your work accepted for publication on the first submission.
Legal Copy-Editing
Legal copy-editing is the process of reviewing and revising legal documents, academic works, or other texts to ensure clarity, accuracy, and adherence to specific writing conventions. This involves:
- Correcting grammar and syntax:
- Fixing grammatical errors, typos, punctuation mistakes, and awkward sentence structures.
- Improving clarity and precision:
- Refining ambiguous language and ensuring the text conveys its intended meaning.
- Using legal terminology accurately.
- Ensuring consistency:
- Applying consistent terminology, style, and formatting across the document.
- Ensuring proper capitalization of legal terms, case names, statutes, and headings.
- Checking citations and references:
- Verifying the accuracy and format of legal citations, statutes, case law, and other references.
- Adhering to style guides:
- Following specific legal style guides (e.g., OSCOLA, Bluebook) to maintain the correct format.
OSCOLA Reference Editing and Formatting
The Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) is a widely used citation style in the UK and internationally for legal writing. OSCOLA editing and formatting involves ensuring that all references in a legal document comply with its standards. Key elements include:
- Primary sources:
- Cases: Formatting case names in italics and citing the correct neutral citation or law report (e.g., Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562).
- Legislation: Accurately citing statutes (e.g., Human Rights Act 1998, s 1).
- Secondary sources:
- Citing books, journal articles, and other legal materials accurately, including proper use of italics and punctuation.
- Example: A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (10th edn, Macmillan 1959).
- Footnotes and bibliography:
- Ensuring all references are formatted as footnotes using the correct OSCOLA structure.
- Creating a bibliography categorized by case law, legislation, and secondary sources.
- Locating missing DOIs and other structural aspects of OSCOLA sources.
- Quotations:
- Formatting short and long quotations according to OSCOLA’s guidelines (e.g., short quotes in quotation marks, long quotes as indented text).
Legal copy-editing and OSCOLA formatting are critical for producing polished, professional, and academically rigorous legal documents.
Get in touch
To enquire about our law proofreading services, as well as legal translation and indexing, please email editor@lexacademic.com or complete our short contact form. Your enquiry will be treated with the utmost confidence and we endeavour to reply within two hours.
Can we help with anything else?
Ensure your manuscript is submission-ready with our bespoke Indexing and Developmental Editing services. We are famous for purveying extraordinary academic proofreading, copy-editing, and developmental editing. Our impeccable author services include correcting all typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors. Where desired, we can make stylistic and substantive changes to your work that promise a powerful first impression with major publishers. Our authors have published with all of the top-tier publishing houses, including Bloomsbury, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Penguin, Peter Lang, Princeton University Press, and Routledge.
