From EIC to EIC, an Interview with Ryan Palmer, the First Editor-in-Chief of the St. Thomas Law Journal, About the Creation of the Law Journal

Julia Abreu Siufi*

“Any structure must be built on a solid foundation and the cornerstones of the foundation are the most significant part of it.”¹

The University of St. Thomas School of Law was founded in 1999.² Since its founding, it has thrived, and it is now ranked as number 98 in the country.³ A few years after it was founded, the St. Thomas Law Journal was created, becoming the flagship journal for the law school. This year marks the Journal’s twenty-first anniversary.  

Ryan Palmer was the Journal’s first Editor-in-Chief.⁴ He is currently a partner at the law firm Lathrop GPM, working in the Minneapolis office.⁵ To celebrate the Journal turning twenty-one years old, I interviewed Palmer to talk about the Journal’s first year and the foundational work that was done by him and his team in establishing a new journal in a new law school.⁶

“It was one of those things that just kind of felt right to be honest,”⁷ said Palmer about why he chose to go to St. Thomas, a newly created law school.⁸ After the first week, he said he felt it was the right decision, and he is still in touch with a lot of people that attended law school with him—people that were part of the first class.⁹

When asked how the Journal was then, he highlighted how at first it did not exist and then explained how it was created:¹⁰

I think it was the summer between our first and second years that we got letters saying they were going to start this law review, so we just went through an internal process to figure out leadership, and structure, and all of that. Liz Corken and I went to a conference to figure out what a law review was and how to run it, and then just [] put things in place based on [what] a number of other helpful schools and editors had told us.¹¹

Back then, the Journal’s advisor was Professor Berg.¹² Palmer highlighted how Professor Berg was essential in the formation of the Journal, dedicating many hours to provide them with guidance.¹³ Another Professor that assisted the Journal that first year was Professor Reid, who helped set up the first symposium.¹⁴ The first symposium was successful, and it even “turned out to be this giant symposium with all these people coming to town.”¹⁵ Ultimately, this was “how we started it, it was a lot of just kind of feeling our way through the dark and relying a lot on outside resources to help us.”¹⁶

Nowadays, Board Members for the St. Thomas Law Journal are elected to their board positions in the spring of their second years of law school and officially start their positions during the summer between their second and third years. Back then, however, Palmer and his Board started their positions halfway through their second year, as they were also responsible for setting up the Journal’s structure.¹⁷

When discussing how he became the Editor-in-Chief, Palmer gave credit to his journalism background in choosing to be in the position.¹⁸

I had this desire to keep working on writing and researching and doing it in a deeper way, because that is one of the elements of journalism that just really appealed to me, was kind of the long form of storytelling. So, I felt like it was a way to build a publication that could do that, although in an academic setting. And I had been the editor of our college paper, so I kind of knew what it took to do, what it took to publish something.¹⁹ 

In addition to setting up the publication process, Palmer and his Board also set up the structure of the Journal, including what each Board position would be responsible for and what the membership of the Journal would look like.²⁰ To set this foundation, they attended conferences, researched what other journals did, talked to other editors, discussed decisions with Professor Berg, and, of course, also learned from their experiences during that first year.²¹ “All of those things that now just exist, and people don’t think about it too much, we had to spend a lot of time putting [them] in place.”²²

He also discussed the choice of having the Law Journal be a symposium-based journal, noting that the goal was to attract the right talent and the right people to publish in it—and how it felt that having it be a symposium-based journal was the best way to do so.²³

Palmer emphasized that the key goals of the Journal that first year were ensuring that “we had a process that worked, making sure that we were cemented within the University, and then also making sure we could run a symposium where people would show up, we could meet our budget, and that we could get the Journal turned around and published in a timely manner.”²⁴ Other goals, such as setting up an electronic workflow system or developing an online presence, were ideas that they also had back then, but simply ran out of time to develop.²⁵ Those ideas, however, were not lost, and have since been implemented by the classes that followed them.²⁶

Since its first year, the Law Journal has published sixty-one issues, with three more issues coming out this 2024–25 academic year.²⁷ The solid foundation of the Journal is due to the work of Ryan Palmer and the first-year Journal members, who set up a great system—one which has been successful and has worked for the past two decades. Our Journal is thankful for all their contribution in setting up such a wonderful system, which has enabled us to continue the work of providing the University of St. Thomas School of Law with an avenue for developing scholarship. 

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*Julia Abreu Siufi, J.D. Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law Class of 2025, Editor-in-Chief of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.

1. Craig Impelman, How Coach Wooden Created the Pyramid of Success, Wooden Effect (Mar. 15, 2017), https://www.thewoodeneffect.com/creating-the-pyramid-of-success/ [https://perma.cc/89SD-L6U2]. ↩︎
2. About the School of Law, Univ. St. Thomas Sch. L., https://law.stthomas.edu/about/index.html [https://perma.cc/CGY6-ZA4S] (last visited Mar. 2, 2025, 7:23 PM CST). ↩︎
3. University of St. Thomas, U.S. News,https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/university-of-st-thomas-03191#:~:text=Law%20%26%20Specialties%20Rankings-,University%20of%20St.,widely%20accepted%20indicators%20of%20excellence [https://perma.cc/WRZ8-PZPC] (last visited Apr. 15, 2025, 7:25 PM CST). ↩︎
4. Zoom Interview with Ryan R. Palmer, J.D., Partner, Lathrop GPM (Oct. 21, 2024) (on file with author) [hereinafter Interview with Ryan Palmer]. ↩︎
5. Ryan R. Palmer, Lathrop GPM, https://www.lathropgpm.com/team/Ryan-Palmer/ [https://perma.cc/QU8E-W5SW] (last visited Mar. 2, 2025, 7:35 PM CST). ↩︎
6. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
7. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
8. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
9. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
10. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
11. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. Elizabeth Corken, in the interview referred to as “Liz Corken,” was the first Managing Editor for the St. Thomas Law Journal. University of St. Thomas Law Journal, Univ. St. Thomas Sch. L.,https://law.stthomas.edu/student-life/get-involved/university-of-stthomas-law-journal/ [https://perma.cc/NZ7L-FEB5] (last visited Mar. 2, 2025, 7:37 PM CST). ↩︎
12. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
13. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
14. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
15. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
16. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
17. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
18. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
19. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
20. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
21. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
22. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
23. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
24. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
25. Interview with Ryan Palmer, supra note 4. ↩︎
26. Since then, for example, the Law Journal has been able to expand its online presence by creating a blog. See University of St. Thomas Law Journal Blog, Univ. St. Thomas L.J. Blog, https://ustlawjournal.blog/blog/ [https://perma.cc/A59N-53R8] (last visited Mar. 2, 2025, 7:43 PM CST). ↩︎
27. Past Issues Law Journal, Univ. St. Thomas Sch. L., https://law.stthomas.edu/student-life/get-involved/university-of-stthomas-law-journal/past-issues/index.html [https://perma.cc/N2VK-XXV2] (last visited Mar. 2, 2025, 7:45 PM CST). ↩︎