While Caitlin Toto ’18 and KG Gasseling ’18 were remaking Boston College Law Review during their 3L year, they got a boost from the previous editorial team when it was announced by Washington and Lee School of Law that the journal had risen one slot and was ranked twenty-first in the country.
The two new editors-in-chief were tasked with taking the review to the next level by overhauling operations, combining staffs, and consolidating the Environmental Law Review, the International & Comparative Law Review, and the Journal of Law & Social Justice into the flagship Boston College Law Review. The merger expanded the journal’s output from five issues per year to eight, allowed for greater article selectivity and a less Balkanized journal program, and boosted the number of student notes and comments published in print and online.
There were personal rewards as well. Gasseling’s attention to detail “skyrocketed” as did the ability to get colleagues to work together. Toto discovered a knack for managing meetings and grew comfortable speaking to groups of students. But for all the business skills they developed and deployed to launch the new journal, Gasseling said, “the most important role we filled was setting a good tone for how people should treat others.”