Edlene Miguel ’25 and Bani Sapra ’25 are the outgoing co-editors-in-chief of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, now celebrating its 40th anniversary.
Miguel previously worked as a software engineer, helping develop data-driven personalized healthcare platforms and applications used in medical diagnostics. Coming to law school to pursue a career in intellectual property and technology law, she hoped to continue working on the frontlines of groundbreaking technological advancements, leveraging her training as a computer scientist to help promote innovation.
Before law school, Sapra worked as a digital and magazine journalist covering nascent startups, emerging technologies, and (eventually) the global technology industry from the Bay Area and the Middle East. In this role, she encountered lawyers, scholars, and policymakers working at the intersection of law and technology and was thus ultimately inspired to work in this dynamic field.
Below, Miguel and Sapra reflect on the journal’s impressive 40-year legacy and their experience leading the journal at a time of dizzying advancements in technology — with the law scrambling to keep pace.
We both joined the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (BTLJ) in Fall 2022, drawn by the opportunity to critically engage with legal ideas alongside a strong and diverse technology law community. As first-year law students, we were excited to play a part in the country’s longest-standing technology law journal.
Three years later, it is our immense honor to celebrate the 40th anniversary of BTLJ, a journal that has played a pivotal role in shaping legal scholarship, advancing the careers of several authors, and defining the academic and professional journeys of countless UC Berkeley Law students.
Bold beginnings, lasting impact
BTLJ was founded in March 1985, back in the early days of the Internet, when technology law was largely synonymous with intellectual property law. Originally named the High Technology Law Journal, the journal’s entrepreneurial founding members recognized that the legal field would soon face novel questions posed by emerging technologies.
They published cutting-edge articles on genetic engineering, computer software copyrights, and even artificial intelligence — well before the AI craze hit mainstream media. A decade later, the journal adopted its current name to better reflect its focus on the ever-expanding, dynamic field of law and technology.
Forty years since its founding, BTLJ has grown from a bold student initiative into UC Berkeley Law’s largest journal and largest student group. This year, our membership exceeded 210 students — constituting more than 15% of the total law school student body.
We have published leading scholarship on everything from blockchain to the sharing economy to digital surveillance. Our articles have been cited in court decisions, shaping the law both within California and nationwide.
Thanks to our blog and podcast, our audience has also grown beyond judges, policymakers, practitioners, and academics to encompass any online user curious to learn about the intersection of law and technology.
Engaging with the present and the future
As BTLJ’s editors-in-chief, we hoped to champion meaningful scholarship while honoring the collective effort behind it. We set out to grow BTLJ as a journal and as a community, whether through expanding public-facing content on our online platforms, hosting cross-disciplinary events that foster important dialogue on current events, or refining our editorial processes to better serve both authors and student editors.
At the heart of every initiative was our shared belief that BTLJ is a uniquely collaborative organization where law students, legal thinkers, and technologists can shape the future of technology law together.
We are proud to have led BTLJ at a moment of profound technological change. As legal scholars have raced to understand how the law might govern innovations like generative AI, BTLJ has remained at the forefront of these conversations. The journal’s spirit of innovation has been especially apparent to us while publishing amid a supercharged technology revolution — we published articles that explore how advances in AI will affect disparate areas of law, including trade secrets, privacy, and national security.
Together with the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (BCLT), we hosted a symposium on AI governance that explored regulatory initiatives across jurisdictions, focusing on the tools and standards needed to ensure the safe and trustworthy development of artificial intelligence. This focus has resonated deeply with our readership — in fact, our two most popular podcast episodes this year explored AI’s intersections with music and democracy.
BTLJ also serves as a platform for elevating student voices and a vehicle for promoting student innovation, most notably through our Annual Review. By giving students the chance to explore emerging legal issues and publish original scholarship, the Annual Review has served as a springboard for over 550 aspiring academics and future practitioners.
Celebrating our community
More than anything, BTLJ has helped cultivate a vibrant, global community united by a shared commitment to the evolving intersection of law and technology. At our recent annual banquet, we were reminded that our community encompasses more than just our current student members — it includes our alumni, our faculty advisors, and BCLT.
Our alumni — who helped build BTLJ during their law school years — have continued to support the journal by serving as mentors, recruiting students to their current endeavors, and submitting articles to the journal. Our faculty advisors have also been generous with their mentorship and guidance, while BCLT continues to be instrumental in sustaining our growth over the years.
As we celebrate this 40-year milestone, we are filled with gratitude: for our peers, for our prior and future leadership, and for the enduring strength of this journal.
We look forward with optimism and excitement to all that the next 40 years will bring.