Janu, Tamsin; Madden, Bill --- "Farewell Ren e Harris" [2019] PrecedentAULA 77; (2019) 155 Precedent 47

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RENÉE HARRIS

FAREWELL

After over 15 years as the ALA’s Publications Manager, and with 94 editions of Precedent under her belt, sadly this is Renée’s final edition. We know that she will bring the same excitement and sense of purpose to her retirement as she has brought to Precedent and the ALA. I will be moving into the Publications Manager role, and will carry the knowledge and fun that Renée has passed on along with me.

Renée joined the ALA in April 2004 after living and working in London for over 20 years. APLA had only just rebranded itself as the ALA and the journal had recently been renamed Precedent from Plaintiff, and upgraded from a duotone to full-colour magazine.

For her first seven years, Renée produced the journal single-handedly, leaning heavily on the editorial committee and her husband (who was occasionally put on proofreading duty). Renée’s most steadfast supporter has been Precedent’s designer Dr Tianli Zu, who has worked with the ALA since its inception.

While in recent years Renée has had the help of an assistant, it is no mean feat to put together a legal journal of 35,000‑–40,000 words every two months. And having to rely on the generosity of volunteer contributors means, as Renée often says, ‘one has absolutely no sticks and precious few carrots!’ While there is the expected sigh of relief when the latest edition hits desks, seeing the finished product has always given Renée a big thrill.

Renée has been a champion of the ALA house style and a stickler for grammar and punctuation – long-term Precedent editorial committee member Ngaire Watson has said that she is her ‘favourite word nerd’. But ever the pragmatist, Renée has also been mindful of authors’ voices and views, often telling me not to ‘die in a ditch’ over little style issues.

In addition to editing, Renée has spent a great deal of her time phoning editorial committee members, potential contributors, contributors running late with their copy, and a host of others who help to whip each edition into shape. It’s unusual for Renée not to have a potential author’s name at her fingertips, and her ability to reach out to people time and time again, building on relationships developed over many years, has been extremely valuable. Although she declares an ‘old-fashioned’ preference for communicating via phone, she also has the ‘friendly yet firm’ email down to a fine art.

One aspect of her work that Renée has very much enjoyed is selecting images for Precedent. Her aim has been to set Precedent apart from other legal journals: ‘some might think my choice of images in pursuit of this objective over the years a tad eccentric!’ Renée’s initial ‘theme’ suggestion for the Nov/Dec 2019 edition was that it would contain images exclusively of gargoyles. Unfortunately this didn’t come to pass, but I would’ve loved to see how Renée would have approached it – with her usual creative flair, I’d expect!

Vale, Renée – you will be missed!

Tamsin Janu is ALA Publications Assistant.

An editor’s role is a bit like that of a professional sports coach – the players get all the credit if all goes well, but the coach gets rapidly replaced if the runs are not on the board. With Renée in the chair, the runs have always been on the board. Getting content for a journal is never an easy task. I suspect that the main reason that the Precedent journal has continued to be published regularly and with good content (something which even the large publishers struggle with) has been her downright tenacious pursuit of submissions and promised deadlines. So far as I am aware, she has resisted the urge to visit contributors in order to chain them to a desk until the piece is written – but perhaps she has wanted to, on occasion, and rightly so. Clearly she has devoted a great deal of work, both personal and in ongoing strong collaboration with Tianli Zu on the design front and no doubt others who contributed to Precedent over many years. There is an old saying (footnotes omitted) that often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else – I am sure that will be the case for Renee. Though, she will insist on having a draft of the ‘something else’ four months before it is actually due ...

Bill Madden is an ALA member, former Managing Editor of Plaintiff (Precedent’s predecessor) and regular contributor.