An internet-based example of service learning,[2] Jurist gives its law student staffers ongoing opportunities to broaden their awareness of current legal events and develops their research and writing skills in a 21st-century technological environment while they serve the public as apprentice journalists.

[14] In 1998, Jurist – still just Hibbitts and a couple of law student assistants who happened to have technical skills - began pivoting to respond to pressing public demand for authoritative and timely information on the legal aspects of rapidly-developing current issues.

Jurist provided extended research and organized academic commentary on the Clinton impeachment crisis, the Kosovo War, the 2000 US presidential election recount and terrorism law and policy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

By 2003, Jurist had been reconceptualized as a new kind of news service fusing academic research and legal journalism[15][16] and ceased functioning as a scholarly archive, leaving that mission to SSRN, Bepress and other up-and-coming commercial repositories.

Hibbitts and his assistants recruited a staff of some 25 law students from the University of Pittsburgh to begin reporting and documenting national and international news in real-time, supplemented by the invited contributions of expert academic commentators.