As in almost any field, so too in law, writing a brilliant work does not guarantee an audience. You must also find a publisher. Senior scholars publish their work in books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and various other fora, but to get a legal academic job (and, for the most part, to get tenure in that job), you need to publish in law journals, most of which are student-edited.
There are exceptions. If you have an advanced degree in another field, you may be hired by a law faculty with the expectation that your work will appear in the scholarly journals in that field. In addition, some law journals are faculty-edited, and publishing in these journals is prestigious. (Faculty-edited journals typically adhere to the custom in other fields: you can only submit your piece to one journal at a time; for a beginning scholar, this makes writing "on spec" for a faculty-edited journal a very risky proposition, because by the time the journal decides whether to publish your paper, it may be too late to submit to other, student-edited journals.)
The following tips apply to publication in student-edited law journals.
1. Timing. Authors should submit articles during the two recognized seasons, Spring season and Fall season. Spring season begins around mid-March and lasts through April. Fall season goes from mid-August through the end of September.
In the spring, journals fill their fall books. In the summer, many journals don't read any pieces. In the fall, they fill the spring books. If you have a choice, you would do better to submit in the spring, because the journals have more slots available.
Authors will probably be soliciting comments on pieces, so should plan to be ready at least a month before the season starts. A working schedule might look like this: February 5 - complete draft. Feb. 6 - send to faculty mentors for comment. Feb. 24 - receive comments back. Feb. 25-March 5 - incorporate suggested changes and edits from comments. March 6 - prepare and send out to journals.
2. Expedited review. The typical route is to submit to a large number of journals (50, 75, or even 100). Authors should do this even if they don't particularly want to publish with the lower-end journals. The reason is expedited review. When an author receives an offer from one journal, she will be given a deadline, typically 2 weeks for journals outside the top 50 though frequently significantly shorter. Indeed, some journals give authors as little as a day or even an hour to decide whether to take the offer.
The offer and deadline are the key to expedited review, which is how to be noticed at top journals. The author should immediately contact other journals (ones she thinks are preferable to the current offer) and ask them for "expedited review" -- i.e., an answer before the deadline.
Example: An author receives an offer from the East Virginia Law Review, which she has listed at #80 on her list. She contacts journals 1 (Harvard or Yale) through 70 (say the West Dakota Law Journal) on her list and requests expedited review.
For an unknown author, expedited review is practically the only way to get the attention of high-end journals. These journals may receive over 2,000 articles in a year. Expedited review is purportedly a deadline-related courtesy (an author telling the journal about an impending deadline). In reality, it is used as a de facto screening device. This real function derives from two causes. First, expedited articles are simply read first because they have deadlines, forcing Articles Editors to read them. So, expedites tend to get picked up more often simply because they are read first.
Second and perhaps more importantly, there is a widespread (though not unanimous) belief among many Articles Editors at high-end journals that if a piece couldn't get an offer from a lower-prestige journal, it's not likely to be worth a spot at the fancier journal. Because this belief is so prevalent, authors should not hesitate to re-expedite. I.e., the author should call and ask for expedited review with the original East Virginia offer, and then call again a few days later to inform journals 1-30 of her new
Southern Oregon offer and changed deadline. Again, the purported reason for this is courtesy and timing ("I'm letting you know about my new deadline") but the real reason is to show off the new offer for editors who may see an expedite offer as a signal of article quality.
3. Submissions nuts and bolts.
a. Electronic Submission. Many journals now prefer that you submit your manuscript electronically via their website.Some only accept submissions this way.You should use the journals’ own websites if they prefer that method of submission.This will save you money because it’s free.
Most journals also (and in some cases only) accept submission electronically via the submissions services offered by http://law.bepress.com/expresso/ .When you first sign up you get some free deliveries, and thereafter it’s $2/journal, which is considerably cheaper than duplicating and mailing. It's also a time-saver because you can do it all without ever leaving your desk. You should use ExpressO for journals that accept such deliveries but lack their own web submission system.
For other journals (of which there are very few, and fewer still each year), you should be prepared to submit via snail mail.A very helpful list of law review addresses and submission policies can be found at http://www.law.suffolk.edu/library/lawrev/submission.cfm
b. Format. Journals sometimes say that they want submissions to be double-spaced, triple spaced, endnoted, etc. You cannot possibly comply with all the different formatting requirements without spending an enormous amount of time that would be better spent on the substance of your article.In fact, most or all editors will be happy with either standard double-spaced formatting or, preferably, "book page" formatting (i.e., tinkering with the margins, font size, and presentation until the page looks like a book page from a law review.). At the very least, articles should be bluebooked properly and in standard-type font (Times New Roman, 12 point, and footnotes in either 12 or 10 point).
c. Cover Letter and C.V. The cover letter should give a nice (but short!) synopsis of the article and why it matters. Cover letters can also be used to explain any helpful background, especially for articles on topics which may be unfamiliar to editors ("This article addresses a hitherto unnoticed false assumption in the debate over the domestic status of customary international law.")It is also a good idea to include a c.v. along with your cover letter.
d. Polished Draft. Most editors want to see a finished piece, not a working paper. Half-articulated notes and edits should be excised. The author will of course want to keep track of what further research needs to be done, but written indications of future research or development (a footnote that reads "Add cite to Dworkin and Glendon, discuss Dworkin's theory on Rawls and natural rights approach") should be cut, or given a placeholder cite for the time being.
e. Which Journals? To which journals should you submit? A standard tactic is to use the US News list of law schools. (An alternative is the Leiter rankings, but they don't go past 50. (http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/rankings ).) Authors should also submit to specialty journals.A crude rule of thumb states that the specialty journal of a law school ranked X is roughly equal in prestige to a flagship journal of a law school ranked X+20.There are significant exceptions, especially in some fairly technical fields, where particular specialty journals may be as prestigious as or even more prestigious than flagship journals.Consult with faculty in the field if you are uncertain whether to accept a publication offer from a specialty journal or a flagship journal.(At the submission stage, you can err on the side of inclusion.)
f. Requesting Expedited Consideration. When expediting, authors should attach an electronic copy if they are making the expedite request by e-mail (unless the journal specifically says not to). That way the Executive Articles Editor can print it out if she wants to, rather than digging through a stack of submissions, muttering under her breath as she tries to find the copy that was filed away a month ago. Authors should always make it as easy as possible for the AE's to read their article.
[The foregoing tips are adapted from a document originally prepared by Kaimipono Wenger.]
