An update to the annual guide to submitting law review articles

If you didn't already know, Professors Nancy Levit and Alan Rostron (both of UMKC) have written the definitive nuts and bolts guide to submitting law review articles called, straightforwardly enough, Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals which is available on SSRN here.  Each year about this time the authors update their article in anticipation of the spring article submission season.  The following are some of the highlights of this latest version which was posted a few days ago:

First, as the authors have done each year, the charts in their article are updated (to the extent possible) to reflect what law reviews are not accepting submissions at the moment and what dates they say they'll resume accepting them.  Most of this information does not consist of specific dates because the journals themselves tend to post only imprecise statements in this regard. 

 

Second, the article notes the greater movement by some journals to using and preferring Scholastica instead of ExpressO or emails submissions: 29 (compared to 22 six months ago) journals prefer or strongly prefer Scholastica, 11 more list it as one of the acceptable alternatives for submitting an article and 18 (compared to 10 six months ago) now list Scholastica as the exclusive method of submission.  

 

Third, the article notes the law reviews that have changed their names since last update including: McGeorge Law Review which is now known as the Pacific Law Review, Thomas M. Cooley Law Review which is now known as the WMU-Cooley Law Review,  and William Mitchell Law Review which is now known as the Mitchell Hamline Law Review.

 

The first chart contains information about each journal’s preferred method for submitting articles (e.g., e-mail, ExpressO, Scholastica, or regular mail), as well as special formatting requirements and how to request an expedited review.  The second chart contains rankings information from U.S. News and World Report as well as data from Washington & Lee’s law review website.

 

Thanks to Professors Levit and Rostron for taking on this annual task.  Now get writing.

(jbl).