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Faculty Scholarship Support

The purpose of this guide is to assist law school faculty in the production and promotion of their scholarly activities.

General Guidelines for the Submission Process

Allen Rostron & Nancy Levit, Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals (Updated Annually)
This article is a comprehensive guide to submission methods, requirements, and contact information for approximately 200 law reviews and journals. It contains two charts useful for the law review/journal article submission process. The first chart contains information gathered from the journals' websites about the following topics:  

  • Methods for submitting an article (such as by e-mail, ExpressO, Scholastica, or regular mail)
  • Any special formatting requirements
  • How to request an expedited review
  • How to withdraw an article after it has been accepted for publication elsewhere

The second chart contains information about rankings of the journals and the law schools associated with them.

Nancy Levit, Scholarship Advice for New Law Professors in the Electronic Age, 16 Widener L.J. 947 (2007)
Detailed discussion of the submission process and related issues for law professors.

Scott Dodson & Jacob Hirsch, A Model Code of Conduct for Student-Edited Law-Journal Submissions, 67 J. Legal Educ. 734 (2018)
Dodson & Hirsh provide a series of proposed rules governing the law review submission and editing process. In so doing, the authors provide a good overview of the structure of the law journal submission process as well as best practices for authors and editors.

Robert Luther III, Practical Tips for Placing and Publishing Your First Law Review Article, 50 U. Rich. L. Rev. Online 63 (2016)
This short article is a collection of advice previously shared by Robert Luther III, gathered from his experience submitting to law journals.

Brian D. Galle, The Law Review Submission Process:  A Guide for (and by) the Perplexed
This blog post covers all aspects of the law review submission process. Included are the definition of Redyip, overviews of ExpressO and Scholastica, and a thorough discussion of expediting reviews.

PrawfsBlawg, Tips on Placing Law Review Articles
These general tips from Orin Kerr range from submission timing to formatting.

Submission Cycles and Timing

It is generally accepted that law journals have two submission windows:  a spring submission cycle in February and March, and a fall submission cycle in August. The materials linked below offer more information on the timing of these cycles as well as any deviations.

Scholastica Law Review Submissions Insights (Updated Annually)
Using data from Scholastica, the authors of this post map out the times of year when most journals are open for submission and when most authors submit.

PrawfsBlawg, Underneath the Law Review Submission Process:  Part I (Timing)
This blog post, part of a larger series resulting from interviews with article editors, provides information on when editors at one law review received the most submissions and issued the most offers in the February/March submission cycle.

PrawfsBlawg, Underneath the Law Review Submission Process:  Part II (More on Timing)
As with the earlier post in this series, this post tracks when editors at one law review received the most submissions in the February/March submission cycle.

PrawfsBlawg, Underneath the Law Review Submission Process:  Part IX (Fall Submission Timing)
In this post, the editors at one law review share when they received the most submissions during the fall submission cycle, and compare the fall cycle with the spring cycle.

Papers, Conferences, and Workshops

Legal Scholarship Blog
Frequently updated blog with calls for papers, conferences, and workshops. Coverage is U.S.-oriented.

Conal Conference Alerts
Conference calendar for justice and legal studies conferences. Coverage is internationally-oriented.

Law Journal Rankings

Law Journal Meta-Ranking
Developed by Professor Bryce Newell, this approach creates a MetaRank by computing average ranks of U.S. News Peer Reputation score ranking, overall U.S. News school ranking, Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings, and Google Scholar Metrics ranking.

Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings
Rankings provide citation data and calculated ranks for the top 400 U.S.-published law journals and the top 100 law journals published outside the United States.

Google Scholar Metrics
Google Scholar ranks law journals, as well as journals in many other disciplines, by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics.