There's been a lot of chatter this year in the blawgosphere this summer about changes in the law review submisson process (see my earlier post here). Now Dan Filler writes:
As I noted here, the University of Chicago Law Review and California Law Review are no longer accepting submissions from ExpressO. They now accept articles submitted for five dollars a pop via Scholastica. The Stanford Law Review and Yale Law Journal only accept pieces submitted through their proprietary submission systems. Over at the Faculty Lounge, I ponder the possibility of law review submission consortiums or law reviews charging authors for submissions as two possible routes to a new submission reality. The submission process has only been getting more insane. Is now the time for some (fairly) radical change?
Or, as in my case, you can just wait for Muhammad to come to the mountain (is that still an acceptable metaphor in these politically correct times?). Today, I got an unsolicited email from a very reputable law review (indeed, top ten by some rankings), from which I quote in pertinent part:
On behalf of the Editorial Board, I would like to extend an offer to publish your article, "The Geography of Revlon-Land," in Volume ... Law Review. The Editor-in-Chief ... and I believe strongly that your piece will make an important contribution to legal scholarship.
One of our editors, an avid reader of your blog, www.professorbainbridge.com, saw a recent post discussing your new article. He brought the article to the attention of our Article Selection Committee and, after reviewing it, we believe your article would make an excellent addition to our journal.
I accepted their kind offer, thereby bypassing the law review submission process. No muss, no fuss.
So maybe the solution is for law professors to blog about their scholarship and wait for the law reviews to come to them. After all, this isn't the first time it's worked for your truly.
As Will Sonnet said, "no brag, just fact."
