Some colleagues may know that Leandra Lederman (Indiana) and Allison Christians (McGill) are the cohosts of a YouTube video series called Break Into Tax that reviews important tax-related concepts and ideas in a fun and student-friendly way.
In a recent session, Professor Lederman and special co-host fellow tax prof Jonathan Choi (Minnesota) talked with Indiana 3L Abigael Semnisky, who is finishing up her time as the Executive Articles Editor of the Indiana Law Journal. Their session, called “Optimizing Law Review Submissions,” is available here. Even though I’m in my 20th year teaching, I learned many new things!
Here are a few tips/stats/facts from the program that I jotted down in my notes:
-
Many journals, including the Indiana Law Journal and the Minnesota Law Review fill their entire books during the spring submissions season. They do not have August/September seasons.
-
Last year, the Minnesota Law Review received 1585 submissions for the spring cycle (with 475 of those arriving on the very first day that submissions were open!). The journal received 1270 total submissions in February and 315 in March. By the end of March, they had filled their volume completely. The Indiana Law Journal reports similar figures.
-
The Indiana Law Journal accepts about 5% of the submissions they receive. Approximately 2/3 of the offers extended to authors are accepted. Minnesota accepts about 2% of all submissions. Approximately 2/3 of their offers extended are accepted.
-
In the view of outgoing EAE 3L Abbi Semnisky, the abstract is infinitely more important than the cover letter. Jonathan Choi revealed that he typically revises his abstracts multiple times. The abstract should set up the article’s subject for a general audience, explain why it is important, and why the article’s claims are novel. Don’t be shy about asking your home institution’s EAE for tips on making your abstract punchier (but please don’t recommend a buddy’s articles to your home institution’s journal; follow instead the advice of the NYT Ethicist here).
-
The cover letter is less important in Abbi Semnisky’s view. If you submit one, make sure that it is different from the abstract. Your letter should refer to your expertise and why the article matters (without repeating the abstract). A reference to your personal citation counts isn’t unwelcome, either.
-
How about titles? Punny or long ones are disfavored (i.e., there appears to be some anecdotal truth to the conventional wisdom that one should avoid titles with semi-colons).
-
What about those footnotes? 3L Abbi Semnisky is looking for approximately a 70% text to 30% footnote ratio. Footnotes not filled in or sparsely footnotes parts of the paper may rise some eyebrows.
-
Indiana Law Journal prefers to receive submissions in MS Word form, even though the Scholastica platform permits submission of either a PDF or a Word document. Having a Word document allows the student editors to see how many journal pages the article might take up in its formatting program. The sweet spot for article length is 20k-28k words.
-
For those who like Mendeley (I’m talking to you, Louie), Jonathan Choi has created a Bluebook extension here. Amazing!
-
On expedites, this EAE tends not to distinguish between expedites from specialty journals versus main journals (this is somewhat contra the conventional wisdom I’ve heard through the years). Expediting definitely bumps an author out of the undifferentiated pile. Jonathan Choi and Leandra Lederman both do not counsel sending your article to a journal that you would not accept “just to get an offer.” The EAE will not necessarily expedite based on the fact that the author is under board review at another journal.
-
Deadlines to respond to an offer may range from 1 week to 2 weeks, subject to negotiation. Be honest, be kind, and try to meet the journal half-way. Jonathan Choi did mention that there are some journals that expect answers on the spot or in a few hours.
Thanks to Leandra, Jonathan and Abbi for doing this helpful video!
