The Faculty Lounge

Information for Submitting to Online Law Review Companions

Now updated to include online law review companions at 45 schools, here. (Expanded from July 22 version that included only 20 publications.)

Data Visualization Tools to Pump Up That Law Review Article?

Some interesting data visualization ideas from the SEO company Moz, here.

Apart from the expected promotion of the company's own products, I learned about some free Google tools that I didn't know about, as well as the free version of Tableau Public.

I know that lots of folks in the legal academy already have strong abilities to present data persuasively and well (Ryan Whalen, I see you!). Beyond making a nice bar chart in Excel, though, my own skills are limited. I'm interested to give these new tools a try!

The Feminist Legal Theory Project's Search for an Archival Home:

Earlier this week, Ms. Magazine published an article (here) revealing the somewhat surprising decision of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University to decline the records of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, begun at the University of Wisconsin in 1984 and still going strong at Emory University, under the leadership of path-breaking scholar Professor Martha Fineman.  Here's an excerpt from the story:

For close to four decades, Fineman’s Feminism and Legal Theory Project has hosted hundreds of conversations where feminist thinkers from across the United States and world have shaped and explored a wide range of concepts relating to women’s position within law and society. Those conversations delved into the “public nature of private violence,” the legal regulation of motherhood, feminism’s reception in the media, the relevance of economics to feminist thought, the complexities of sexuality, conflicting children’s and parental rights, the origins and implications of dependency and vulnerability, and the extent and nature of social responsibility. ***

Out of these conversations emerged the first anthology of feminist legal theory, At the Boundaries of Law, published in 1991. Many more followed, including over a dozen collections, numerous special issues of law reviews and hundreds of individual articles developing an interdisciplinary approach to feminist legal theory.

“In the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, we created what I called ‘uncomfortable conversations’—events where people who shared values, but disagreed about strategies and implementation, could talk,” said Fineman. “If there were areas of disagreement around collective objectives, you could talk about them and work through them hopefully in a constructive manner. That’s how actual progress can be made.” ***

Fineman recorded all of these conversations—a treasure trove of close to four decades of feminist intellectual history. But she is now struggling to find a home for this invaluable archive of the first generation of feminist legal thinkers.

“History has something to teach us. If we don’t collect the history and preserve it, then it can’t teach us,” said Fineman.

The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University is one of the few facilities that currently has the resources to care for the Fineman’s collection, but they told her that although they saw its value, they would not take her archives because they had other priorities. According to Fineman, a representative from Harvard told her: “We do see the real importance of the conferences, the ideas generated, and know it is an important resource for scholars. Unfortunately, it doesn’t align with our current strategic priorities, which involve a heightened focus on lives of women of color. We wouldn’t be able to commit the resources the archives need to its care.”

Others archives, including the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University and the Pembroke Center Archives at Brown University, indicated they have other priorities (e.g. Smith is prioritizing papers related to sex workers’ rights while Duke “does not focus on the papers of legal scholars”) or they do not have the resources or technical capacity to house the collection.

“Some people are telling me the size of the collection is prohibitive,” said Fineman. “They talk about the necessity to digitize everything initially—but then explain that current technology will need ongoing updating, and this will all add to the cost, ironically decreasing the amount of material that they can actually collect.”

Read the full story here.

Submission Guide for Law Review Online Companions

Submission season is upon us.  Inspired by Allan Rostron and Nancy Levit's most recent update to their useful law review submission guide (here), I've updated my copycat guide to submitting shorter piece to the online companions at 20 top journals.

Some take-aways:

(1) More of the online journals are gravitating toward Scholastica for submissions (and from what I can tell, the big beneficiary of that move is that company's owners).

(2) Wash U Law Review Online is the only companion journal not yet included in the HeinOnline Law Journal Library, but expect that to change in the future.

(3) The length of pieces that online journals accept varies widely.

You can download the Information for Submitting to Online Law Review Companions here.

 

Updated Guide to Submitting to Online Law Review Companions

As the law review submission season has begun (I've already received a rejection on an article), I've updated the Information for Submitting to Online Law Review Companions. The latest version is here and covers only the top 20 main law reviews that receive shorter pieces like essays, book reviews, etc. I'll expand the list's coverage as I have time.

The  materials are modeled after the chart for law review article submissions prepared by Professor Allen Rostron and Professor Nancy Levit at the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law.

This chart is for submissions to online companions of main law reviews and journals at the top 20 schools (as determined by the most recent US News overall ranking, not because that system merits endorsement, but because it is convenient).  Specifically, the chart derives from the journals’ websites the following information:

• Name of the online journal
• Word count limitation, if any
• Subject matter limitations, if any
• Preferred essay/commentary/review submission method
• Whether articles from online journal are included in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library
• Other information of possible interest to authors.

The online companions accept a variety of different shorter pieces.

For further information concerning the rankings of the journals and their associated law schools, please consult the source of your choosing.  Some colleagues find the Washington & Lee law review rankings website helpful. That site is here.

LSA Announcment on Now-Defunct USNWR Legal Scholarship Rankings

Readers might be interested in the recent announcement by the Law and Society Association about the now-defunct USNWR legal scholarship ranking plans. Although no one can know precisely what caused Bob Morse's turn-around, LSA's efforts on this issue were valuable.

Here is an excerpt from LSA's announcement:

The Law and Society Association is pleased to report that the U.S. News and World Report has decided not to proceed with its proposal to add a measure of “scholarly impact” to its law school rankings. This report summarizes the Association’s concerns and actions taken while the metric was under consideration.

The proposed metric for measuring scholarly impact was to be drawn from citations in the Hein database which is comprised primarily of law review articles. The Law & Society Association was concerned with the implications for our members, many of whom write books, book chapters and peer-reviewed articles that appear in and are frequently cited in publications other than law reviews. For that reason, the scholarly impact of our members’ scholarship would not have been accurately represented in the proposed metric. In addition, non-doctrinal and data- driven sociolegal scholarship ordinarily does not amass as many citations as constitutional or purely doctrinal articles do. Moreover, if law schools attempted to game the system to improve their rankings, as has happened with other U.S. News metrics, the intellectual, interdisciplinary, and racial diversity of law school faculties and the range of topics they choose to write on might have been negatively affected.... LSA was not alone in our effort to ensure the unbiasedness and soundness of the U.S. News rankings or to see the project cancelled if obstacles were too big to overcome. The Association is grateful for the extensive work of U.S. law librarians who were deeply engaged with U.S. News and Hein about the difficulties they discovered with the various proposed approaches to a legal scholarship ranking.

The full announcement is here.

H/T Elizabeth Mertz

Future Business Law Professors Conference @Villanova_Law

Future Business Law Professors Conference

Presented by the John F. Scarpa Center for Entrepreneurship and Law

Friday, September 10, 2021 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. Virtual Event

The John F. Scarpa Center for Entrepreneurship and Law will host the second Future Business Law Professors Conference on Friday, September 10. All visiting assistant professors, fellows, researchers, law clerks, practitioners and others who are considering entering the higher education academic teaching market in business law—including business associations, securities regulation, corporate finance and business ethics—are invited to attend. This year’s conference will be virtual.

Participants will learn more about the business law teaching market, receive advice on how to be a successful candidate and meet future colleagues. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in mock interviews and get a sneak-peak into the hiring process from current business law faculty. Some will be able to present their job talk paper to leaders in the field and receive feedback.

Faculty from University of Colorado Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, George Washington University Law School, University of Michigan Law School, University of Nebraska College of Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Rutgers Law School, Temple University Beasley School of Law and Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law are scheduled to participate.

Please note registration is required. Attendees will receive an email from Eventbrite with the Zoom link on the day of the event. Registration is here.

Updated Guide for Submission of Law Review Articles to Specialty Law Reviews and Journals in Gender, Women & Sexuality

I have updated my "Information for Submitting to Specialty Law Reviews and Journals in Gender, Women & Sexuality." The most recent version dated July 13, 2021 is here.

The guide is modeled after the chart prepared by Professor Allen Rostron and Professor Nancy Levit at the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law, and after my Information for Submitting to Online Law Review Companions. It contains information about twenty-seven (27) U.S.-based law reviews and journals classified under the subject “Gender, Women and Sexuality and Law” by the Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings (here) or that are broadly related to social justice and five (5) additional journals that contain the word “gender” in their title, but are not listed in the Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings.  Within each category (W&L-ranked journals, then non-ranked journals) journals are listed in the order of the “rank” of the school, if any (as determined by the most recent US News overall ranking, not because that system merits endorsement, but because it is convenient).  Specifically, the chart derives from the journals’ websites the following information:

• Name of the specialty journal
• Word count limitation, if any
• Preferred submission method
• Whether articles from online journal are included in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library
• Other information of possible interest to authors
• US News ranking of affiliated school, if any
• W&L Law Journal Ranking within category of “Gender, Women and Sexuality,” by “combined” score for 2020 (most recent year available).

Corrections and updates are welcome.

What Should Go in the Conclusion to a Law Review Article?

Ellen Muehleberger (@emuehleb), Professor of History and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, posted to Twitter a list of advice for her students about what should go in the conclusion of a scholarly paper in History. Many of her tips seem equally helpful for law review articles, too. Here are a few of Professor Meuhlberger's suggestions:

• take a piece of evidence used early in the paper and revisit it, re-reading it under the new analysis that developed over the course of the paper
• zoom out, taking the reader to a concept or method you haven't talked about yet, but that now needs to be thought of differently because of what you've written, and explain that
• zoom in, looking just at the small field/era/geography you've covered, and make clear where your argument sits among the work of three other people writing on that small field/era/geography
• make a list of the things you weren't able to do in the paper, then turn that list into a set of explorations you suggest are now possible for the reader to take up

The full thread is unrolled here.

The Ethics of Forwarding an Outside Colleague's Paper to One's Home Law Review

In an old Ethicist column from 2018 at the New York Times, Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) addressed a reader's question about the practice of asking one's law faculty friends at other schools to forward the "outsider's" paper to the student law review editors at the recipient's home institution. Here's an excerpt from the reader's question:

In recent years, a practice has developed in which authors send their manuscripts to friends on other law faculties and ask them to recommend their paper for publication to the editors of their school’s law journal. Law students understandably feel pressure to defer to the professors who give them grades and who are far more experienced.

I don’t know how common the practice is, though I suspect that many authors who submit to law reviews are unaware of it. On the positive side, the practice means that a professor vets the article. And it is no different from the common practice of using your connections to get ahead. * * *

In short, to the extent law-review placements are thought to be a statement about the quality of the article — a view that, despite what I say above, I find hard to shake in myself — a result of this practice is that placements may send a misleading signal about the article. That has not stopped me from engaging in it once or twice. Did I behave unethically? Is it relevant that students are involved?

Appiah's response doesn't quite address the reader's question (and I myself am not sure if the reader was a sender or a forwarder of the law review article), but here's Appiah's take:

As you’ve made clear, the practice of faculty recommendation puts pressures on law-review editors that may involve the abuse of power, temptations to toady and a host of other unfortunate effects. . . . [S]ome meliorative steps can be taken. Law reviews could adopt an explicit policy that they will not consider articles sent to them via the faculty of their own institution. Indeed, they could simply circulate a letter to their own faculty asking them not to do this. 

H/T Leandra Lederman.

Over on Twitter (here), Leandra Lederman (Indiana Maurer) explains her policy of declining any requests to forward colleagues' articles to her home institution's law review, for fear of putting the proverbial "thumb on the scale for a friend," thereby putting uncomfortable pressure on students.

My guess is that practices and views depend on multiple variables, including the relative "rank" of the sender's and receiver's home institutions (and associated issues of perceived prestige or quality) in some cases. It's a tricky issue, for sure. Until reading the thread on Twitter, I hadn't considered the unintended pressure that these sorts of forwards might place on the receiving student editors vis-à-vis the faculty at their school. Again, that may depend on many factors, but the student perspective makes me think about the issue in a new way.

 

Continue reading the main story

 

 

Scholastica Data on 2020 Submissions

Scholastica has made available here information about the submissions made via that platform in 2020. A few facts caught my eye:

"Only 35% of law reviews using Scholastica actively open/close submissions across the year – the other 65% remain open for submissions year-round, much like traditional peer-reviewed journals that have year-round rolling review."

Technically speaking, it may be that 65% of the law reviews remain "open" year-round on Scholastica, but this does not mean the journals are accepting/reading submissions. Anecdotally speaking (aka based onto the abyss into which I have sent several articles), my sense is that the 65% number does not mean that 65% of journals are open. Rather, a large number of journals just haven't clicked the button to indicate that they are full/not accepting/not reading. Perhaps from the journal's perspective, staying open means it may receive an off-season gem. More likely, it's a financial gain for Scholastica in the form of fees paid on articles submitted and never read.

"The majority of articles, around 80% in total, are sent to law reviews in the six weeks following February 1 and the six weeks following August 1."

Familiar news, but always interesting to see the underlying data in graphic form (from here):

And finally:

"Most decisions are made from February to the end of April and then August through the end of October – though there are still some decisions made outside those periods."

Here's Scholastica's graphic on when the journals make decisions:

This seems to follow conventional wisdom that the February cycle is more active than the August one, but that there still remains a fall cycle.

A few years ago, Brian Galle posted some reflections (over here, on Medium). His assessment? "[T]he fall sucks...only about a third of acceptances happen in the fall." The fall cycle does appear less robust than the February cycle.

All obvious to many experienced submitters, but helpful data for those newer to the process.

Updated Guide to Submitting to Specialty Law Reviews and Journals in Gender, Women & Sexuality

I’ve updated this guide to submitting to 29 specialty law reviews and law journals classified by the W&L Law Journal Rankings under the subject  “Gender, Women and Sexuality,” as well as  5 additional journals with the word “gender” in the title. 

The document contains information about word count limitations, submission details, whether the HeinOnline Law Journal Library indexes the journal’s articles, and other guidelines authors may find relevant when considering sending their work to specialty law reviews in Gender, Women & Sexuality.

Details vary widely from journal to journal. Not all journals accept unsolicited contributions (or are still in existence!).

Corrections, additions, refinements are very welcome.

Updated Guide to Submitting Essays, Commentaries, Reviews to Online Law Review Companions

I've updated and expanded my guide to submitting to online law review companions at 60 law schools. It is here on SSRN. 

As before, the document contains information about word count limitations, subject matter preferences, submission details and other guidelines authors may find relevant when considering sending their work to law review presences online. There's a column indicating whether the online companion articles are included in the HeinOnline Law Journal Library.

Corrections, additions, refinements to this chart are always welcome.

 

Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award: Call for Submissions

Bumping this to the front in anticipation of the July 1, 2020 deadline.

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law is pleased to announce the competition for its inaugural Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award.  This paper competition is open to all full-time law professors with five (5) or fewer years of full-time law teaching experience as of July 1, 2020. The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2020.

The purpose of the award is to encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship related to women, gender and the law.  The work chosen for the Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award should make a substantial contribution to legal literature and reflect original research and/or major developments in previously reported research.

Papers will be reviewed on a blind basis by a committee comprised of four members of the Haub Law faculty with expertise in this area: Bridget Crawford, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher and Emily Gold Waldman.  The winner of the competition will be invited to present the paper to selected students and faculty at Haub Law (located in White Plains, NY) during the 2020-2021 academic year, with reasonable travel expenses paid.

ELIGIBILITY:

• All persons who have held full-time teaching positions for five (5) or fewer full academic years as of July 1, 2020 are eligible for consideration.
• There is no subject-matter limitation for submissions, as long as the paper relates in some way to women, gender, and the law.
• Jointly authored papers are accepted as long as each author independently meets the eligibility requirements.

PUBLICATION COMMITMENTS/LIMITATIONS:

• There is no publication commitment associated with the competition. 
• Papers are eligible regardless of whether they were published prior to submission date, are scheduled to be published after the submission date, or are not yet under submission.
• Each applicant is limited to one (1) entry.
• There are no page-length or word-count limitations.
• All publications (including scholarly articles, book chapters, legal briefs and other writings) are eligible for consideration.

SUBMISSION:

• We will accept submissions for the Emerging Scholar Award from April 1, 2020, through July 1, 2020. The winner will be announced by August 30, 2020.
• To participate, please email your article, redacted as necessary to preserve anonymity (for the blind grading process), as a portable data file (PDF) to Judy Jaeger, Senior Staff Associate, at jjaeger@law.pace.edu with the subject line “Emerging Scholar Award.”
• Please include in the body of the email your name, institutional affiliation and confirmation that you meet the eligibility requirements.
• Unredacted papers will not be considered.

Information on Emerging Scholar Award and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law

This is the inaugural year of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law’s Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award.  The law school at Pace University is one of a small number of schools in the United States named after a woman, and we are proud of our school’s long-standing commitment to gender justice.

Since the establishment of the Women’s Justice Center in 1991, Haub Law has made gender justice a priority.  Students have the ability to pursue a concentration in Women, Gender & the Law, through which they develop skills and strategies for effective representation and advocacy for gender justice, regardless of what career they pursue.  The Haub Law faculty includes nationally-recognized academic experts and advocates for gender justice. Our faculty teach, research and write about gender equality and justice as it relates to constitutional law, corporate law, criminal law, education, environmental law, estate planning, juvenile justice, legal theory, poverty, public health, social media, and taxation, to name just a few areas.  An important hallmark of Haub Law is that in addition to our specialty classes that focus on gender, issues involving gender are also integrated into a wide range of other courses.

AALS Faculty Focus Webinars for Early Career Faculty

Posted at the request of the AALS:

AALS Faculty Focus Webinars for Early Career Faculty

AALS is launching a webinar series, Faculty Focus, to address some of the challenges brought on by COVID-19 that might be particularly disruptive for early career tenure-track, clinical, and legal writing faculty.

The first series of topics will focus on how faculty might best allocate their time this summer, beginning with Work-Life Balance and the Demands of Scholarship, Tuesday, June 9 at 4 pm ET/1 pm PT.

Hosted by deans Darby Dickerson (UIC John Marshall) and Vincent Rougeau (Boston College), Faculty Focus webinars will be held every Tuesday afternoon. Each 60-minute webinar will feature expert advice from law school leaders followed by shared experiences from early career law faculty. The sessions will be structured to encourage conversation and connection, as well as provide opportunities for participants to crowdsource solutions and discuss common issues across schools and teaching areas.

Details and registration information can be found on the AALS Faculty Focus webpage at www.aals.org/events/faculty-focus.

@SSRN Categorizers Can’t Recognize a Scholarly Article When They See One

I have previously lamented (here) SSRN’s arbitrary determination of “scholarly” merit. SSRN has inconsistent and unevenly applied rules for what does (and does not) qualify as a “scholarly paper.” That’s a determination with consequence: papers that don’t meet SSRN’s idiosyncratic rules are not “publicly available” and thus will not be accessible on the author’s page on SSRN. The paper is rendered invisible on the SSRN platform (although one can land on the paper through an internet search).

Brian Frye (@brianlfrye) has yet again posted a paper that SSRN inexplicably treats as non-scholarly. Illegitimacy of Plagiarism Norms has an unusual (but enticing) abstract. Click through to the paper and it is… well, a traditional scholarly paper. What gives, SSRN?

The treatment of Professor Frye’s paper by SSRN suggests to me that SSRN classifiers are not actually clicking through to the papers submitted. Professor Frye’s paper is far from anything that SSRN considers a “non-scholarly” paper: work that is an “editorial or opinion paper;” “opinion, advocacy, or satire;” “data tables, summary book reviews, opinion, advocacy and satirical papers.”

SSRN's (arbitary) classfication of some papers as “scholarly” and others as “non-scholarly” and the attendant exclusion of "non-scholarly" papers from an author's publicly-available page do not serve SSRN’s stated mission (here) of providing “rapid worldwide distribution of research to authors and their readers and to facilitate communication among them at the lowest possible cost.” But then again, I’m biased.  SSRN has classified several of my papers (here, here and here, for example) as non-scholarly (and thus non-discoverable from my author page). I have sour grapes.

While we’re on the subject of unusual abstracts, Brian Frye’s new co-authored piece with Maybell Romero (Northern Illinois), The Right to Unmarry: A Proposal, has my all-time favorite abstract. No spoilers. Click through to read a beautiful, happy, joyful abstract to an undoubtedly scholarly paper. SSRN, do the right thing.

Thinking About Submitting to a Law Review's Online Companion?

Here's the info you need to know, in one handy table -- well, for 50 schools at least.

 

Updated Guide to Submitting Essays, Commentaries, Reviews to Online Law Review Companions

I've updated my guide to submitting to online law review companions at 50 law schools. It is here on SSRN. 

As before, the document contains information about word count limitations, subject matter preferences, submission details and other guidelines authors may find relevant when considering sending their work to law review presences online. There's a column indicating whether the online companion articles are included in the HeinOnline Law Journal Library.

Details vary widely from journal to journal. Not all journals accept unsolicited contributions. Corrections, additions, refinements to this chart are very welcome.

I've updated my guide to submitting to online law review companions at 50 law schools. It is here on SSRN. 

As before, the document contains information about word count limitations, subject matter preferences, submission details and other guidelines authors may find relevant when considering sending their work to law review presences online. There's a column indicating whether the online companion articles are included in the HeinOnline Law Journal Library.

Details vary widely from journal to journal. Not all journals accept unsolicited contributions. Corrections, additions, refinements to this chart are very welcome.

Updated Guide to Specialty Law Review Submissions - Women, Gender & Law

It's available here.

Updated Guide to Submitting Essays, Commentaries, Reviews to Online Law Review Companions

I've updated my guide to submitting to online companions to include 50 schools' law reviews.  The new guide is here on SSRN.  The chart with contains details on the mechanics of submitting essays, commentaries, reviews to the online presence of journals at 50+ schools.

For now, the document contains information about word count limitations, subject matter preferences, submission details and other guidelines authors may find relevant when considering sending their work to law review presences online.

Details vary widely from journal to journal. Not all journals accept unsolicited contributions.

Corrections, additions, refinements to this chart are very welcome. (If for any reason the link doesn't work because the submission hasn't been reviewed yet by SSRN, you can navigate to it via my SSRN page here.)