What Makes a Good Submission - How To Pull Together A Successful Article for Publication in a Journal

Many students and scholars have asked me what makes a good submission.  There are a number of things that editors look at related and here is a summary of some of the top things to consider. 

·      Write about something you are very familiar with. This could include something closely aligned to an old profession or something that you studied in college. If you are already an expert in a topic, you can mix this with legal concepts and your paper will stand out. For example, I was an investment banker prior to law school and wrote & published a paper on fair value accounting and the financial crisis. A friend who worked as an auctioneer wrote an published a paper on art law. This combination of your experience and the law will be very appealing to journals and makes for interesting papers.

·      A cover letter and good abstract (summary of what you have written) are essential! When you submit your paper to a journal, these two documents may be the only thing that the editor reads and for 95% of the papers received, this alone is the basis for rejection. As such, you must use the cover letter and the abstract to market yourself and capture the reader’s attention.

·      Make sure that your article is final and free from errors.  Get as many people as possible to read and edit your paper and this will help you to catch errors and will also alert you to areas of your paper that need work. Also, listen to their feedback!

·      Follow the Journal’s instructions! This includes font size, spacing, length of article, submission timing, cover letters or anything else they say. Several good papers are not considered because they do not adhere to simple guidelines.

·      Consider joining a journal at your law school. While some journal work like cite checking may not be the most glamorous work in the world, you will get great experience and learn what makes a good article and why some are rejected.

·      Do not plagiarize! Plagiarism is cheating and involves stating or summarizing the work of others without citing them. All papers have a significant amount of citations and this is normal. If you use someone else’s ideas, cite them. If you do not, this could have significant implications related to your ability to become a lawyer.

·      Consider the content of your paper and perhaps submit to specialized journals. For example, my paper dealt with a business topic so I primarily submitted to business law journals.

·      Keep it simple! I was an editor on the Human Rights Journal at Harvard Law School and many papers that the journal received were complicated and confusing. You are not writing a literary masterpiece so there is no need to use symbolism or complex metaphors. Instead, use simple plain language. Also, if your paper deals with a complex topic like finance for example, make sure that you either explain the terms you are using or simplify the language. Remember the people deciding whether or not to publish your paper are law students and are not quantitative experts or economists.  They are often students just like you.

This summary is one of many law school helpful tips in the new book Law School Lowdown: Secrets of Success from the Application Process to Landing the First Job – (Barron's Publishing) - Author Ian E. Scott.  You can order Law School Lowdown on Amazon by clicking here.

Why Should You Publish While In Law School?

There are several good reasons to publish while you are in Law School and the Dean of Harvard Law School agrees.  “You should try to publish at least one scholarly paper during your law school experience.” This excellent advice was offered by Harvard Law School’s Dean, Martha Minow, during a student meeting.

When I was in Law School I followed this great advice and published a paper in a business law journal.  I was surprised to discover the process was much easier than I thought it would be and the publication has reaped enormous rewards.  In addition to the resume building benefit, when you publish you will put your name in print and this is a good feeling. You should be proud if you publish something and there is no better feeling than receipt of the finished product with your name boldly splashed across the cover.

Why Should You Publish While In Law School?

There are several good reasons publishing while you are in law school.  Here are a few:

1.     You will already have to write at least one comprehensive paper during your three years at law school—so why not try to get it published.  Often you may not have to modify a paper you have written much, and depending on your topic and area of expertise, your work may be exactly what a particular journal is looking for.

2.     Some journals will publish student work, but will only publish a non-student’s work if the person is an expert in the field. As such, your status as a student can get you an opportunity and audience that you would not otherwise have.

3.     There may be a significant cost savings associated with publication as a student because many students have the benefit of submitting their papers to as many journals as they like for free through an on-line submission vehicle called ExpressO. If you are not a student, you must pay over $2 per journal. With hundreds of journals, this can become costly.

The Submission Process

Thankfully, the submission process for articles is electronic so you can easily submit your note to several journals simultaneously. The best way to make a simultaneous electronic submission is through a website called ExpressO.

ExpressO makes the submission or your article and cover letter to over 750 journals fast and easy. Best of all it could be free for students if your law school has an institutional account with ExpressO!

Once submitted, you will start to receive a number of rejections and this is normal. Even people who ultimately have their papers published in the Harvard Law Review will receive rejections from numerous other journals so do not be discouraged. It can take some journals several weeks to review a paper and make a decision as often the papers undergo several rounds of review before a decision is made and journals get thousands of requests.  Once you accept their offer, you are required to sign a contract with the journal and the editing process starts. Your paper is then placed into the subcite stream and various subsciters will start to check your citations and edit your paper. Even for a good paper, the editing process is extensive. When I submitted my paper for editing, it contained 50 citations. When the editors were done with the paper it contained over 300.

This summary is one of many law school helpful tips in the new book Law School Lowdown: Secrets of Success from the Application Process to Landing the First Job – (Barron's Publishing) - Author Ian E. Scott.  You can order Law School Lowdown on Amazon by clicking here.