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.