An Excellent Resource for Law Students: Colin Miller’s Online Law Review Supplement Submission Guide

At EvidenceProf Blog, Colin Miller posts, announcing an update to his Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements.  Miller announces that he has updated the guide so that it is current for 2013, and has added several additional online supplements to the list.

I have quickly looked over Miller’s submission guide and it looks like an excellent resource for law students who are interested in getting published.  One of the more aggravating problems that I ran into when I was trying to publish papers was that I would be rejected by general law reviews due to my student status, despite their lack of any express policy that they do not publish student work.

Online supplements, on the other hand, are generally more accepting of work written by students from other law schools.  Many of their policies expressly state that they consider work by students from other schools.  I know of at least one other student at UCLA who has had work published in an online supplement at another school.

I think that publishing in online supplements is a great idea for students.  Miller explains in this post why publishing in these supplements is a good idea for professors, and I think many of his reasons apply to students as well.  To add my own reasons, first, many of these supplements appear in the journal and law review databases of Westlaw and Lexis, meaning that lawyers and scholars doing research will read work published in online supplements.  Second, as Miller notes in his post announcing his updated submission guide, there is a growing trend with top journals adding supplements, indicating that this forum may be gaining more acceptance in legal scholarship.  Finally, a publication in an online supplement is still a publication, and carries with it the many bonuses that a publication entails, such as distinguishing one’s resume from the rest of the pile and catching the eyes of interviewers and drawing them into lines of questions that the interviewee will be well-prepared to discuss.

Students should consider publishing in online law review supplements, and Miller’s guide is a huge help for keeping the various requirements and submission procedures organized.