"Write! Submit! Publish!"

Students at UCLA Law are used to hearing me shout these words constantly.  Most of the time I shout at them, but sometimes I am mistaken and end up yelling at an undergraduate or other visitor who has stumbled into our insular community.  Occasionally, other law students are foolish enough to listen to me and they too get to experience the joy that is academic legal writing and publishing.

Students who are interested in the publication process should pay close attention to this piece by William Foster in the Green Bag  (h/t: Legal Writing Prof Blog).  Based on my experience so far, I think that it very accurately encapsulates the publishing experience from the author's point of view (especially footnote 5).

In addition to being an author, I am also an Articles Editor.  This means that as I am writing this post, I am staring at a pile of articles that is nearly three feet high that sits in the corner of my living room.  It is a collection of all I have read in my time on Law Review, and I hope that by the end of next year it will be as tall as I am.

While I have seen some fantastic criticism of the law review publishing process from the author's side, I think there are a few points worth mentioning from an editor's point of view that authors should keep in mind.

• In the spirit of diligence, I almost always keep reading an article with an open mind after reading the first footnote.  This is a difficult habit to maintain, however, when the author has misspelled the name of the school with which he or she is affiliated.
• It is especially different to take the author seriously when his or her misspelled school happens to be my alma mater.
• I occasionally read articles that engage in statistical analysis.  While there are other articles editors who have a better eye for this than me, authors should try to avoid errors in analysis that even I can spot.  For instance, comparison with control groups should be included in the analysis -- not relegated to future research.
• If the author's paper has been pre-empted, it is best not to submit the paper in the first place.  It is simply too tempting to cite the pre-empting piece since it is so closely related to the current project.  Unfortunately, when the author's thesis paraphrases the title of the cited source, a conscious articles editor will often spot this.
• Authors should not re-post pieces on ExpressO.  It looks too desperate.
• While on the subject of ExpressO, when filling out a submission form, the box "Title" is where the title of the author's paper should go, not the word "Professor."
• The Chief Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review is female.
• I pay attention to citations.  Any citation to A.P. Herbert's Uncommon Law earns an author some points in my book.  There are so many cases in that book on so many topics that any author writing on any subject should be able to include several footnotes to this source.  Don't worry, the footnote will look legitimate, so authors are not risking anything by including as many of these citations as possible.

Following these simple bits of advice may not guarantee publication, but it is certainly a good checklist to follow in order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot.