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1st year associate. Got some offers to publish an article i wrote in the summer.

Can't decide if it's better to publish in a t50's specialty journal (xxx's business law review) or a TTT's main law journal.

Would you just go by journal rankings?

It entirely depends on what field, which specialty journal, and how ttt the flagship journal is. It's impossible to give you advice on this without knowing more specifics.

And incidentally, if you're really talking about whether you're going to publish somewhere like Southern Methodist's Journal of Admiralty Law or in Cooley's flagship, well, it doesn't matter. Neither placement proves anything besides showing that you are capable of writing a law review article (which is not a small accomplishment), and your article is exceedingly unlikely to be read by virtue of the fact that it is published in either journal (e.g., it may be read, but that won't be in any way caused by where it was published).

Edit: if I were hypothetically choosing between these journals, I would go with SMU. Part of what you're getting with a journal placement is student editors, and because neither placement is going to help you in other ways, I'd go with the placement where you're more likely to get more dedicated and higher quality student editors. I don't think that journal rankings matter when it comes to this level of placement.

Had kind of this choice, between the Environmental journal of a T30 and a flagship of a TTT. Went with the specialty mostly because it was rated slightly higher on W&L and the school name sounded better. Kind of silly, but there has to be some way to decide right?

ndirish2010 wrote:Had kind of this choice, between the Environmental journal of a T30 and a flagship of a TTT. Went with the specialty mostly because it was rated slightly higher on W&L and the school name sounded better. Kind of silly, but there has to be some way to decide right?

Haha this sounds like me. Sort of flipped though, my TTT option has a known undergrad so it actually sounds better than my specialty option.

Anonymous User wrote:It entirely depends on what field, which specialty journal, and how ttt the flagship journal is. It's impossible to give you advice on this without knowing more specifics.

And incidentally, if you're really talking about whether you're going to publish somewhere like Southern Methodist's Journal of Admiralty Law or in Cooley's flagship, well, it doesn't matter. Neither placement proves anything besides showing that you are capable of writing a law review article (which is not a small accomplishment), and your article is exceedingly unlikely to be read by virtue of the fact that it is published in either journal (e.g., it may be read, but that won't be in any way caused by where it was published).

Edit: if I were hypothetically choosing between these journals, I would go with SMU. Part of what you're getting with a journal placement is student editors, and because neither placement is going to help you in other ways, I'd go with the placement where you're more likely to get more dedicated and higher quality student editors. I don't think that journal rankings matter when it comes to this level of placement.

Yeah, I mean I know I'm kind of splitting hairs and niether option is going to do anything awesome for me but just wanted some opinions. Good point about the student editors. Didn't consider that at all.

gaddockteeg wrote:

ndirish2010 wrote:Had kind of this choice, between the Environmental journal of a T30 and a flagship of a TTT. Went with the specialty mostly because it was rated slightly higher on W&L and the school name sounded better. Kind of silly, but there has to be some way to decide right?

Haha this sounds like me. Sort of flipped though, my TTT option has a known undergrad so it actually sounds better than my specialty option.

Anonymous User wrote:It entirely depends on what field, which specialty journal, and how ttt the flagship journal is. It's impossible to give you advice on this without knowing more specifics.

And incidentally, if you're really talking about whether you're going to publish somewhere like Southern Methodist's Journal of Admiralty Law or in Cooley's flagship, well, it doesn't matter. Neither placement proves anything besides showing that you are capable of writing a law review article (which is not a small accomplishment), and your article is exceedingly unlikely to be read by virtue of the fact that it is published in either journal (e.g., it may be read, but that won't be in any way caused by where it was published).

Edit: if I were hypothetically choosing between these journals, I would go with SMU. Part of what you're getting with a journal placement is student editors, and because neither placement is going to help you in other ways, I'd go with the placement where you're more likely to get more dedicated and higher quality student editors. I don't think that journal rankings matter when it comes to this level of placement.

Yeah, I mean I know I'm kind of splitting hairs and niether option is going to do anything awesome for me but just wanted some opinions. Good point about the student editors. Didn't consider that at all.

Here are some other relevant considerations:

*What's the timeline for publication? Sooner is generally better than later, and a lot of second- and third-tier journals can get pretty far behind their publication schedule. (It's worth asking if recent volumes have come out on time.)

*Which editors have you gotten a better feel for? You'll be working with these folks reasonably closely for the next couple of months, and there are real differences between journals when it comes to professionalism, care of editing, etc.

*Are both journals light edit? Heavy edit? Different journals have different policies about how much editing they do of accepted articles. Established professors generally prefer light edit journals because there's less of a risk of 2Ls messing up their "perfect" articles. If you trust the journal and the editors, though, more thorough editing can be pretty nice and can really improve the quality of the journal.

*Which will you feel more proud of? Accepting that there probably aren't going to be huge differences in readership or career outcomes between these journals, why not just go with whoever is going to give you the most warm fuzzies?

abl wrote:

gaddockteeg wrote:

ndirish2010 wrote:Had kind of this choice, between the Environmental journal of a T30 and a flagship of a TTT. Went with the specialty mostly because it was rated slightly higher on W&L and the school name sounded better. Kind of silly, but there has to be some way to decide right?

Haha this sounds like me. Sort of flipped though, my TTT option has a known undergrad so it actually sounds better than my specialty option.

Anonymous User wrote:It entirely depends on what field, which specialty journal, and how ttt the flagship journal is. It's impossible to give you advice on this without knowing more specifics.

And incidentally, if you're really talking about whether you're going to publish somewhere like Southern Methodist's Journal of Admiralty Law or in Cooley's flagship, well, it doesn't matter. Neither placement proves anything besides showing that you are capable of writing a law review article (which is not a small accomplishment), and your article is exceedingly unlikely to be read by virtue of the fact that it is published in either journal (e.g., it may be read, but that won't be in any way caused by where it was published).

Edit: if I were hypothetically choosing between these journals, I would go with SMU. Part of what you're getting with a journal placement is student editors, and because neither placement is going to help you in other ways, I'd go with the placement where you're more likely to get more dedicated and higher quality student editors. I don't think that journal rankings matter when it comes to this level of placement.

Yeah, I mean I know I'm kind of splitting hairs and niether option is going to do anything awesome for me but just wanted some opinions. Good point about the student editors. Didn't consider that at all.

Here are some other relevant considerations:

*What's the timeline for publication? Sooner is generally better than later, and a lot of second- and third-tier journals can get pretty far behind their publication schedule. (It's worth asking if recent volumes have come out on time.)

*Which editors have you gotten a better feel for? You'll be working with these folks reasonably closely for the next couple of months, and there are real differences between journals when it comes to professionalism, care of editing, etc.

*Are both journals light edit? Heavy edit? Different journals have different policies about how much editing they do of accepted articles. Established professors generally prefer light edit journals because there's less of a risk of 2Ls messing up their "perfect" articles. If you trust the journal and the editors, though, more thorough editing can be pretty nice and can really improve the quality of the journal.

*Which will you feel more proud of? Accepting that there probably aren't going to be huge differences in readership or career outcomes between these journals, why not just go with whoever is going to give you the most warm fuzzies?

Thanks, man; all good points. Didn't think about timeline at all.

gaddockteeg wrote:

ndirish2010 wrote:Had kind of this choice, between the Environmental journal of a T30 and a flagship of a TTT. Went with the specialty mostly because it was rated slightly higher on W&L and the school name sounded better. Kind of silly, but there has to be some way to decide right?

Haha this sounds like me. Sort of flipped though, my TTT option has a known undergrad so it actually sounds better than my specialty option.

Haha that makes sense, my TTT offer was from a school that nobody's heard of.