Top Law Schools

Hi Everyone,

Was hoping you could provide some insight. In the fortunate position to be weighing (mainly) three offers for publication. One is a law review in a school ranked in the T100, one is a specialty journal in a school ranked in the top 10 (however this would only be published as a note), and one is in a specialty journal of a school ranked T50, but has been widely cited.

If my ultimate goal would be to practice and then try to break into academia (which would require more publications), which do you think would put be in the best position for future publications? In other words, which would serve as the best "confirmation" that I can produce scholarly work?

Thanks!

Go flagship unless the t10specialty is well especially well regarded (harvard public policy, stanford tech, etc) -- especially if you're being published as an article vs note.

The key to getting more publications is not getting more cites (as in the t50), it's getting articles into more LRs. Eventually, you do want to start chasing cites but when you first start out, go with the LR to get more articles out there.

I agree - I'd go flagship even if the T10 specialty is well regarded because you say it would be published as a note there (so not fully "scholarship" for academic market purposes, although more so than a note/comment in your own school's journal). T50 specialty is not really worth considering at this point although it might be later.

It's also worth it to keep up with Prawfsblawg - the Submission Angsting thread and the Clearinghouse/Hiring threads. As with TLS, you shouldn't take everything there as gospel, but also as with TLS there's a lot of useful strategy and best practices you can pick up from it.