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I wrote a paper for one of my spring classes, and the professor agreed that it was publishable. At the beginning of August, I submitted to about 20 law reviews (T100) and specialty journals, but only two of them rejected my publication. The one "overlooked" portion was my abstract: it's only 80 words, and I noticed that most have a requirement of about 150 words. Should I rewrite the abstract and then resubmit? Two months seems a lot of time to wait (I haven't even received confirmation of receipt!), but it's my understanding that the fall submission season is pretty hectic.

crEEp wrote:I wrote a paper for one of my spring classes, and the professor agreed that it was publishable. At the beginning of August, I submitted to about 20 law reviews (T100) and specialty journals, but only two of them rejected my publication. The one "overlooked" portion was my abstract: it's only 80 words, and I noticed that most have a requirement of about 150 words. Should I rewrite the abstract and then resubmit? Two months seems a lot of time to wait (I haven't even received confirmation of receipt!), but it's my understanding that the fall submission season is pretty hectic.

Really tough to get published in a LR as a student. Have you thought of submitting it to your own as a note? Maybe hitting specialty journals or secondaries? They are much more apt to look at students. My T30 journal auto-rejects any student papers.

Many law reviews (all the ones that I know of) auto reject any student Notes/Comments that are from students from other schools. Most law reviews only publish very Notes/Comments written by students from their own schools. Often, meeting "publishable" quality is insufficient for student articles; while, the same quality would be sufficient if written by a law professor or other legal scholar. Student articles often have to go beyond mere publishable quality. Think of it this way. Most law reviews have 30+ 2Ls writing Notes/Comments, hoping that they get published. Each of these students spends 100s of hours on their papers. Maybe 3-5 of them get published (give or take a few). More likely than not, more than 3-5 of them have publishable quality papers.

Good luck. Getting published it definitely possible, especially with secondary journals. Good luck! You will need it (and so will I).

You might also look to the periodicals produced by the various sections of the ABA. While they aren't as prestigious as a law school publication, any publication is a good publication, and an ABA publication might be more of a feather in your cap with regard to practitioners.

If you're at all interested in getting published online TheStudentAppeal.com publishes student written legal articles. Just a thought.

I'm a student an LR at Loyola-LA. I published my note with a secondary at the Univ. of Maryland last year. I suggest finding a really hot topic and being the first person out there with an article. In my case I got the offer in February 2011 with a draft about the proposed SEC whistleblower rules that came out in November 2010. When the final rules were published in May 2012, I worked around the clock and got the final version to the journal in a matter of days. It was published in August 2012.

With 550 law journals in the US, if you write something good, it will be published somewhere. I agree that The Student Appeal is a good option.