I've been pondering my August law review submission cover letter today. (It keeps me from actually working on my paper. I worked on my title yesterday.) I think I may take a new angle. In the past, my cover letter has been pretty standard: this paper is amazing; it continues a vigorous dialogue on the topic, but simultaneously fills a huge void in the literature; this paper can only be written by me, a person with a long history in the topic. This time, as I see August creeping up on me, I'm pondering a new strategy. I call it the "Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" strategy, as in "Help Me, [_____] Law Review, You Are My Only Hope."
The cover letter will go something like this. Oh, law review editor, thank goodness I've gotten your attention. I have this amazing idea -- very creative, very now, very happening. However, this idea is lost inside of a big pile of words and footnotes that say "NEED CITE." I have heard that your editors are the most brilliant, the most detail-oriented, and the most organized of any other law review. I have heard stories of your editors finding authority for even the most esoteric of assertions and reorganizing paragraphs and whole sections in a way that creates logic where there was none before. I therefore have a challenge for you. Please accept this paper, and let's take it to new heights together.
Sort of Princess Leia meets Nigerian royal expatriate.
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1. Posted by Scott on July 20, 2005 @ 20:24 | Permalink
Love the site - just discovered it the other day (when I was taking a break from studying for next Tuesday's bar exam).
Anyway, as a student who was footnoting lr articles not so long ago, I can tell you this: Second-year law students everywhere believe that professors have the sentiment expressed in your letter. Why not send your "letter" stapled to the back of your real letter? Give the editors something to chuckle about...
2. Posted by Scott Moss on July 20, 2005 @ 23:18 | Permalink
You know what'd be a great strategy for getting your article accepted? Mock the egos of law review editors openly on a publicly accessible blog.
3. Posted by current editor on July 21, 2005 @ 6:25 | Permalink
As long as you mention Star Wars, we will read it. Mock away! A picture of you in a Storm Trooper costume would almost certainly mean an automatic offer.
4. Posted by Dave! on July 21, 2005 @ 8:28 | Permalink
Gee, Scott, are review editors egos *that* fragile, that they completely lack any sense of humor?!
5. Posted by keith on July 22, 2005 @ 11:18 | Permalink
I served as articles editor of my school's law journal. It wasn't a particularly prestigious journal, but it wasn't at the bottom of the heap either. We got roughly 500 submissions over the course of the year. When reviewing the submissions, I would routinely reject manuscripts that had even a couple of unsourced footnotes.
Do your homework before you send out the piece -- or hire some research assistants and have them do it for you. Law journal staffs are there to *verify* your research, not perform it in the first instance.
6. Posted by Gordon Smith on July 22, 2005 @ 12:55 | Permalink
Keith,
Please tell me that there was something besides unsourced footnotes that caused you to reject those pieces. Otherwise, your comment will be added to long the list of anecdotes that illustrate why students have no business acting as the gatekeepers for legal scholarship.
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