As readers may recall, I sent out an article in early August.  That article, on similarities between gambling speculation and financial speculation and illogical differences in the regulation of the two, is on ssrn here, as of today.  The blogosphere has been alive with tales of authors sending out on ExpressO and hearing from law reviews in thirty minutes or less, like Domino's pizza delivery.  My experience was more like Ethan Allen furniture delivery.  Seven weeks after sending out (half on ExpressO, half hard copy, just for the experimental value), I received an offer from Boston University Law School, and I accepted it on the phone.  (In case you were wondering, BU was in the hard copy pile.)

I told the editor on the phone that I was going to accept because I found expediting demoralizing, and when I had the opportunity to get a great placement without expediting, I would prefer to be part of the solution than part of the problem.  I could tell that he thought I was a little wacky, and he may be in good company there.  However, I think that less expediting could be good for the whole system.  Apparently, submissions are out of control high.  Whether because of ExpressO or higher tenure expectations or increased number of schools focusing on scholarship, I do not know, but the BU editor told me that the August submissions there were double those of last year.  However, if authors decided not to expedite, then authors would send out to fewer law reviews, decreasing the number of submissions at law reviews.  Because editors knew that they couldn't wait for expedite requests, they would need to jump on the stack to get to good papers before they were unavailable.  Because submission piles would be smaller, editors would be able to do this.

Well, it's a thought, anyway.

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