"For young scholars attempting to establish themselves, asking for expedited review from well-regarded journals for an article that has received publication offers is essential.
Ask the initial journal(s) that made offers for as much time as possible to make a decision, and alert journals that you were interested in that you would appreciate their review before your deadlines. Expediting signals to those other journals that your article is garnering interest, and by giving it the opportunity to be published by a well-regarded or more well-known journal, you open yourself to a greater readership. More concretely, with a strong placement, you will get the attention of hiring committees."
Pratheepan Gulasekaram, NYU Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering 2005-07, Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law
In order to place your article in the best journal possible, you are going to need to rely on “expedited review” at other journals. There is a science to this. You will want to follow these instructions with some precision.
You should initially have submitted your manuscript to a large number of law reviews – typically 100 – and perhaps some specialty journals as well. When you receive your first offer from a journal; you will most likely be given a deadline and told that you must make a decision whether to publish with them by that date. You now can begin the process of contacting other journals to request that they expedite their review of your manuscript. You have two goals in the process. The first is to land your article in the most prestigious journal possible by contacting higher ranked journals and asking them to read your manuscript (and hopefully make an offer to publish). Journal editors, however, may find it difficult to meet tight deadlines, and thus, you have a secondary goal -- to buy yourself time. You will want to expedite to journals that are not substantially better than the one from which you already have an offer, in order to get a new, later deadline. This latter part of the process is extremely important.
There are a variety of listings of law journal importance. Most people simply use the U.S. News and World Report rankings as a sufficient rule of thumb. Alternatively, there is a list done by Washington and Lee that ranks specific journals.
Compile a list of the 15-25 journals that are better than the one from which you received an offer, as well as the 5-10 that are roughly on par. Then, contact these journals and request expedited review. You do not want to contact journals too far ahead of where you got the offer, as they will be less impressed by the offer you have. However, if you get several offers, this will start to sound impressive to schools higher on the list. The reason you are contacting “par” schools is that you need to get another offer.
If you have more than one offer, you can start to play the offers off against one another to gain more time. You can tell X journal that you will go with Y journal unless they give you more time to reach a decision. It is difficult to know how much time to ask for. Sometimes they will give you a week more; sometimes two. Often they will agree to give you more time if you release all the other schools on your list. No matter what you do, bear in mind that having time to play the process out is extremely important. You might even stick with a slightly less desirable school if they are willing to give you more time.
This process moves very quickly. Be prepared to devote substantial time to it. Have available your list of reviews, their phone numbers and email addresses. Be diligent in contacting them, though bear in mind that if you make a complete pest of yourself they will have little interest in working with you. If you get additional offers it is always okay to call back reviews and let them know that (as well as if you have more time).
Schools typically give authors ten days to two weeks to accept an offer of publication, but the deadlines can vary dramatically, and higher ranked schools will give short deadlines (those in the top ten often given 24 hours or less). Do the best you can to work through this process. Finally, if you have any questions, contact the Academic Careers Program at law.academiccareers@nyu.edu.
Tips:
- You may contact a school more than once, for example, if you have a new offer with a new deadline. The editors may not have been able to read your manuscript by your first deadline, but perhaps they can meet the second deadline.
- Be prepared to spend a large amount of time on the process. It is time consuming to contact 30 or 40 journals, even by email. Work quickly.
- If you request expedited review by email, make sure you attach a copy of your article. Make it as easy as possible for journal editors to find your manuscript.
- Ranking law reviews is fairly simple, most people rely on U.S. News and World Report. When you are considering secondary or specialty journals (typically any journal besides a school’s law review or law journal), it becomes much harder to judge whether one journal is “better” than another. For example, is it preferable to publish with a secondary journal at Stanford, or with the law review at a second tier law school? Often a law professor in your field of research will be able to give you a sense of how a secondary journal compares to a law review.
- Regardless of a journal’s ranking, your contact with the law review staff should be polite and professional. As soon as you know that you will not be accepting an offer of publication, contact the journal and let them know. Do not force them to track you down.
