Legal Commentary

I was having a conversation with my colleagues recently about how the ease of submitting law review articles through ExpressO has affected the law review submission process.  Gone are the arduous days of mailing out paper copies with individual cover letters; now it is a simple matter.  Select publications!  Upload files!  Check that all is complete!  Done! 

We were in general agreement that law reviews are even more bombarded with submissions than they used to be; indeed, it seems that several publications are currently full and, according to ExpressO, are not accepting any submissions until 2011.  When law reviews are oversaturated with submissions, one tried-and-true method of getting your article noticed is requesting an expedited decision. 

The practice of expediting an article, however, can involve some tricky ethical questions, particularly when a law professor submits to the top 100 law reviews but in reality has no intention of publishing with that lowest-ranked law review.  I think that most would regard this submission strategy as less than ideal.  But is such a submission strategy actually unethical? 

There seems to be little question that law reviews, particularly those that are "low-ranked," are harmed by these choices.  Untenured professors, in particular, may feel pressure to apply to a large number of law reviews to maximize their chances of not only placing an article, but placing it in as prestigious a publication as possible.  If no offers from prestigious (or "prestigious enough" publications are forthcoming, they may also feel pressure to turn down an offer from a "low-ranked" law review and resubmit the article in the future.  It seems that these ethical issues are exacerbated when the law reviews are just bursting at the seams with submissions, reducing the odds that your article will be considered.

Thoughts?