Introduction
This guide is aimed at law students and professionals who want to write scholarly papers for publication in law reviews. Most of it will also be helpful for students who are writing seminar papers that they don't plan to publish.
It addresses many aspects of the process, from finding and developing topics to writing to submitting to journals.
Some of the sources linked to are to sources that are restricted, either to members of the UW community (
) or to UW Law faculty, staff, and students (
).
photo credit: Mary Whisner
What are Law Reviews?
Law reviews are scholarly journals about law, generally published by law schools and edited by students. More broadly, they can include journals published by professional associations (e.g., The Business Lawyer, published by the American Bar Association) and peer-edited journals (e.g., the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, published by Wiley in conjunction with the Society for Empirical Legal Studies).
Law schools typically have a general-interest (or "flagship") law review (e.g., Washington Law Review, Seattle University Law Review, Gonzaga Law Review) that publishes articles on a wide range of topics. Most law schools also have one or more specialized journals, focusing on one or more topics (e.g., Washington International Law Journal; Washington Journal of Social and Environmental Justice; Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts; Gonzaga Journal of International Law; Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law; Seattle Journal for Social Justice).
Print and Online
Most journals are available electronically as well as in print. For example, the Washington Law Review is available on Lexis, Westlaw, and HeinOnline, and on Digital Commons.
Online Companions
Some law reviews supplement their print offerings with short articles that are only posted on their websites. For example, the Washington Law Review publishes the Washington Law Review Online.
Online-Only Journals
Some journals are published online only. They are sometimes called e-journals (or ejournals).
Finding Journals
You can find lists of law journals available online at the sites below.
- Law Review Commons (bepress) includes over 300 open-access law journals from around the world.
- Directory of Open Access Journals
- Law Library of Congress, Law Reviews Online
Because the universe of journals available online is growing, it's likely that each list is incomplete.
Other Guides for Writers & Editors
- Bluebook 101 [Gallagher Law Library]Information about The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.
- Citation Management Software [UW Libraries]UW Libraries guides for using Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote. (If you've used RefWorks, there are instructions for migrating your citations to another system.)
- Legal Dictionaries [Gallagher Law Library]U.S. legal dictionaries (general and specialized), historical dictionaries (want to know how dictionaries defined your term when a statute was drafted?), bilingual and multilingual legal dictionaries.
- Legal Dictionaries [Georgetown Law Library]A growing collection of legal dictionaries in English and other languages, going back to titles published in the 1500s. This collection is also available on HeinOnline's Legal Dictionaries collection.
- Nuts & Bolts of Scholarly Publishing [UW Libraries]Evaluating journals: fit; impact; quality.
Publication agreements: copyright basics; parts of the agreement; deciding to sign; negotiating. - SSRN [Gallagher Law Library]The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is an open-access repository where authors can post papers and researchers can find and download them.
- Writer's Guide [UW Health Sciences Library]Guides and resources to use when writing. Some are focused on health sciences; others will be useful for any writers. Sections on
- Publishing
- Citation Styles and Tools (common citation styles in the health sciences; tools for managing and using citations)
- Writing Support (on campus)
- More Resources (incl. dictionaries, general and health related)
- Writing Resources for Legal Writers [Gallagher Law Library]Books and other resources on legal writing and English usage.