An institutional Law Review is a pillar of legal scholarship that covers the most cutting-edge and current issues in the field. These student-run publications typically run between 40 to 60 pages per article, and typically 200-300 pages per issue, with 200 or more footnotes, and feature articles from law professors, judges, law students, and others in the legal field. Being invited to join and even publish in a Law Review is highly desirable; employers often look for these credentials on your CV. Being elected to Law Review makes you even more attractive to potential employers. But after the elation of your election, there may follow a period of worry that you simply don’t know enough to produce a Law Review.
Overview of Law Review Production Process
The biggest fear students feel after a Law Review editorial transition is that they won’t be able to acquaint themselves with the time-honored tradition of the publication. Workflows and internal processes will likely be something of a mystery, but you should receive some sort of training and documentation from your outgoing board. To frighten you further, here is an overview of what is required to produce a Law Review:
- Article submissions
- Approvals and rejections
- Vetting
- Editing
- Copywriting
- Layout
- Printing
- Mailing
- Subscription management
- Author off-prints
- Online versions
Despite the transition to digital research practices, as well as drops in library subscription numbers at many Law Reviews, print remains the predominant publishing format.
Submission season can be difficult to manage, along with your course of study. That’s why Sheridan’s white paper, Producing Your Law Review, is a great resource that details how your accepted raw manuscripts can be formatted easily to your specific style. To request a copy of the white paper, simply email pub.sales@sheridan.com.
How Sheridan helps with law review publishing
Sheridan has been serving the scholarly journal publishing community for decades. One of the most rewarding parts of the experience is working with students newly appointed to the Law Review board. We understand how challenging it is for editorial boards who are elected for one year while simultaneously pursuing their law degree. That’s why we created the Sheridan Law Experience. It offers:
- The Sheridan Law Template, a free Word tool to stylize and format articles to your specifications. Some benefits of using the template include:
- Customized to match your journal style.
- Styles the entire document to your base style for the text and footnotes.
- Automatically inserts page numbers and running heads and sets the proper page margins.
- Loads your custom styles into each document so they are consistent article to article.
- We build the template, help with installation and train your Law Review staff— even incoming staff — year after year.
- Sheridan walks editors through the process of creating print-ready PDF files.
- Online issue submission to LexisNexis, Westlaw, and HeinOnline.
- Print/offprint production in offset, digital, and print-on-demand.
- eBook conversion and eCommerce options.
- Mailing and distribution.
- Author offprint and direct bill services.
- Subscription management.
- Warehousing and back-issue fulfillment.
Law Reviews are an enduring legacy of the legal educational structure in this country. But these publications face challenges as new student-run editorial boards are elected annually to handle the publication of their institutional Law Review — a process that is time-consuming and difficult to manage. That’s why student editors turn to Sheridan and our turnkey operation to ensure your success.
Contact your Sheridan representative for a consultation or visit our contact page to learn how Sheridan experts can help streamline and simplify your publishing processes.
