Today over lunch I heard about a very interesting form of self-help from a colleague (unnamed!). S/he mentioned that when law reviews fail to acknowledge receipt of the manuscript during the submission cycle, or receipt of the request for the expedite, s/he simply doesn’t inform those schools of when the manuscript has been accepted elsewhere/withdrawn from availability. Hopefully, we can create a virtuous circle where the law review editors click the Expresso box to confirm receipt and the authors won’t be tempted to retaliate by clogging the pipeline…reactions?
Update: just to be clear, I’m not endorsing the retaliation, just describing it!
Posted by Administrators on March 20, 2009 at 02:53 PM
Comments
Anon, I’m not sure you’re reading the post very carefully, or at least I’m not sure who you’re directing this question to, but it seems like it’s me. I thought I made clear in the post and subsequent comment that I wasn’t endorsing the retaliation strategy described in the post; rather, that it’s a suggestion (or perhaps a past practice) of someone else, and it’s in the end a strategy that creates harms that are basically needless and easy to avoid. Precisely because I know some articles editors read this, I wanted to alert them to this possibility so that they could do what they can to avoid irking some profs who might otherwise be tempted to “neglect” to withdraw pieces from the pipeline.
Posted by: Dan Markel | Mar 22, 2009 2:54:15 PM
just from a strategic pov, why in god’s name would you ever post something like this when you have to know that articles editors frequent this blog?
think of it this way: would you advise a student looking for a firm job to post a critique–no matter how justified–of firm practices under her own name to a website that partners/recruiting staff are likely to read? it’s funny, maybe this is a generational thing; the idea of a student doing that is almost incoherent, probably because students growing up in a post-above-the-law world have an acute understanding of the stickiness of internet postings that perhaps their profs don’t share. blogging publicly about articles selection process just seems clearly unwise; you can’t imagine how poorly you come off here to practically any overworked articles editor who happens upon this post.
Posted by: anon | Mar 22, 2009 2:18:12 PM
I suppose the law review can punish the professor in the future, by refusing to read his pieces, but that requires keeping a blacklist of some sort since law reviews have high turnover.
Oh, law reviews have blacklists.
Posted by: anon | Mar 20, 2009 6:12:32 PM
This professor is part of the very problem he/she’d like to solve. Law Review editors’ time is valuable, and the more wasteful time spent reading an article the less time they have to get to the others. It would be sweet justice if this professor missed out on some good offers because all other law profs adopted her/his method.
Posted by: outgoing EIC | Mar 20, 2009 5:24:38 PM
Btw, I ‘m not sure why Paul’s sticking up for me– of course, in any battle, i’d want him as a wingman — but just to clarify, I didn’t mean to endorse this strategy of retaliation, but to describe it, and see what could be done about it in case others engage in it…
Posted by: Dan Markel | Mar 20, 2009 4:09:17 PM
I’m not sure it will work, because it has a credible commitment problem. The law review editor can’t be sure that the professor will follow through on his promise to promptly withdraw the piece; and also cannot punish the law professor for later reneging since, by the time of withdrawal, the law review has lost leverage over the professor. Then you have the prisoner’s dilemma problem that the professor’s dominant strategy is to be lazy at the time of withdrawal, and the law review editor, knowing this ahead of time, follows a dominant strategy of laziness on his own part.
I suppose the law review can punish the professor in the future, by refusing to read his pieces, but that requires keeping a blacklist of some sort since law reviews have high turnover.
Posted by: TJ | Mar 20, 2009 3:55:43 PM
Let me stick up for Dan a bit. I don’t think a receipt of the manuscript is crucial, although I think it is entirely appropriate and that law reviews that rely on ExpressO ought to take advantage of its features. I think it is not so good for a law review to fail to acknowledge receipt of a request for expedited review, or to fail to send out rejections in a timely manner; I think many law reviews are guilty of the latter, partly because they may want to make sure the volume is filled before taking a final action and partly because they don’t seem to consider it an important part of author relations to send timely rejections. I don’t know whether I approve of “tit for tat” or not — I’m not sure anyone would get the message, and instead we might see a downward spiral of mutual rudeness — but clearly the law reviews that are most deserving of timely updates are those that are timely themselves.
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | Mar 20, 2009 3:46:48 PM
That seems sort of ridiculous to me. Do people actually think the receipt acknowledgments mean something? I regard them as spam more than anything else, not any indication of consideration.
Posted by: anon2 | Mar 20, 2009 3:04:37 PM
Wow, that’s kind of terrible. She doesn’t get receipt of something she already basically knows and so decides to waste minimum a couple of hours of a student’s time? Mature.
Not to mention that on my journal there was about a 25% chance that the person responsible for acknowledging receipt of articles would be the first person to read your article anyway, and I imagine it’s lower on other journals.
Posted by: anon | Mar 20, 2009 3:01:36 PM