A Modest Proposal for Expediting Manuscript Selection at Less Prestigious Law Reviews

The matching market in unsolicited manuscripts, submitted to general law reviews, suffers from far too much wasted student effort. This is especially so among the less prestigious law review staffs, which scramble to read submissions they cannot land in the misguided belief they owe authors serious scholarly engagement with the drafts they submit. If they set aside this quaintly artisanal view—an apparent relic of the “Paper Chase” era that ill suits the age of ExpressO and Scholastica—students can process manuscripts far more efficiently. They need only update their manuscript-review systems according to the same market imperatives that drive the professors who submit the manuscripts, thus putting their respective interests on the same self-directed footing. For less prestigious journals, key moves include short-fuse automated offers and targeted categorical rejections of requests for expedited review