An editor in chief (EIC) must master many administrative tasks. At most, an EIC has only one year to learn how to manage a law review, do the job, and then train a replacement. Because of the workload, the relative brevity of an EIC’s tour of duty is both a blessing and a curse.
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If there is one piece of advice that any incoming editor in chief should accept, it is this—be prepared. From the moment you step into your new role, there will be many expectations you need to fulfill. The executive board expects you to be a competent leader who is dedicated to the law review; the school and community expect you to publish in a timely fashion; the membership expects you to consider their competing commitments and responsibilities. You must be prepared to deal with these expectations and to figure out the best way to fulfill them.
President Harry S. Truman, upon learning of his predecessor’s death and subsequently being sworn in as the Nation’s president, stated to a crowd of reporters, “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. . . . [W]hen they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.” Truman’s eloquent quote describes my own feelings about being selected as the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review’s editor in chief. Although the awesome responsibilities held by the Nation’s chief executive officer dwarf those of a law review editor in chief, this fact did not help to alleviate my own anxiety. As a staff member, I merely Bluebooked articles and made feeble attempts at crafting them. My background possessed no indicia of editorial experience. Yet, I was expected to oversee an established law journal with more than fifty members. To say I felt a bit overwhelmed would be an understatement.
I remember accepting my law review’s managing editor position as if it were yesterday. I could not wait to implement my new ideas and “shape-up” the law review. I was young, I was hungry, I was . . . well, I was completely overwhelmed. The outgoing managing editor was, in my mind and everyone else’s mind, the standard by which all managing editors should be measured. I, on the other hand, was not technically proficient; I did not know the Bluebook by heart. I often heard, though it did not need to be said, “You’ve got big shoes to fill.”
Welcome to management! Odd as it may sound, this is the most appropriate greeting for new student works editors. Your previous law school experiences have consisted almost entirely of challenges and obstacles that you have overcome by individual effort. As editors, however, you will be judged by the output of others. Good editors, by definition, are those who ensure that their writers produce “on time and on target”—that they produce quality works in a timely manner. This Essay suggests ways of dealing with the difficulties you likely will encounter in overseeing the work of other students.
This Essay is designed to warn new editors of the pitfalls they may encounter in dealing with law review associates and editors and suggest some advice on how to deal with these potential problems.
First-year law students are indoctrinated with the importance of doing well. The reward for high grades during one’s first year of law school is a coveted spot on the law review. However, a new trend in law schools is becoming a member of a specialty law journal. Specialty law journals cater to practitioners, lawyers, and legal scholars within a particular area of the law. The specialty journal is becoming a new forum in which lawyers voice their opinions on how law should be made.
Last year, while perusing the submission policies of several law reviews, I noticed that several of the reviews listed e-mail addresses and encouraged authors to submit manuscripts electronically by email attachment. Noting that the lists of law review names and addresses I traditionally used for my article submissions did not include e-mail addresses, I began to compile a list of my own. In Fall 1999, I wrote to some 180 general-interest law reviews and asked whether they accepted electronic submissions and, if so, whether they would send me their e-mail addresses. Eric W. Young and I compiled the responses and created a Web site of law reviews that accept electronic submissions.
Enhancing the quality of the law review should be a primary goal of every law review. Librarians have expertise that can help your law review staff improve their research skills and can help in the process of training new associates. This Article describes Stetson University College of Law’s model, which you can modify to fit your school’s specific needs.
Student-edited law reviews speak to diverse audiences and serve multiple roles. Practitioners, judges, and law students utilize the invaluable information contained in the pages of law reviews. While law reviews are showcases for academic scholarship, they also are student organizations and commercial enterprises.