1.1 Submission of articles and essays

Submissions of articles and essays under 15,000 words, including footnotes, are due on or before September 1 this year. Details about the required technical aspects of submissions appear below, in Section 2.

We welcome articles and essays on any topic that falls within the mission of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD to develop scholarship focusing on the substance and practice of professional legal communication, broadly defined to include many aspects of lawyering, and to make that scholarship accessible and helpful to practitioners as well as to legal academics. Without compromising analytical rigor and the necessary theoretical and research foundation, our goal is to publish articles that are readable and usable by the broader audience of professional legal writers. We are looking for clear, concrete, direct writing; strong, interesting, intelligent voices; and a style that uses the text for substance and the footnotes to provide support, sources, and references for additional study.

The editorial board is committed to discipline-building and will gladly respond to pre-submission inquiries for early mission review or guidance in advance of the September submission deadline. If you would like guidance regarding a proposed article topic in the earlier stages of your drafting process, we invite you to submit a one paragraph expression of interest summarizing your proposed topic. In other words, we are willing to make suggestions to help you during the drafting of your article and to help your article meet the journal’s mission.

Potential authors may wish to consult articles and essays published in past issues, as well as the more specific information for authors available under the Submissions tab.

1.2 Exclusive submission preferred / peer review and the effect on expedited requests

Because of the time involved with conducting the peer review process, Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD prefers but does not require exclusive submission of manuscripts. Submission elsewhere does not prejudice the author’s chances of receiving an offer from Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD. If an author has submitted the manuscript elsewhere or wishes to do so, the author should inform the Journal at the time of submission and notify the Journal immediately should the author accept another offer of publication. This is to allow us to alert our peer reviewers. Using an anonymous, peer-review process is time-consuming and makes expedited review difficult to accommodate.

1.3 Diversity Statement

Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD recognizes the historical inequalities that pervade the legal profession and the legal academy and affirms its commitment to contributing to a legal writing discipline that is equitable and inclusive. Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD further recognizes that increasing diversity brings added intellectual, scholarly, cultural, social and economic benefits to the academic and lawyering communities. Accordingly, while staying true to its publication mission, Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD shall make every effort to promote equal access to all and ensure that its structure, policies and systems reflect the varied aspects of the academic and lawyering communities. These efforts specifically include seeking diversity among its contributing authors along racial, socioeconomic, sexual orientation, gender and other under-represented lines.

2.1 Three parts to the submission

Electronic manuscripts should be accompanied by 1) a cover sheet summarizing the article; 2) the article; and 3) a CV, resume, or summary of the author’s scholarship background. This last document should include the author’s preferred email and phone contact information.

2.2 Maximum length of submissions

For major articles, Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD will consider manuscripts from 5,000–15,000 words of text including footnotes. For more informal essays, Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD recommends manuscripts of approximately 2,500–5,000 words of text and fewer than 50 footnotes. Book reviews are solicited separately and are shorter documents.

2.3 Microsoft Word (native) and explanation

Because we use a professional designer who requires it, all manuscripts must be prepared and submitted as native Microsoft Word documents.[1] Most of us will be reading the submissions onscreen, whether on a desktop or tablet. For that reason, there is no need for double-spacing, and in fact we prefer submissions in a multiple of 1.0 to 1.2 spacing (for readability purposes).

Moreover, you are free to select the readable typeface of your choice. You are also encouraged to use scientific numbering, as we have modeled in this call for articles. At this time, we cannot print color graphics in our bound volumes, but if you do use charts, we will offer advice about converting to grayscale with patterns. We also anticipate more flexibility in publishing color graphics and charts on the online platform.

2.4 Citation and providing copies of source materials

Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD follows standard legal citation form, contained in both the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation (7th ed.) and in The Bluebook (21st ed.).

Please note that all accepted authors will be required to provide copies of source materials that are unavailable through normal legal research methods (including title and copyright pages). We prefer scanned materials shared via Dropbox.

[1] Any manuscript that originated in another program such as WordPerfect must be recreated in Word before submission to the journal because the footnote formatting is not converted properly (trust us, we speak from experience).

Submissions should be sent through the Online Submission Form or by email to LCR@alwd.org.

3.1 Process

This is a peer-reviewed journal. All submissions (articles and essays) that meet the mission of the journal are sent to anonymous peer reviewers before returning to the editorial board for a discussion of the anonymous reviews and a final vote. The peer-review system is double blind.

3.2 Submission of Book Reviews

We include book reviews in each volume. Those are handled through a separate submission procedure after the articles are selected. For more information, contact our Book Review Editor, Nantiya Ruan or Danielle Tully.

Please contact the co-Editors-in-Chief.