Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [135]
Some schools have a school-wide license for ExpressO (an “Institutional ExpressO Account”), under which anyone with an e-mail address at the school, including students, can submit without paying anything extra. If your school has such an account, then ExpressO simply won't ask you for payment information before making the deliveries; so just try submitting your article, and see if you can do it for free.
b. SSRN: The Social Science Research Network also lets you submit your article to many journals just by filling out a few Web forms; and, as of the time I write this, SSRN is free. I also link to it at http://volokh.com/writing/submitting.
SSRN doesn't handle as many journals as ExpressO does: It doesn't submit to journals that only take print copies, and it omits even some of the journals that take electronic copies via ExpressO. But in the meantime, if you want to save money, you should use SSRN to submit to those journals that SSRN covers, and then use ExpressO to submit to the remainder.
All this may change over time: SSRN may cover more, some journals that take only paper submissions may start accepting electronic submissions, ExpressO rates may fall, or SSRN may start charging. I hope to summarize the current ExpressO vs. SSRN tradeoff at http://volokh.com/writing/submitting, and to update the summary as things change.
c. Manually sending: You can also print and copy the article yourself, and then mail it; http://volokh.com/writing/submitting links to a list of journal mailing addresses. Some journals also let you submit by e-mail directly—a list of their e-mail addresses is also linked to by http://volokh.com/writing/submitting—but many do not.
If you do submit by e-mail, keep in mind that e-mail addresses change more often than postal addresses. If an e-mail address looks like a personal address, call the journal or visit its Web site to confirm that the address is still current. Also, regardless of whether the address looks official, watch for “unknown address” messages that you might get in response to your e-mails, and resubmit the materials to a better e-mail address, or by sending a paper copy.
Sending the article manually, though, is a huge hassle, and I much recommend using ExpressO or SSRN instead. Among other things, if you don't use the electronic services, you'll be tempted to save effort by submitting to fewer journals—a mistake, because then you'll be less likely to get a good offer, which means you won't get the most out of the much greater effort that you've expended on writing your article.
10. Saving money: As I mentioned, if your school has an Institutional ExpressO Account, you can submit via those services for free. But if those services cost money, see if your school (1) is willing to reimburse all or part of your ExpressO submission costs, or of your copying and mailing costs, or (2) is willing to let you use its copying machines for free, or to send your article for free through its mailroom. Option 2 may be bureaucratically easier, since it might be doable without getting the accounting department involved.
Ask your dean's office. If your school has a faculty member or administrator in charge of helping students get jobs as law clerks or professors, ask that person. Or ask your faculty advisor to ask on your behalf (or perhaps just to let you use his copying and mailing account, if the faculty are allowed to do that).
Don't be bashful: It's in the school's interest for their students and graduates to get valuable credentials, and it's hardly a vast expense. Many schools are willing to do this; and even if the administration isn't already committed to helping this way, a sympathetic faculty member may be able to pull the right strings with little effort.
Whether you're spending your own money or trying to persuade the school to spend its money, you might want to use the “Media mail” (also known as “book rate”) postage rate, which is available