Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [141]
You don't have (5) any case names here, and you probably don't need them. “Transaction costs” is a bit of (6) economics jargon, but it's so well-known that it's probably worth keeping, especially since there's no really good synonym. You don't have any technical legal terms or statutory cites, which is good: If your title had been “17 U.S.C. § 115: Fighting Transaction Costs Through Intellectual Quasi–Property,” you should have changed it to our working title (“Compulsory Licenses ...”)—many readers, even ones who know something about copyright law, might not be sure what § 115 covers.
So you now have a pretty good title. It's not exciting, but it should get the job done. Someone who is interested in compulsory licenses and who comes across a piece labeled “Compulsory Licenses in Copyrighted Music: Fighting Transaction Costs Through Intellectual Quasi–Property” will probably think it's worth looking at—and that's the title's main function.
C. Writing an Abstract
An abstract is a short summary of an article. You should write it before submitting it to the journal, and include it at the start of the article, perhaps in a format such as this:
MY ARTICLE TITLE
My Name
ABSTRACT
[Abstract goes here. Abstract goes here. Abstract goes here. Abstract goes here. Abstract goes here. Abstract goes here. Abstract goes here.]
[The rest of the article goes here. The rest of the article goes here. The rest of the article goes here. The rest of the article goes here.]
Some journals print abstracts in italics, but I recommend against formatting the abstract that way. Big blocks of italicized text are harder to read than the same text set in a normal font.
There are four places an abstract might be distributed and read:
1. Some journals publish it at the start of the article, on the issue's table of contents, or on the journal's Web site.
2. Whether or not the journal publishes an abstract, services such as the Social Science Research Network (see p. 287) maintain e-mail distribution lists through which hundreds of subscribers get abstracts of forthcoming articles. These distribution lists are valuable tools to get readers for your work.
3. Some researchers search the Social Science Research Network abstract database to find articles, including forthcoming articles that aren't yet on Lexis, Westlaw, or HeinOnline.
4. Some law review editors look at the abstract when the article is submitted, and forward it to other editors when they recommend that the article be accepted.
So it's worth taking some care with the abstract. Don't view it as an afterthought, to be cobbled together a few minutes before you circulate the article. Write it at least several days beforehand, and edit it several times, just like you edited the rest of the article several times. Take special care with editing the abstract, since for many readers the abstract will be the first part they read—and maybe the only part they read. And take special pains to tighten the wording as much as possible, to make it as terse (but readable) as possible.
The abstract is an advertisement for your article: It tries to persuade readers to invest their scarce time and attention into reading your article, or at least the Introduction. A good abstract might persuade some to read the article right away. But it could also help others remember the article (even if just vaguely) for the future, so that when the underlying issue becomes important to them, they can find and read the article then.
And the audience for your advertisement is quite demanding. They've generally found the abstract just through a quick skim of an SSRN e-mail or a law review table of contents, so they aren't sure the article will be of any value to them.
You need to quickly show them this value, by clearly and tersely telling readers (1) what problem the article is trying to solve, and (2) what valuable original observations the article offers. Naturally, the abstract can't go into much detail. But it has to