Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [151]
If you're in doubt about the nature of the publication, go to the library and skim a few copies. If after that you're still in doubt about whether you want your piece published there, talk to a professor who works in the field.
b. “Do I think I can do better by circulating the article to the law reviews?” In my experience, some law students circulating a very good article can get it into a primary journal at a Top 50 school, or into a specialty journal at a Top 20 school. If they can't make that, then they tend to be able to get it into a primary at a Top 100, or a specialty journal at a Top 50. They almost always get it published somewhere—but the goal is to publish it in as prestigious a place as possible.
If the competition offers to publish the winner in a journal of roughly that stature (such as the Cardozo Law Review or the Michigan Journal of Race & Law), or at some other journal that's at the top of its specialty (such as the American Indian Law Review), then you should be pleased by the opportunity. On the other hand, if the journal seems likely to be less well-regarded, then you might prefer to take your chances with the higher-ranked law reviews, unless the prize is really too good to resist.
c. “Am I willing to delay submitting the piece to the other journals while I wait to hear from the competition?” If the organization promises to publish the winner, then it doubtless expects that the winner will be available to be published. If they call to tell you that you've won, and you say “Thanks, but I can't let you publish the article, because it's already being published elsewhere,” they probably won't give you the award, and might be annoyed that you've wasted their time. Don't expect to be able to publish the piece in both places—you'd need the permission of both, and at least one of them will almost certainly refuse.
You should therefore wait to hear the results of the competition before you submit the article to other journals. Or, if you don't want to wait, and don't mind losing the chance for an award if you get a good publication offer, then you could submit simultaneously both to the competition and to the journals (unless the competition's rules forbid this) and just withdraw the article from the competition if a journal accepts it first.
If your article seems time-sensitive—if, for instance, you expect there to be new court decisions, statutes, or regulations that may preempt your piece in the next year or two—then you might not want to wait to publish it. The same is true if you're writing in a hot field, and you expect that lots of other people will be writing on the subject. This is especially so if the organization is planning on taking a while to judge the competition; you might call or e-mail them to check how long they'll take to decide.
On the other hand, say you don't think that a delay will hurt much, the competition promises to give an answer quickly, or you actually want a delay (for instance, if you want to circulate the article right after you graduate, rather than a few months before you graduate, to counteract some law reviews' prejudice against publishing articles that are submitted by law students). Then you might want to send the article to the competition, hope for the best, and if they say “no,” then circulate it to the law journals.
D. Competitions That Offer a Chance for Publication
Some competitions that say the winning piece will be merely considered for publication might not mind your publishing the piece elsewhere, and may give you the prize in any event. They may, for instance, take the view that the offer of publication is just a benefit they offer to competitors, and that it's no loss to the organization or its journal if the competitor isn't interested. In that case, you may want to treat them like the competitions that don't offer publication (see Part XXIV.B, p. 292), unless their journal is so prestigious that you do want the chance to publish there.
On the other hand, many