Researching for a Scholarly Article or Seminar (SAW) Paper

Two law professors maintain a detailed, regularly updated guide to submitting articles for 195 law reviews:

Following the closure of the ExpressO article submission system, most law reviews now prefer submissions via Scholastica:

Scholastica charges $6.60 per article submission per law review and $10 per article submission for other scholarly journals. (See How much do submissions cost?)

You will need to pay out of pocket to submit articles but, if you are a current law student, you can request reimbursement from your Career and Conference Fund (up to $100 per year). Applications for reimbursement are on My Law → Department → Student Services → Career & Conference Fund Application (in the far right column, under the Documents heading).

Authors commonly want to publish in a law review that it is as highly ranked as possible. There's no definitive, agreed upon list of law review rankings, but the following tools can help you get a rough sense of which law reviews are better ranked. 

The Washington & Lee Law Library maintains a list of law journals by ranking, including the ability to sort to law reviews on specific subjects:

Law review rankings generally align closely with the ranking of the law school, so many authors look to the U.S. News Law School Rankings:

Google Scholar ranks law reviews and other journals based on how often their articles have been cited in the past five years, which Google Scholar calls their h5-index. The higher the h5-index, the better.

Google Scholar lists the top 20 overall law reviews, as well as the top 20 law reviews in the fields of international law and law and technology:

You can also find the h5-index for a law review not on the top 20 lists by clicking the Search icon and then searching for the law review by name. 

Formatting is not the most important factor in whether a paper is accepted, but a polished, professional appearance can give your article a slight boost. 

The following templates may be helpful: