This week I thanked the law review editors at the West Virginia Law Review for their hard work on my forthcoming article. They seemed truly grateful for the thanks, which was well deserved, and it made me think that I should thank law review editors more often.

Law review editors put in a tremendous amount of time working on our articles, often well after-hours given all of their other commitments. Even when the process is frustrating, I think we need to be thankful and professional. Also, given that I have had a few rough editing experiences, I now state my preferences up front, which (at least this time) led to better results. 

Somewhat related, over at PrawfsBlawg, Andrew Chongseh Kim has a couple posts on the law review process: one on exploding offers and one on peer review of law review articles.

Personally, I don't have a problem with exploding offers, and I actually think more law reviews should use them. The submission game incentivizes submission to many journals and trading up multiple times. This process wastes an incredible amount of student editor time and they have every right to effectively shut down the expedite process.

As I have mentioned before, the exclusive submission window is an elegant solution to the expedite problem. Under this strategy, the law review promises a prompt decision and the professor promises to accept the offer if made. The only downside to the exclusive submission window is that the professor usually cannot shop the article during that window, so it slows the submission process. 

Maybe the solution is to allow multiple submissions, but prevent professors from trading-up. If that were the rule, professors would be incentivized to submit only to journals where they would be happy to publish and the process would be faster.

Finally, I can't have a post about law reviews without asking, again, why more law reviews have not moved to blind review. I cannot think of a good reason, but am I missing something?