Pimps, Prostitutes, and Placements: Drafting the Cover Letter to Law Journals

I have two articles that I’ll be submitting to law journals over the next three weeks or so.   When I first started teaching in 1994, I did not know that many journals are most receptive to submissions in March/April and August/September.  So I shopped my first major piece in late December or early January as soon as I completed it.  I was quite pleased to receive (and accept) an offer from the fine folks at the Tennessee Law Review.  I’m skeptical that an “off season” submission would yield the same result today.  Now I follow the herd and keep the traditional windows in mind as I work on scholarship.

The format of my cover letter, though, continues to evolve.  For several years, my cover letter included three paragraphs.  The first paragraph said something like “Enclosed is my manuscript entitled ….”  The second paragraph was (or came close to being) an abstract of the article.  And the third paragraph provided student editors with guidance on where to send rejections.  I never enclosed my c.v.  Why would I?  I’m selling my article, not myself.  And the article will should place on its own merits.  Right?

So I move along in my career, and I discover that my competitors peers are including a c.v. as part of the submission packet.  Hmmmmm.  Well, I guess I better do so, too, although I’m skeptical of its purpose.  So I throw in a one-sentence paragraph near the end of my cover letter.  “Enclosed is my c.v.”  To say more just seemed so … so … wrong presumptuous.

In recent days I’ve asked two junior colleagues to review and comment on drafts of a cover letter.  Both colleagues have been very successful in placing scholarship with excellent journals.  And both served as articles editors for a “top 10” journal.  So when they talk, I listen.

And I did not like what I heard.  To loosely paraphrase, they said the one-sentence, end-of-the-letter, reference to “the enclosed c.v.” just wouldn’t do.  No sirree.  I needed to mention my previous placements.  Perhaps even in the opening paragraph!  Say what?  Shouldn’t my article rise and fall on its own?  Well, maybe it should, but apparently student editors use prior placements as a time-saving proxy for “quality.”  I’m shocked!  Just shocked!!

OK.  I’m not shocked.  Naive, perhaps.  But not shocked.  I’ve known for years why folks include c.v.’s and sell their prior placements (and AmJur awards, and numerous SCOTUS clerkships, and multiple inductions into Order of the Hairdo, and summer internships with Cravath Skadden Latham Sidley Covington Habitat For Humanity, and missionary journeys with St. Paul, etc.) as much as (if not more than) the enclosed manuscript.  And I’ve decided to play along.  This time.  We’ll see what happens.  I still feel somewhat unclean.  And just as one of my junior colleagues warned, the long hot showers have not made the cheap and tawdry feelings go away.

I am excited to report that this whole process will prompt me to change my behavior in two dramatic ways.  First, beginning in September 2009, my cover letter will take the following single-sentence format:  “A list of my future scholarship may include placements at Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Yale, Stanford, Yale, Virginia, Yale, Chicago, and Yale, so add your name to this impressive list by extending an offer to publish my forthcoming untitled and unwritten manuscript.”  And second, I won’t be grading any more exams.  I’ll just ask students to submit a transcript of prior grades, which I’ll use as my proxy.  Seems only fair, right?