There are many things wrong and frustrating about the law review submission process, but other approaches can be just as bad, or even worse. I have written before about the problems with the peer review system in the social sciences.
Let us now turn to more mainstream publications. The submissions page for the Los Angeles Review of Books includes these instructions for pitching an article:
All submissions must be exclusive.
And,
Due to the volume of pitches we receive daily, we can only respond to those we accept.
In other words, you could submit your piece to LARB and only LARB, and then sit in limbo for an unspecified amount of time, precluded from sending it elsewhere, while waiting for a response that may never come.
We could call that Schrodinger’s submission – neither accepted nor rejected, with the added twist that you cannot even open the box.
Huh. I've never seen anything quite like that before. Presumably there's some norm here about when it's reasonable to solicit another offer.
I imagine that many law professors are currently violating the exclusive submission standards of peer reviewed journals because firms like Express O list journals without noting that they are peer reviewed single submission journals. Unless the author takes time to go to each journal to check submission guidelines, merely checking the Express O box to submit will tell you nothing.
On another point, why don't we professors demand from student run law reviews that they contact authors when the review rejects an article? Bar associations and courts are placing significant emphasis on "civility", but we professors and faculty advisors to student law reviews don't demand civility in the law review process.
William, we're veering a little off topic, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that law professors are infamously bad at extending this courtesy to candidates during the appointments process. Perhaps law professors don't demand that courtesy because they don't extend it themselves. (All should, to be clear, but unfortunately that is only an aspiration.)
Orin: Do you really think law professors hold that long of a grudge? I mean, I know I have a list of every law school that's done me wrong, but I figured I was unusually petty.
In all seriousness, one of my academic fantasies is to reply to one of those "We hope you will continue to submit to X Law Review in the future" rejection emails with a "nope, you're dead to me now," and see what happens.
Steve: Why isn't the solution that the author withdraws the submission after a reasonable amount of time, say one month? Or, better, indicates in the submission letter that the submission will be deemed withdrawn absent a response within a month? (Not trying to suggest a month is reasonable–just using it for illustrative purposes.)
Orin: the AppComm practice you identify is, I agree, generally poor form. But I suppose the candidate could take the same approach as the author, which is to say to withdraw after a certain reasonable amount of time. Extended AppComm silence has the perhaps salutary effect of allowing the candidate to say that s/he pulled out rather than confess rejection. Admittedly, it's a risky strategy for entry-level candidates, but perhaps more plausible for lateral candidates.