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78 SMU L. Rev. F. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/smulrf78 and id is 1 raw text is: COPYRIGHT © 2025 SMU LAW REVIEW ASSOCIATION SMU Law Review Forum Volume 78 2025 1-8 ENHANCING LAW REVIEW IMPACT Jeffrey A. Parness* I. INTRODUCTION The success of any law review can be gauged, though in part only, by the impact of the ideas within its published works.1 Impact depends, in part, on law review visibility. Review success is often hampered, however, by the shortcomings in journal visibility. The shortcomings in the means utilized by reviews to promote their works have plagued legal journals for years.2 Some reviews do better, their efforts able to inform others. Opportunities for enhanced law review impact chiefly arise from the new technologically based mechanisms for delivering information. Unfortunately, these mechanisms are generally underutilized by law reviews. Opportunities for impact enhancement are available for the solicitation, editing, and distribution stages of journal publication. As to solicitation, law reviews need to be far more proactive, and creative. Reliance solely or chiefly on unsolicited pieces pouring in through Scholastica or otherwise is not usually wise. In revamping solicitation efforts, reforms should vary across reviews. Journals at elite schools should solicit works from outside authors differently than journals DOI: https://doi.org/10.25172/slrf.78.1.1 *Professor Emeritus, Northern Illinois University College of Law. B.A., Colby College; J.D., The University of Chicago Law School. 1. Law review success can also be significantly gauged by the skills development of its members. New law review efforts aimed at enhancing the impact of published works in legal arenas and beyond should not interfere with student skills development efforts. 2. Of course, law review success is hampered by other shortcomings, including the subject matter of published pieces, which is often criticized for not being very helpful to judges, lawyers, lawmakers, and law reform groups, among others. See, e.g., Fred Rodell, Goodbye to Law Reviews, 31 VA. L. REv. 38, 43 (1936) (With law as the only alternative to force as a means of solving ... problems of the world ... the articulate among the clan of lawyers might, in their writings be more pointedly aware of those problems . . . instead of blithely continuing to make mountain after mountain of tiresome technical molehills.). More recent critiques are noted in HIarry T. Edwards, Another Look at ProfessorRodell's Goodbye to Law Reviews, 100 VA. L. REV. 1483, 1484-1487 (2014), though Judge Edwards concluded I do not agree that almost all reviews are useless. Id. at 1487. But see Paul D. Reingold, Harry Edwards'Nostalgia, 91 MICH. L. REV. 1998, 2009 (1993) (suggesting that law schools where clinics are an integral part of the curriculum can bring us closer to Edwards' vision of what law schools ought to be, which are environments where all kinds of legal work ... is supported and appreciated). 1

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