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LETTERHEAD BIAS AND BLIND REVIEW:
AN ANALYSIS OF PREVALENCE AND
MITIGATION EFFORTS
Michael Conklin*
INTRODUCTION
Legal scholarship is one of the only areas in academia that allows non-ex-
clusive, non-blind submissions.1 Meaning an author may simultaneously submit
the same manuscript to multiple journals, and the reviewers of those journals will
be aware of the author's identity.2 The non-blind aspect of legal scholarship has
led to widespread accusations of letterhead bias3 and an equally widespread call
for blind article selection.4 Letterhead bias is when journal editors use infor-
mation about the author-reputation, affiliated institution, prior publications,
etc.-as a proxy for article quality and therefore adjust their likelihood of accept-
ing the submission accordingly.5 Because of the private nature of law journals'
review processes, current inquiry into the practice has been primarily limited to
anecdotes.6 The lack of any empirical research into the subject has led to bold
* Powell Endowed Professor of Business Law, Angelo State University.
1. Albert H. Yoon, Editorial Bias in Legal Academia, 5 J. LEGAL ANALYSIS 309, 311 (2013).
2. Id.
3. Everyone has a sense that letterhead bias exists but no one can prove it. Michael J.Z. Mannheimer,
Anecdotal Evidence of Letterhead Bias, PRAWFSBLAWG (May 27, 2011, 1:22 PM),
https://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2011/05/anecdotal-evidence-of-letterhead-bias.html
[https://perma.cc/2G8G-7V4X]..
4. Stephen Thomson, Letterhead Bias and the Demographics of Elite Journal Publications, 33 HARVARD
J.L. & TECH. 203, 210 (2019) (Legal academics generally favor a system of blind review in article selection ....
Most of those academics also want the entire selection process to be blind.); see also James Lindgren, An Au-
thor's Manifesto, 61 U. CHI. L. REV. 527, 538 (1994) (Reform-minded student reviews should [c]onceal the
author's identity, gender, and institutional affiliation from those selecting the articles.); Barry Friedman, Fixing
Law Reviews, 67 DUKE L.J. 1297, 1349 (2018) (Review of articles ought to be blind.).
5. Kevin M. Yamamoto, What's in a Name? The Letterhead Impact Project, 22 J. LEGAL STUD. EDUC.
65, 65 (2004); see also Fabio Arcila, Judging Scholarship, or, Would You Killfor BlindReview?, PRAWFSBLAWG
(Dec. 7, 2009, 9:12 AM), https://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2009/12/judging-scholarship-or-would-
you-kill-for-blind-review.html [https://perma.cc/SQ99-9MUW].
6. Dan Subotnik & Glen Lazar, Deconstructing the Rejection Letter: A Look at Elitism in Article Selec-
tion, 49 J. LEGAL EDUC. 601, 610 (1999) (providing two such anecdotal examples). In one, a professor from the
University of Kentucky Law School received no offers when submitting her article to fifty law reviews. Id. Then,
while visiting William and Mary Law School she resubmitted using their letterhead. Id. She received five inquir-
ies in the first week. Id. The second anecdote is from a professor who engaged in a mass submission of an article,
half of which were conducted on Chicago-Kent letterhead and half of which were on University of Chicago
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/uilro2022&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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