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50 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 385 (2018-2019)
The Law Review Follies

handle is hein.journals/luclj50 and id is 429 raw text is: The Law Review Follies Eric J. Segall* Would you want the New England Journal of Medicine to be edited by medical students?1 IN TRODUCTION ............................................................................. 385 I. Too LONG, Too MANY FOOTNOTES, Too BLAND .................... 386 II. Too LONG BETWEEN ACCEPTANCE AND PUBLICATION ........... 388 III. THE AVALANCHE OF SCHOLARSHIP ........................................ 389 IV. THE COMPLETELY INSANE SELECTION PROCESS .................... 391 V. THE FUTURE OF LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP ..................................... 393 C ON CLU SION ................................................................................. 394 INTRODUCTION The world of law review scholarship is a bizarre one and has been for a long time. Traditional forty-plus page law review articles with hundreds of footnotes are barely read, except by law school hiring and tenure committees and maybe a few other law professors writing on the same subject. Many professors are frustrated by the unduly lengthy time, often a year or more, that it takes for an article to go from submission to print, usually with much wrangling between student editors and faculty over the smallest of editing decisions. The need to footnote every idea, even universally accepted statements of obvious fact, disturbs and frustrates many law review authors.2 And the competition to the traditional law review article, in the form of shorter and less-footnoted online law review essays, op-eds, blog posts, and online journals such as Slate, National Review, and The Atlantic, among many others, has never been fiercer. In short, the traditional law review article is in great jeopardy, and that is * Kathy & Lawrence Ashe Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law. Thanks to the excellent students of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal for hosting this wonderful symposium on legal scholarship and to all the faculty who attended the conference and provided many insights that helped shape this essay. Warning: the footnotes to this essay will be unconventional and may be dangerous to read for those who take The Bluebook seriously. 1. Adam Liptak, The Lackluster Reviews That Lawyers Love to Hate, N.Y. Times (Oct. 21, 2013), https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/law-scholarships-lackluster-reviews.html? r=O (quoting Professor Richard Wise). 2. See this is just true.

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