Volume 127 of the Yale Law Journal (YLJ) will begin reviewing Articles and Essays submissions on February 1, 2017. The new Board would like to highlight the following important guidelines for submissions. Please see our General Submission Guidelines for more details.

• We highly encourage authors to submit to YLJ exclusively for at least ten days. We read and consider every manuscript we receive through an extensive review process. Exclusive submission prevents the unfortunate pressure some authors have faced in the past of having to make a decision about an offer from another journal—often an “exploding offer” with an exceedingly short deadline—before we are able to complete our review process.

• Relatedly, expedited review provides no competitive advantage in our process. In fact, it may disadvantage your piece insofar as it inhibits us from completing our review process. The vast majority of the pieces we have accepted in recent volumes have not been expedited. When we do expedite a piece through our review process, our Articles & Essays Committee remains blinded to the identity of both the author and the peer journal that has made an offer. 

• There is no “best” time to submit to YLJ, though authors are welcome to review our submission cycle statistics. This year, the Articles & Essays Committee will close and not review pieces between April 25 and July 5. 

• There is no need to submit a CV or cover letter with your piece. To maintain our blind review process, we do not consider these documents.

• Volume 126 issued YLJ’s first Empirical Work Policy. YLJ is committed to increasing the transparency and accessibility of legal scholarship that builds on empirical data. We offer a variety of options for authors to submit, store, and share their datasets.