Washington Law Review will soon be seeking submissions from current UW Law students for publication in Washington Law Review Online. One selected paper will be published in Washington Law Review Online as a student comment, and the author will win a prize of $1,000, thanks to law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. The accepted paper will go through rounds of edits by WLR editors during Spring Quarter and be published in 2027.
Student Eligibility
WLR will accept submissions from UW Law students who are currently 2Ls, 3Ls, LLMs, or MJs. We will also not accept submissions from current WLR members. In addition, pieces submitted must not be published or going to be published with any other journal or organization.
Paper Criteria
Topic Selection
WLR publishes pieces for a general legal audience and invites authors to submit papers on all topics. WLR embraces a multi-faceted, intersectional approach to legal issues relevant to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. We seek to respond to the overdue and critical need for diverse voices in law; primarily voices that have been historically underrepresented in our legal community. To that end, WLR is particularly interested in submissions from scholars of color, submissions that address legal issues facing historically marginalized communities, and submissions that discuss legal issues specific to the Pacific Northwest and the Ninth Circuit.
Word Count and Citations
Submitted papers must be no shorter than 5,000 words and no longer than 10,000 words, including footnotes. Papers should be cited by the Bluebook.
Editorial Process
After selection, WLR editors will work with the author by providing substantive and stylistic feedback on the author’s work. Our goal is to make editorial suggestions that will help authors produce high-quality scholarship without infringing on their personal style, voice, and expertise. For citations, Washington Law Review conforms to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (22nd ed.). For grammar, WLR follows the conventions of The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (5th ed.) and The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). For spelling, WLR follows the conventions of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed.). WLR’s Style Guide departs from these authorities in limited circumstances, most notably in our Inclusive Language Policy. If selected, we require all authors to cite for the following unless an editor approves an exception: factual assertions, direct quotations, statutes, and case references (immediately after the case and including a pin cite with each following reference).
Submission Instructions
WLR will accept submissions through April 6, 2026.
Anonymous Review Process
WLR uses an anonymous review process to reduce implicit bias in article selection. To that end, WLR asks authors to redact all personally identifying information from submissions.
Please submit your piece through this Google Form by April 3, 2026: https://forms.gle/BL9BvsJ8K39uHzZz7
Questions?
If you have any questions, please contact our Chief Online Editor, Betty Yu, at byu@washlrev.org.
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