Washington Law Review publishes four times a year, in October, December, March, and June. We publish pieces for a general legal audience and invite authors to submit legal scholarship 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.
Please find below more information on guidelines for submitting your piece for consideration, including how to prepare your manuscript for our anonymous review process.
For questions about submission guidelines or procedures, please email editor@washlrev.org.
2023-2024 SUBMISSIONS SEASONS
WLR considers article and essay submissions in summer and winter submission seasons. Our summer submission portal opens on July 31, 2023, and we will be selecting pieces for our March and June books.
Early Exclusive Submissions
Early Exclusive Submission Terms: Authors participating in WLR‘s Early Exclusive Submission Track may not submit their article to any other publication until WLR renders a final decision. If WLR extends an offer of publication at the end of the exclusive submissions period, participating authors agree to accept it.
Early Exclusive Submission Procedure: Authors interested in Early Exclusive Submissions must submit articles through our Scholastica portal. Consistent with all articles submitted to WLR, authors must redact all personally identifying information from the manuscript for anonymous review. Please include a separate CV or résumé that includes your phone number and email address.
Submission Guidelines
Anonymous Review Process
Washington Law Review 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 manuscripts. Required redactions include citations and phrases that reference the author’s prior work (e.g., “as I have argued previously” or “in a previous article”). Please confine name, affiliation, biographical information, and acknowledgements to a separate CV or resume. Our review process is anonymous until the Submission Season Committee’s final vote.
Required Credentials
WLR publishes articles by authors who are law professors or who have more than two years of experience in law practice, inclusive of clerkships. We do not publish student pieces unless written by Washington Law Review student editors or selected in a writing competition for University of Washington School of Law students.
Length and Style Guidelines for Articles and Essays Articles: Law review articles tend to situate an argument in a larger body of scholarship, analyzing the problem and suggesting a solution. Published articles generally follow a traditional roadmap of introduction, background, analysis/argument, and conclusion, and provide a comprehensive treatment of a particular area of law. Articles are more formal in tone, and ground assertions in consistent citation.
Articles: Law review articles tend to situate an argument in a larger body of scholarship, analyzing the problem and suggesting a solution. Published articles generally follow a traditional roadmap of introduction, background, analysis/argument, and conclusion, and provide a comprehensive treatment of a particular area of law. Articles are more formal in tone, and ground assertions in consistent citation. WLR prefers article submissions that contain fewer than 30,000 words including footnotes.
Essays: Washington Law Review strongly encourages essay submissions. While law review articles often situate themselves within existing research, essays start new conversations. Essays are more conversational and theoretical than traditional articles, and contribute to legal scholarship by discussing a new idea or making a philosophical critique. WLR prefers essay submissions of 8,000 to 12,000 words including footnotes.
Submission Methods: To submit an article or essay for consideration, use the Washington Law Review Scholastica portal. Please fill out your demographic information – we do not use it or have access to it during submission review or on a personal basis, but we use it in the aggregate to assess the efficacy of our efforts for diversity and inclusion.
Writing Guidelines
During the editorial process, student editors work with authors 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 a writer’s personal style, voice, and expertise. For citations, Washington Law Review conforms to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed.). For grammar, WLR follows the conventions of The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d ed.) and The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.). For spelling, WLR follows the conventions of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and Black’s Law Dictionary (10th 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).
