Submissions
General Guidelines
Submission of articles
Submissions are due on or before September 15 of the calendar year before an upcoming issue. We welcome articles on any topic that falls within the mission of the Journal: to develop scholarship focusing on the substance and practice of professional legal writing and to make that scholarship accessible and helpful to practitioners as well as to legal academics. Without compromising analytical rigor and the necessary theoretical and research foundation, our goal is to publish articles that are readable and usable by the broader audience of professional legal writers. We are looking for clear, concrete, direct writing; strong, interesting, intelligent voices; and a style that uses the text for substance and the footnotes to provide support, sources, and references for additional study.
Potential authors may wish to consult articles published in past issues of the Journal as well as the more specific information for authors available at Information for Authors.
Exclusive submission
The Journal prefers exclusive submission of manuscripts. If an author has submitted the manuscript elsewhere or wishes to do so, the author should inform the Journal at the time of submission and notify the Journal immediately should the author accept another offer of publication.
Technical requirements
Manuscripts should be accompanied by (1) a cover letter summarizing the article and (2) the resume of the author, including telephone number and e-mail address. For major articles, the Journal will consider manuscripts from 30 to 50 typewritten pages (7,500 to 12,500 words). For practice notes, the Journal recommends manuscripts from 5 to 15 typewritten pages. All manuscripts should be prepared in Microsoft Word, and there is no need to use double spacing. Single or 1.5 spacing is acceptable. Please use a readable-size font for both text and footnotes. Citation format in the final printed article will appear in the format of the current edition of the ALWD Citation Manual, and the editorial board appreciates submission in that format to the extent possible. The editorial board reserves the right to ask the accepted author to assist in any needed citation conversion during the article editing process.
How to submit
Submissions (preferably electronic) should be sent to the following e-mail
address, directly or through the ALWD website: jalwd@alwd.org
Or they may be mailed to:
Suzianne D. Painter-Thorne, Managing Editor
Associate Professor of Law
MercerUniversity School of Law
1021 Georgia Ave.
Macon, GA 31207
Submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail.