Student Note & Comment Submissions
The UC Irvine Law Review accepts student notes and comments only from UC Irvine School of Law students and recent alumni, including UC Irvine Law Review members and nonmembers. A note is a research-based, student-written piece published in a Law Review or journal with one or more authors about a novel legal topic. Notes are often created with the mentorship of a faculty advisor. Work completed to fulfill the Upper-Level Writing Requirement, whether through coursework or Directed Research, serves as a great starting point for a note submission. Please e-mail lawreview.notes@lawnet.uci.edu for information regarding submission windows and deadlines.
What Do I Submit?
When submitting a note or comment to the UC Irvine Law Review during a submission window, please include the following three things:
- A Microsoft Word document (no PDFs, please) of your note or comment without identifying information (e.g., name, year of graduation, course in which the paper was drafted)
- A preemption memorandum
- Faculty approval of submission to the Law Review for publication
(1) Note and Comment Content Guidelines
When submitting a note or comment, please take note of the guidelines listed below.
- Preference will be given to notes and comments that are 20,000 words or less, including footnotes.
- Please include a short abstract summarizing the main argument and thesis of the note or comment.
- Please include a table of contents.
Attribution and Style Guidelines
- The UC Irvine Law Review uses The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed. 2020) where it offers rules, and The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed. 2017) for all other style questions. Student notes and comments should conform to the rules and style guidelines in The Bluebook and The Chicago Manual of Style.
- Please provide attribution for all statements of fact or law that are not common knowledge. Please use footnotes rather than endnotes, a bibliography, or in-line citations. Citations in footnotes should identify the specific, relevant portions of cited sources.
(2) What Is a Preemption Memorandum?
- A preemption memorandum is a document that demonstrates the topic of your note or comment does not completely parallel a previously published work on the same or substantially similar topic. A preemption memorandum should demonstrate your note or comment would make an original or novel contribution to legal scholarship.
- To determine if you are preempted, student note authors should locate and review published sources on their topic using Lexis, Westlaw, the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), database, JSTOR and/or Google. Some Westlaw databases that prove particularly helpful are: Current Index to Legal periodicals (CILP), Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP), Journals and Law Review (JLR), and Practice Area Databases.
- To perform a preemption check, authors should use the databases mentioned above and conduct keyword and subject searches to confirm the originality of a note or comment’s thesis. Authors should note the findings of this preemption check, especially any similar work, in their preemption memo.
- At the end of the preemption memo, please also include a statement indicating that you have not previously published a similar piece.
(3) What Does Faculty Approval Look Like?
- Before submitting your note, you must obtain a faculty advisor’s approval of the general accuracy of the law in your note. An advisor is a faculty member who taught a course you wrote the note or comment for or a faculty member who oversaw your directed research.
- When you submit your note or comment, please include the name of your faculty advisor and provide some evidence of your faculty advisor’s approval of the general accuracy of the law in your note or comment. The approval may be an informal statement. For example, students have previously submitted a screenshot or PDF of an informal e-mail exchange between the student and faculty advisor.
What Happens After I Submit?
- The Notes and Comments Committee will read all submissions and conduct a blind review of the pieces. After reading and reviewing, the Committee will meet and discuss the submissions to determine which they will extend offers for publication.
- Upon acceptance of a note or comment, the author must (1) sign a licensing agreement acknowledging the UC Irvine Law Review has first right of publication for the note or comment, (2) schedule a meeting with the Senior Notes and Comments Editor and assigned Notes Editor to discuss the editorial timeline, and (3) submit PDF copies of all cited-to sources.
- The meeting with the Senior Notes and Comments Editor and Notes Editor is intended to introduce the author to the Notes Editor with whom they will be working closely to perfect the note or comment ahead of publication. At the meeting, we will discuss the editorial timeline for the issue in which the note or comment will be published, expectations the Law Review has for a student note or comment author, and expectations a student note or comment author should have of the Law Review staff working on the piece.
- When collecting sources, the PDFs must conform to the Law Review’s source collection and file-naming conventions. Upon acceptance of a note, the Senior Notes and Comments Editor will inform the note author of the Law Review’s source collection and file-naming conventions. If you would like to review our source collection and file-naming conventions before you submit your note, please contact the Senior Notes and Comments Editor at lawreview.notes@lawnet.uci.edu.
- If necessary, the author must submit a separate data file for empirical work and high-resolution files of illustrations, graphs, or figures. Additionally, if cited material is unavailable for public access or is likely to be difficult to obtain, please provide digital files, scans, or photocopies to allow our editors to verify and properly cite the materials.