To Practicing Attorneys: Stop Writing Law Review Articles, Steer Clear of Pedantry and Mystification

Is the Law Review dead? Many think it is. Or, that it is dying. According to Walter Olson of The Atlantic on the subject of law reviews: “They’re outdated, impractical, and slowly dying. It’s time to put them to rest.”

Let’s just be honest – we just don’t have the attention span for law review articles anymore. The trend for legal scholarship is shorter, timelier discussions that people actually read like blogs and other short-form online publications. According to Olson, “[a]s online law writing has taken off, readers are rewarding qualities like clarity, concision, relevance, and wit, and steering clear of pedantry and mystification.” Here, here, Mr. Olson.

In a recent article on Lawyerist.com, attorney Matthew R. Salzwedel writes that as law reviews are declining in influence and relevance, practicing attorneys interested in joining the legal discourse community are better off writing “shorter, narrowly focused articles” for legal newspapers, bar publications, blogs, and online legal publications.

Practicing lawyers want quick access to timely, valuable information, which shorter works provide. With more lawyers writing and consuming shorter, narrowly focused articles on blogs and online journals, these writings are also gaining in prestige and legitimacy. The transition to shorter materials is as much due to the accessibility of the medium (online v. print) as the message (pedantic v. concise).