Author: I shortened a submission in progress that was going to be around 70-75 pages. It's now around 50. It needed an overhaul anyway -- the new guidelines pushed me in one particular direction.

EDITOR: I am an editor on one of the journals that signed on to the new policy. Many of the articles we read and reviewed included a note that they had been shortened to comply with the new policy. As editors, we made a conscious effort to consider article length in our publication decisions. We were not thinking "this is the new policy, you must follow the policy," it was more along the lines of "we have asked the authors to tighten things up and eliminate redundant and/or overly summarized sections, did this author do that?"

We also made at least one request that an article be shortened (an appendix ended up being removed to bring the length down). Some articles felt like they needed to go beyond the suggested length, and we did not contemplate shortening those, but for the most part we wanted to stick to the limits.

The way I think of the new policy is that many (probably most) articles submitted to law reviews can easily summarize the background and make their argument within the given parameters. However, many of the authors who could submit excellent shorter pieces feel the need to draw the piece out to make it seem more substantial. The reality is that there are great topics that can be handled in a small piece (we are publishing one that is only 25 pages), but those great topics become mind-numbing and repetitive when they are drawn out. The guidelines are not hard and fast because there are some articles that simply cannot be written in less than 100 or more pages. The topic could be incredibly broad, or the case law might be extremely complex and/or unknown.

AUTHOR: I shortened my article, which was on a fairly technical topic about taxation and private equity funds, from 60 to 45 pages. I did so by removing some quasi-empirical stuff, removing unnecessary footnotes, tightening the writing a bit, and removing some of the summary of the literature. Probably not a wise move. I did great with the specialty journals, but not great with the general law reviews, where the students probably would have liked more background material. Next time I may submit a separate 10-20 page "reader's manual" for students who might find the topic intriguing but don't have sufficient background knowledge to assess whether it's a significant contribution to the literature.

EDITOR: We did not sign the new policy, but the average length of articles submitted to our journal has noticeably decreased, and a significant percentage of cover letters flag compliance with the policy (they also tend to say something like "I realize you are among the schools to sign on to the joint statement urging shorter submissions." No we aren't.)

We have tended to publish shorter articles, primarily because the average length of submitted articles are shorter. I had reservations about the joint statement when it was issued, and I think the early data seems to bear out my concerns. There's no question that a tightly written, shorter article is better than a version of the same article that is more verbose and contains unnecessary information. The former is easier to read, and lets us publish more articles per volume. However, I don't think the policy creates tightly written articles:

First, we get a lot of submissions that are just a handful of words under the limit. If an author struggled hard to get 8 words under the limit, I suspect a lot he or she is going to add that information back in during editing.

Second, authors don't seem to be streamlining their pieces. They are cutting solely for the sake of shortness. One very good author submitted two versions of an article. One proposed his new theory. The other both proposed the new theory and applied it. I'm not sure why we would have refused to publish a well-written application of his theory solely in the name of length. The goal of the policy is tighter pieces, not redacting scholarship.

Third, the policy still doesn't address the role law review editors have in making articles longer. I'd be interested to see whether law reviews with reputations for insisting on parenthetical for nearly every footnote, definitions of even basic terms, etc. start backing off of these demands.

The word limits changed just before I started writing my piece, so I carefully crafted it to be around 50 pages. We'll see what happens in the editing process, though. It's already pretty heavily footnoted, but from my previous experiences I'm sure the requested additional footnotes will balloon the word count substantially.

AUTHOR - I submitted a 17,000 word piece. I intended it to be on the short side even before the new length policy, but had it not been for the new policy, I would have worked to expand it, though frankly I think it would have gotten longer without actually getting better. It was accepted by a top tier journal. I think we will see a more striking pattern next August/September: the new length policy caught many authors by surprise this time around, and I know people who, having worked for six months on a hundred page peice, just shrugged and submitted it anyway, hoping for some flexibility since the policy is so new. Most of those people would have written shorter pieces in thie first place had they known it was an option! An informal poll of my colleagues suggests huge support for the new length policy.