Scholastica Law Review Submission Insights: 2026 Edition
A data-driven look at the legal scholarship cycle
Updated Feb 2026
Welcome to the 11th edition of Scholastica's Law Review Submission Insights report! Here, we dig into our submission season data (anonymized and aggregated) to shed light on past and present trends in the annual article selection cycle.
We launched this report to help answer some of the most common questions we've heard about article selection, including "When do law reviews usually open for submissions?" and "When do editors issue the majority of article decisions?" Each year, we update it with new data points and analysis of historical trends.
The below series of graphs highlight findings from the most recent submission cycle (January 1, 2025 - December 31, 2025).
For additional submission season resources, we encourage authors to visit Scholastica's Law Review Submissions Center and editors to visit the Law Editor Learning Center. Now, without further ado, let's get to it!
Quick submission season stats
Below is a bird's-eye view of the makeup of law reviews currently using Scholastica’s submission system, along with some quick insights into article acceptance stats and word count trends.
Did you know law reviews use Scholastica for more than collecting submissions? Scholastica includes an article selection platform that editors rely on to assign submissions to team members, track their article review processes, select articles, and communicate updates and decisions to authors.
747
Number of law reviews using Scholastica
195
Number of general law reviews
542
Number of specialty law reviews
19
Average days to accept decision
47
Average days to reject decision
1:14
Ratio of accept to reject decisions
21,656
Median number of words per article
20,610
Average number of words per article
216,621
Longest article submitted in 2025
A couple of notes on the above data:
- Decision stats: The average number of days to receive an acceptance decision in 2025 was nearly identical to 2024 (19 versus 18 days). However, the average number of days to receive a rejection decision in 2025 was somewhat higher (47 in 2025 versus 29 in 2024). The ratio of acceptance to rejection decisions also decreased somewhat from 1 in every 12 decisions accepted to 1 in every 14, which could indicate that law reviews were somewhat more selective and/or that they received slightly more submissions in 2025.
- Word count stats: The median and average number of words per article in 2025 tracked closely with 2024 (the median number of words per article in 2024 was 21,435, and the average number of words per article in 2024 was 20,434). However, 2024 still takes the cake for the lengthiest article submitted at 294,068 words (versus 216,621 in 2025).
When do law reviews open?
We're kicking things off with one of the most common questions we hear at Scholastica, "When do law reviews usually open?" (and presumably initiate article selection). The graph below maps out, by day, when law reviews opened during the 2025 article selection cycle (January 1, 2025 - December 31, 2025).
Each time we've pulled this graph, the data has remained relatively constant. Last year, as was the case in all previous years analyzed, most law reviews began opening in late January and late July, and the majority of openings occurred on February 1st and August 1st. Anecdotally, we've heard many editors refer to those dates as their markers for the beginning of the "spring" and "fall" submission seasons. We know, spring starts quite early in the world of law reviews!
Has anything changed since last year? Compared to 2024, 2025 had a flatter, more concentrated opening pattern, with lower single-day spikes and less dispersion of openings across the calendar overall. The fall submission season (starting in late July/early August) also appears to have been more active than the previous year, with a greater percentage of law reviews opening during that time period in 2025 than in 2024.
Around 54% of law reviews using Scholastica actively opened/closed submissions across the year in 2025. The other ~46% remained open for submissions year-round.
A quick methodological note: Journals can open and close their Scholastica submissions portal anytime they want, and many do so twice a year (e.g., open in the spring and close for summer, then open again in the fall and close for winter) — so a single journal could count two times in the above chart.
Since 2022, we have observed that around 20% more law reviews are closing and reopening submissions throughout the year (so not staying open year-round) — going from 35% in 2022 to the current 54%. Authors can check our automatically updating table of all law reviews that accept submissions via Scholastica to see which are open at any given time.
Scholastica regularly reminds law reviews to close their accounts when not reviewing submissions. Over the years, we have heard from some law reviews that they remain open year-round to have more papers to consider when they are ready to fill their books. In such cases, we advise the editors to add a note to their "For Authors" page explaining that they are seeking rolling submissions with information on the points during the year when they plan to review articles (e.g., we review submissions during the months of XYZ).
A note for authors: If you come across a law review with an open Scholastica account that reported it is closed for submissions elsewhere (i.e., on its school's website), please contact us to let us know. We will reach out to ensure that the law review closes its Scholastica account if it is no longer seeking articles.
When do authors submit to law reviews?
The next question law review editors and authors tend to ask after “when do law reviews open?” is “when do authors tend to submit articles?” Editors want to be sure their law reviews are opening during peak submission times, and authors often want insight into the best times to ride submissions waves or to try to stand out during the “off-season.”
The graph below details, by day, when articles were submitted to law reviews during the 2025 article selection cycle (January 1, 2025 - December 31, 2025).
The six-week period after February 1 accounted for roughly one-third of all submissions, and the six-week period after August 1 accounted for roughly one-fifth of all submissions. Taken together, these two six-week windows account for just over half of all submissions in the year, as was the case in 2024 and most prior years, underscoring the extent to which law review submissions are concentrated into a small number of predictable, calendar-driven periods.
The highest spring submission season days were more concentrated at the beginning of the 2025 season than the previous year, occurring on February 1-4 as opposed to February 1, 2, 5, and 12 in 2024. As in past years, submissions stayed relatively high through the end of February.
The fall law review season also followed the same pattern as the last few years, with the majority of submissions occurring in early August. The highest fall submission season days were also somewhat more concentrated at the beginning of the season (though marginally so).
Over half of the 2025 submissions were sent to law reviews in the six weeks following February and August 1st.
Submissions by day of the week
Want to get even more granular? Here’s a look at which days of the week authors were most likely to submit to law reviews in 2025.
The most popular submission days in 2025 were Friday and Monday, respectively, compared to Thursday and Friday in 2024. Interestingly, there was also a noticeable increase in the percentage of submissions made on Saturdays — ~15% of the total in 2025 versus ~10% of the total in 2024.
The data indicate that authors worked over the weekend more often last year than during the previous year. As in 2024, Sunday had the lowest amount of submissions. However, the percentage of total submissions sent on Sundays also increased slightly compared to 2024.
When do law reviews make decisions?
We know many editors and authors, especially, are eager to know when law reviews tend to make decisions. Editors want to ensure they're moving on articles quickly enough, and authors want to know when to expect those long-awaited decisions.
The graph below shows the days that law reviews issued decisions via Scholastica in 2025 (January 1, 2025 - December 31, 2025). Given the complex mechanics involved in article selection, decision time frames tend to shift somewhat each year.
While we observed noticeable spikes in law review decisions around the beginning of February 2024, with the highest decision days on March 3rd and 4th, law review decisions appeared to occur somewhat later in the season in 2025, with noticeable spikes occurring closer to early March and the highest decision days on March 6th and 28th. The last noticeable spike in spring decisions in 2025 also occurred later in the season on May 18th versus April 23rd in 2024.
As in 2024, we observed noticeable spikes in decisions during the 2025 fall submission season around the second week of August through the middle of September. Spikes in decisions were somewhat more spread out in 2025 compared to the previous year, with more spread out peaks and valleys throughout the usual fall season and into early November.
Law reviews make publication offers every day of the year — which makes sense given the complicated selection mechanics involved.
Looking at the graph, you may be wondering the reason for all of those large spikes in decisions. Based on discussions we've had with law review editors, we're pretty confident the cause is some law review e-boards selecting their last pieces for publication and then rejecting their remaining submissions all at once. Many law reviews keep submissions in play until they're sure they have all the articles they need, just in case some fall through.
Over the past decade that we've reviewed decision data, it's become apparent that law review decision times correlate with the academic calendar. At most universities, law students start preparing for midterms and final exams in November and May, respectively, which are both points when most law reviews appear to have made their final decisions.
Expedites by due date
As authors receive publication offers from law reviews, some choose to ask other law reviews they would prefer to publish with to decide on their article before responses to the decisions they've received are due. These "expedited decision requests" are a form of communication between authors and law reviews that some law review e-boards respond to quickly, some respond to in a moderated fashion, and others choose to ignore.
Below is a graph of when authors submitted expedited decision requests via Scholastica by the due date, looking at all of 2025 (January 1, 2025 - December 31, 2025).
A reminder: Authors create expedited decision requests. So this chart reflects author activity, not journal editor activity.
Expedite request due date data has been quite consistent over the last two years. As in 2024, we started to see spikes in expedite requests around the second week of February through the first week of April and the second week of August through the first week of October in 2025. The days with the highest expedite request spikes in 2025 were slightly earlier than in 2024, with the highest spring season expedite request spike on March 3rd, 2025, versus March 8th, 2024, and the highest fall season spike on August 22nd, 2025, versus August 30th, 2024.
Time from submission to publication offer
Finally, another aspect of the article selection cycle that we realize many authors and editors are curious about is how long it usually takes an author to receive a publication offer after submitting to a law review. Below is a visual of days since submissions when publication offers were made in 2025 (cumulative percent of the total).
As in 2024, ~80% of decisions were issued within 25 days after submission, and over 90% of decisions occurred within 40 days after submission. This suggests that authors should prepare to wait at least two to three weeks to receive a publication offer after submitting to a law review, and they should expect that offers may take up to two months to come in. Authors should not necessarily rule out the potential of getting a publication offer from a law review later in the year, either. The 2025 data shows that publication offers were issued as far as 150 days post-submission.
There are also MANY more human and qualitative considerations that need to be understood to complete the picture.
Closing Thoughts
So, can we definitively answer the big "when" questions on everyone's minds as law review editors and authors race to place new articles and get them published? Like: "When is the best time to submit to law reviews?" and "When do law reviews usually send decisions?"
Unfortunately, no. While there are observable submission trends (as we've unpacked above), there are no hard and fast rules. There will always be variability since many unpredictable factors go into submissions and article selection! For example:
- There may be times when journals are looking for very particular articles because they filled all but a handful of available slots earlier in the year.
- The length of each law review’s article selection process (i.e., three days vs. two weeks) will affect when it can make offers and consider competing ones.
- Some editors want to build up a queue of hundreds of articles to compare all at once, while others want to read articles as they come in a rolling fashion.
Our best takeaway is that authors should not miss opportunities to submit when they know most law reviews are active. At the same time, they should not ignore the reality that law reviews make decisions year-round.
We encourage authors to avoid attempting to game the system and instead default to a more basic tool: communication. Target a journal for publication, and then ask them when they plan to start reviewing submissions. They might just tell you — and in more concrete detail than these aggregated charts ever will.
In closing, we wish legal scholars and law review editors the best in their publication endeavors!
- The Scholastica Team