Скачать или смотреть Modern Law Review Information Session for Female Academics, 10 June 2020

On 10 June 2020 members of the Modern Law Review Editorial Committee hosted a Zoom information session for women on publishing in the MLR. The session was attended by 217 women from 62 institutions and 16 countries.

Virginia Mantouvalou made introductory remarks, highlighting that the MLR was established as a response to black letter journals, which were dominant at the time. To quote from the first Editorial of the MLR in 1937: “The Review deals with the law as it functions in society… as well as the particular social conditions which produce the law”. Virginia explained that a key reason for holding the session is that the MLR receives fewer submissions from women. However, these imbalances are not reflected in the success of female-authored work; indeed, the ratio of submission to acceptance is higher for women than for men. The goal of the session was to encourage submissions from female academics where possible.

Vanessa Munro spoke about the scope of the journal, underscoring the MLR’s ambition - “to create a unique forum for the critical examination of contemporary legal issues and of the law as it functions in society” - and emphasising that the MLR is “a house with many rooms in terms of methodologies”. Whilst the MLR does publish doctrinal work, the Editorial Committee are very keen to “welcome work that is socio-legal in its orientation, or which engages with a variety of different interdisciplinary methods”, in addition to pieces that are international and comparative in their focus. The MLR does not solely publish theoretical work; rather, it aims to engage directly in questions of practical, social relevance, and it encourages empirical work to that end.

Jo Braithwaite commented on the process of review, highlighting that the process is “blind from the point of entry”: at all stages of review, from the initial desk review by a member of the committee through to full peer review, all stages are based on an anonymous version of the article. Jo highlighted that the MLR is a decentralised journal in terms of decision-making: acceptance decisions are made by individual articles editors, not by the articles editor team or the board as a whole. The process is rigorous, reflecting the standards of the journal and number of submissions. Jo also discussed the desk review process, which is a unique feature of the MLR and a key reason to consider submission: the MLR conducts an anonymous desk review by a member of the Editorial Committee, who gives substantive comments and makes a recommendation to the relevant articles editor on whether the article should be sent out for review. This means that authors will always receive comments back (save in a minority of cases, where the article does not meet format requirements), whatever stage of the process they reach.

Kate Greasley spoke about how to write subject-specialist work for a generalist audience. Kate suggested that authors consider three questions: ‘(i) is the topic or puzzle easily grasped by those working outside my own sub-discipline; (ii) why does this issue matter? Why is it interesting to someone other than me?; (iii) does this subject shed light on more general phenomena?”. Kate stressed that it isn’t always your best work that suits a generalist audience; the more rigorous piece might be narrower in focus; the task is always to identify those pieces within one’s ‘scholarly arsenal’ which are most readily explicably to a wider audience; in doing so, it may well be useful to give the piece a trial run in front of a faculty audience writing on areas beyond your own.

Orla Lynskey addressed publication in the MLR’s case notes and legislation sections. Orla gave three reasons why an author might consider publishing in one of these sections: (i) “it gives you familiarity with the publication process as an ECR and diversity as an established scholar; (ii) it gets your name out, in association with a particular topic; and (iii) the barriers to entry are lower” – in that the word limit is lower, and (there being no additional step of desk review) the review process is generally quicker. Orla emphasised that case notes tend to be more formulaic (intro, facts, finding and analysis) but that the analysis section gives the author an opportunity to put their own stamp on the research. Orla also emphasised that authors can reserve case notes, by emailing [email protected]


Conor Gearty encouraged authors to consider submitting to the MLR forum, which is published online. Conor explained that the forum is an opportunity to engage with published work in the MLR by way of response, up to 4000 words, written in a less formal style. It is quicker to see published, and a great way of testing the waters of the journal, and building your ideas.