U Chicago Law Review Now Available as E-Book
Volume 79, No. 1 of The University of Chicago Law Review is unlike any other in the 79-year history of the print publication. That’s because it’s not just a print publication. For the first time, the Law Review is available in digital format, for download on e-readers.
The top legal scholarship that the Law Review has become known for since it first published in 1933 is now available to anyone with a Kindle, Nook, or iPad. Chicago is one of the first law schools to offer a law review e-book, joining Stanford, Harvard, and Yale.
“Things are changing, and we want to be at the forefront of these changes,” said Nathan Tanner, ’13, a member set to be the next volume’s business and communications editor.
Print subscriptions for law reviews in general are going down, much like subscriptions for other traditional print media, said Ben Mooneyham, the current business and communications editor. In fact, according to a 2011 article by Ross E. Davies of the George Mason University School of Law, last year marked the first time that no major law review could boast more than 2,000 paying subscribers. Davies also noted that, among the top 15 law schools in the country, Chicago’s decline was the least sharp.
Even so, the editorial team recognized the need to modernize the product and make it as accessible to as many readers and scholars as possible.
“We want to take steps that allow us to continue to be relevant and widely read,” Mooneyham said.
The law review publishes four times a year. This e-book issue costs $2.99, though the staff expects future issues will cost just 99 cents, to further encourage downloads. (A print subscription is $50 a year, for four issues.) The e-book features linked footnotes, URLs, and cross-references, making navigation easy, Mooneyham said. It can be searched by keyword and case name too.
“This is really about getting the scholarship out to more people in a more accessible form,” Tanner said.
Volume 79, No. 1 is particularly suited to an e-book because the edition is a “symposium issue” on a particular theme: “Understanding Education in the United States.” The articles discuss topics as diverse as state Supreme Court decisions, Catholic and charter schools, Amish one-room schools, and at-risk students. Faculty members Emily Buss, Richard A. Epstein, and Martha C. Nussbaum contributed.
The staff also has begun to supplement the print edition with online-only content, beginning this issue with a piece by Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, Special Education: Its Ethical Dilemmas, Entitlement Status, and Suggested Systemic Reforms.
There are no plans to discontinue the print version, which currently has about 1,000 subscribers.
Volume 79 was compiled by a staff of 30 second-year students and a board of 17 third-year students. Most of the articles in the law review are written by professors and practicing attorneys, with students responsible for soliciting articles, verifying citations, fact-checking, and formatting and style edits. The staff reviews more than 1,000 articles each year, and the ones that are selected go through five rounds of editing, said Samuel Eckman, Editor-in-Chief of Volume 80, due next year.
Luckily, the e-book doesn’t require much additional work. The staff simply sends the ready-to-publish product to a digital publisher (QuidPro Books) as well as a traditional one.
And because some people and institutions will always want a hard copy – thankfully – subscribers are now receiving their print editions.