Publication Requirements for Promotion and Tenure

  1. For promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, a faculty applicant must have written and had accepted for publication at least one law review article or its equivalent, which is considered by the committee to make a significant contribution to legal scholarship.  The work should be of substance displaying the effort usually demonstrated in a law review article.
  2. For promotion from Associate Professor to Professor, a faculty applicant must have written and had accepted for publication at least three law review articles or their equivalent, which are considered by the committee to make significant contribution to legal scholarship.  The works should be of substance displaying the effort usually demonstrated in a law review article.
  3. For applications for tenure, a faculty applicant must have written and had accepted for publication at least two law review articles or their equivalent, which are considered by the committee to make a significant contribution to legal scholarship.  The works should be of substance displaying the effort usually demonstrated in a law review article.
  4. Articles published in bar magazines or similar publications normally do not meet the standard of law review articles in length or quality of scholarship and will not suffice to meet the publication requirement.  Thus, an article in the ABA (American Bar Association) Journal normally would not count for these purposes.  However, an article meeting the substantive standards identified in paragraphs 1 through 3 above published in a publication appropriate for the discipline, placed to reach the targeted audience such as the Law Library Journal, the Journal of Legal Education, Clinical Law Review, the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Journal, or The Urban Lawyer normally would count for such purposes.
  5. “Equivalent” means other scholarly writing, including empirical research, equaling or exceeding in substantive content, significance of contribution to legal scholarship or the development of or interpretation of the law, and length of the traditional law review article.

Circulated October 3, 1986
Revised and Recirculated September 17, 1991
Revised and Recirculated May 13, 1999