Scholarship Support

Current Faculty and Student Scholarship |Student Research Assistants | Library Research Assistance | Directory of Law Reviews | Dean’s “Top 30” | Book and Article Awards | Research Funding | Sabbatical Leave | Helping Students Publish | Shared Scholarship | Submitting an Article using Expresso 

 Current Faculty and Student Scholarship

Our faculty write on a wide list of topics and for a wide range of publications. A list of the current faculty publications and current student publications is available here.

 Student Research Assistants

The law school also provides research support in the form of Student Research Assistants. Research Assistants are selected by an application process administered by the Associate Dean of Faculty. Faculty and students are contacted each spring about their research needs and interest for the following academic year.

A copy of the 2012-2013 faculty application form (pdf)  may be accessed here. Assistants provide faculty with up to 200 hours of research at a $12 per hour pay rate. Faculty are also free to directly hire their assistants, either by posting their own advertisement or by inviting specific students to work for them.

 Library Research Assistance

If faculty do not require regular student assistance, but do have periodic research requests, our library has arranged a new service: research requests by email. All research requests made to refrequest@lclark.edu will be collected daily and processed by very able reference librarians.

 Law Review and Publisher Lists

Find quick access to published law reviews and law publishers through the LexisNexis Directory of Law Reviews. Another source of information regarding law journals is the Washington & Lee Law Journal Service.

 Dean’s “Top 30” Law Reviews and Publishing Presses

Access information on law reviews and publishing firms that our Associate Dean considers the Top 30 Law Reviews. A statement about the list’s methodology is also available.

 Book and Article Awards Available

There are a number of book and article awards available from national organizations and professional associations.  If interested to see if the work you are developing might qualify, please review this list of book and article awards compiled Summer 2010. Its fifty pages cover awards offered for generic law books as well as those dealing with specific curricular areas.

 Research Funding

Summer research grants are available for faculty members:

Faculty approved for a grant to research and write a law review article or book chapter will receive $7,000 during the summer and an additional $7,000 when the piece has been accepted for publication. These individuals will not be eligible to apply for a future summer grant until their piece has been submitted for publication.

Faculty approved for a grant to work on a book or other project where royalties will be paid will receive $7,000. These individuals will be eligible to apply for a second summer grant to work on the same project, but will not be eligible for additional summer support until the book is submitted for publication.

Faculty may apply for summer grants to support other projects consistent with the responsibilities of a faculty member. Any such grants will depend on available funds and will be made at the discretion of the associate dean in an amount appropriate to the expected work involved in the project.

In addition to the law school’s research budget, there may be outside funding for research in areas of interest to faculty:

Consider a Fulbright Scholarship Grant for your next research project.

A flier about the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation grant program is available on their website.

Check out other grant funding sources listed on the Academic Keys for Law web site.

Various non-profit research grant opportunities are also available.

For a listing of foundation, corporation and government grant opportunities, check out the funding source directory compiled by the University of Richmond.

Sabbatical Leave

Full-time tenure-track faculty members are eligible to apply for a sabbatical leave after six years of service. Sabbaticals can be one semester at full pay or two semesters at 60% pay.  For more information, access the full text of the Faculty Handbook and scroll down to the Law School section.

 Helping Students Publish

Scholarship isn’t just for faculty! When you are supervising good student papers in a class, independent research project, or for law review, encourage your students to send the papers out to law reviews or another appropriate forum. You can help students publish in several ways: (1) by giving plenty of detailed, substantive feedback on both content and style; (2) by offering to write a cover letter urging publication to go with the paper (or by having the student draft a letter for you to sign); (3) by working with the student to expand a paper to become a co-authored piece after the paper has been graded for class purposes; or (4) by recognizing significant contributions by research fellows or research assistants with co-author status.

Please check out this list of student writing competitions in specialized fields and encourage students to consider applying.

 Shared Scholarship/Feedback on Works in Progress

The Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) includes the Legal Scholarship Network. This network provides both a way for you to post working papers to the entire scholarly community before they are formally published, and an e-mail based service to provide you with weekly lists of abstracts from papers posted by others.

Another vehicle to share or to view works in progress is the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository.

Distributing Publications: Your faculty assistant and the Text & Image Production Services staff can maintain a mailing list for you to use to send out article reprints. Contact Lisa Frenz (x6663 or frenz@lclark.edu) to set up your list if it has not already been done. Your assistant also has the necessary reprint mailers to package your articles.

For further scholarship advice take a look at this article titled “Scholarship Advice for New Law Professors in the Electronic Age” — very helpful!

 How to Submit an Article for Publication Using the Expresso On-Line Service

1. Have the following requested materials accessible on your computer (in Word format):

– Cover letter introducing the article and yourself
(put on the electronic Lewis & Clark Law School letterhead, address to “Dear Editor” and electronically sign by using either your on-line signature or “/s/ Your Name”. Reviews suggest you include the word count of just the article and the article plus foot and end notes in the body of your letter.)

– Current resume or biographical statement

– Abstract of the article

– Table of Contents

– List of Subject Areas covered

– List of Key Words for search features

– List of Law Reviews selected for submission

– The article itself (12 point typeface, 1” margins, double-spaced. Most law reviews restrict word count to fewer than 35,000.)

2. Follow the 7 easy to use steps that ExpressO has prepared:

[Note that the first step in the above process is to create your personal ExpressO account. This must be done using your Lewis & Clark email address. Otherwise you will not have your submission credited to our account, which means you will not receive the institutional discount and will have to pay using your own credit card.]