With close to 9,000 subscribers, including universities and law firms around the globe, the Review has the widest circulation of any university review, Foreign air mail subscriptions cost $150 where domestic subscribers pay $32.

The Review publishes eight monthly issues during the academic year, including a special issue on recent Supreme Court decisions. The Review also publishes A Uniform System of Citation, the standard legal form book. More than 75,000 copies of the book are sold annually, bringing in half of the non profit corporation's $600,000 gross revenues.

Three years ago, the Review installed a computer system and remodeled its spacious Gannett House offices at an estimated cost of $75,000. The improvements forced the publication to borrow heavily from it's alumni reserve fund, and after two years of running in the red, it finally expects to break even this year, says outgoing Treasurer David Hoffman.

Producing each edition is a mammoth undertaking that draws on the strained energies of 92 staff members, plus outside authors and faculty consultants. Regular issues include articles written by professors or practitioners, student-written analytical "notes," and book reviews.

The Review strives for a diversity of opinions and subjects, says Fram. "We have everything from Wall St. concerns to broad jurisprudential theory," he adds, rejecting the traditional stereotype of the Review as practice-oriented in contrast to the supposedly more academic Yale Law Journal.

The Review's articles department receives an average of 600 manuscripts annually. Most of them are submitted by professors, but outgoing articles director Mark P. Szpak comments that recent submissions include "surprisingly cogent" technical pieces from a New York construction worker and a Martha's Vineyard housewife.

To avoid being influenced by authors' names or reputations, the editors consider the manuscripts anonymously, weeding out the "dubious" from the "promising" and eventually voting for the 10 to 15 that will be printed.

Being published in the Review is considered an important achievement for scholars who wish to publicize their work and further their careers. "It seems to be a kind of talisman that major law schools use in deciding whether to grant tenure to professors," Nelson says.

"Publishing first class law review articles is the sort of staple of legal scholarship that professors are expected to produce in order to get tenure, and in order to keep up their end of the bargain," says Michael Boudin '61, a lecturer at the Law School. "It is regarded as highly attractive in the legal community to publish a first class law article," he adds.

Szpak and Nelson note that some professors have sought to draw special attention to their manuscripts and on occasion authors have pressured Review members to publish their articles.

Last fall, Professor of Law Richard B. Stewart proposed that the Law School faculty publish a separate journal of its own, complaining that the Review's demand for long, meticulously researched articles limits professors' opportunities to air their ideas.

"You could take his proposal as dissatisfaction with the product or process here, but we take what the professors send us," Jones comments. "We actually spend a lot of time trying to cut their articles down to a manageable size."

Once earmarked for publication, articles undergo a rigorous eight-stage editing process in which Review editors scrutinize everything from footnotes to style. As Review executives map their progress on huge wall charts, the pieces often change dramatically, says Supervising Editor Susan F. Hoffman.

The authors are consulted in all editing decisions, and while some object to alterations, most appreciate the students' efforts to strengthen their writing, editors note. "It seems almost ludicrous in the abstract to think that a 2L should be telling a tenured professor at one of the nation's most prestigious law schools how he should change his piece, but in fact a lot of these pieces need work," says Szpak.

Boudin, who recently wrote a book review published in the journal, comments, "By the time they were through, I was exhausted but very impressed with the improvements they had made."