The Yale Law Journal’s editing process is extremely intensive. Each piece, including YLJ Online publications, goes through the following stages:

(1)    Once a piece is accepted, the Lead Editor assigned to the piece prepares an Edit Letter suggesting global changes. This edit letter generally includes comments from the Lead Editor, the relevant scholarship committee, faculty consults, and the Editor-in-Chief. The edit letter is then sent to the author.

(2)    After the author submits a second draft, the piece is sourcecited by a team of ten to fifteen editors. During the sourcecite, editors ensure every claim in the piece is fully and accurately supported and that each footnote conforms with Bluebook citation standards as well as The Yale Law Journal's Style Sheet.

(3)    The Lead Editor then performs a careful line edit of the Sourcecited piece, prepares a second edit letter, and forwards both to an Executive Editor. The Executive Editor then line edits the piece as well, contributes to the edit letter, and forwards them to the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief line edits the piece for the final time (at this stage), contributes to the edit letter, and prepares a redline showing the changes made to the piece since the author submitted the second draft. The edit letter, line edited draft, and redline are then sent to the author. This is the last draft to which the author will have electronic access.

(4)    After the author submits a third draft, the piece is once again sourcecited by a team of ten to fifteen editors. As they did during the first sourcecite, editors ensure every claim in the piece is fully and accurately supported and that each footnote conforms with Bluebook citation standards.

(5)    After the second sourcecite, Step (3) is repeated with the new draft, with the following exception: at this stage, the line edited draft will ultimately be sent to the author as a PDF, and all changes must be made to a hard copy.

(6)    Once the author returns an edited hard copy, the Lead Editor, an Executive Editor, and the Editor-in-Chief all perform a final line edit of the piece and meet to discuss the proposed changes. The Lead Editor then resolves any final substantive issues.

(7)    The piece is then proofread by several editors and sent to the Author.

(8)    The Author performs a final review.

(9)    A Managing Editor performs a pre-publication proof, resolves all final formatting issues, and sends the piece to the printer.