The Banality of Law Journal Rejections

As many others have observed, American law journals are odd. Unlike journals in every other academic field, the articles law journals publish are (for the most part) not selected, reviewed, or edited by experts in the field. Rather, law journals are run by students. But although students run the journals, it is legal academics, as the overwhelming majority of the journals' authors and readers, who benefit most from them. This mismatch between the benefits derived from law journals and the effort that goes into producing them has contributed to law journal publication practices that impose severe burdens on student editors.
For instance, due to efforts by student editors to reduce the length of the papers they publish, the standard law journal article is approximately 25,000 words long -still far longer than is typical in closely related fields.