Of Jewish Guilt and an Open Letter to Law Review Editors Expressing Gratitude and Caution

I am just finishing up the editing process on an article that I placed in a law review and, as always, the students are sincere and hard-working and thoughtful.  Moreover, to have taken my piece, they must have overcome some substantial hurdles, not the least of which is the tenuous link between most of my thinking and the physical universe (Cue:  David Bowie’s Space Oddity – “this is Ground Control to Major Tom.”)

I have spoken much of self-referential loops in the past few weeks, and have come to the tentative conclusion that my ability to feel guilty is in fact a self-referential and never-ending loop.  One of the good-faith edits changed the meaning of a paragraph quite dramatically, and I had what seemed to me like a moderate conniption.  Then I felt terrible because I had had a conniption.  Consistent with his kind and gentle wisdom, my classmate Douglas Baird once told me that he thinks of the interaction with student editors as an opportunity to teach, and that takes the edge off the tendency toward being a prima donna.  I always liked that.

Nevertheless, in the throes of working my way out of my psychological swirl, I composed the following open letter to law review editors, and it seems to have worked for me better than swilling down a Valium or a Xanax.

Dear Law Review Editor:

Thank you again for all of your work in editing my submission to your law review.  Before reviewing edits of my articles, I always invoke the traditional Jewish Yom Kippur prayer that says to God “we are not so arrogant or stiff-necked as to say before You:  ‘We are righteous and have not sinned.'”  This puts me in the frame of mind appropriate to take the implicit and well-meaning criticism of the few people who will ever read this piece, much less engagewith it, as you must, to have edited it so closely. 

At this point in the article’s life, it is to me as though someone else wrote it; my review of the edits is, in many ways, as cold as yours of the submitted draft.  Indeed, the way I review the edited draft is to do a cold read of yourversion. I only go back to my last draftif something seems amiss, either in form or substance. So, for all I know, I have accepted most ofyour edits.

But where something seems amiss, I do go back and check the last version I sent to you.  Invariably there has beensome change from my draft that either impacted the meaning or made a stylisticchange that I didn’t like at all.  I have pointed out a number of these examples.  I am certainly willing to concede that my original point may not have been clear, and, accordingly, I am taking your edit as a sign that I need to clarify.

Some of your changes appear to be wholly stylistic.  A number of these suggest some discomfortwith my willingness to use a more provocative or idiomatic turn of phrase.  It’s interesting, because I have had pieces edited by professional editors in peer-reviewed journals, and they are invariably more tolerant of my unwillingness to toe the line than student editors.  Don’t be sucked in by false solemnity orseriousness in legal writing. I havebeen writing in litigation, corporate law, and non-legal business arenas foralmost thirty years in every kind of environment – law firm, corporation, andacademy – and I’m sure one secret to my longevity is that the writing haslife.  Read some of Judge Posner’s workto see how seriousness does not have to be turgid.

Once again, it was an honor to have my piece selected by your review, and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you.  I look forward to seeing the piece in the galley proofs.

Best regards,

Jeff Lipshaw

* Thanks to Slate.com for the drawing.