Contributor Guidelines

About BLT

Business Law Today is seeking your ideas for high-quality, original content that contributes value to business lawyers. We accept contributions ranging from a few sentences to several thousand words across ten legal practice areas:

Please note that all ideas, submissions, and content will be reviewed by the Editorial Board. The Board is made up of practicing attorneys, judges, and academics. Submissions are reviewed based on relevance, originality, timeliness, and value-add. All substance is reviewed for accuracy of law, quality of insight, and consistency with Business Law Today guidelines and tone. We do not accept opinion pieces, which are outside of the publication’s scope. Writing by student authors will only be considered for month-in-briefs, papers that place in the Business Law Section’s Mendes Hershman Student Writing Contest, or articles co-authored with an attorney.

Content Categories

Business Law Today publishes in several categories. When submitting a pitch, please identify the intended content category of your work.

MONTH-IN-BRIEF

The month’s most important and timely headlines. These are scannable, curated briefings, with each short entry in 150–400 words. They might summarize a recent Supreme Court ruling, point to an interesting development in the field, or introduce a new lawsuit with broader implications for practitioners. Month-in-briefs should link to primary sources and should not include footnotes. Examples include “California Approves Commercial Financing Disclosures Regulations,” “SEC and CTFC Propose Amendments to Required Reporting by Private Funds,” and “Delaware Chancery Court Finds Tesla’s Purchase of SolarCity to Be Fair Despite Flawed Sale Process.”

ARTICLES

Quick insights on timely issues relevant to practitioners. Articles offer a new or unique angle, analysis, or advice in around 750–1,500 words. Many of our articles work best with a hook—a concrete development (often a recent case or news item) that frames the piece. Articles include “International Perspectives on Privacy and Competition Law,” “ESG: Creating Value and Mitigating Risk in Mergers & Acquisitions,” and “How Are Courts Interpreting the New ‘Reasonable Due Diligence’ Requirement Under § 547(b)?”

IN-DEPTH

Longer-form content that offers deep analysis of a topic. These pieces often incorporate footnotes and analyze a number of cases as they track the development of a concept, or they might deep-dive into a particular case, pulling in precedent and other impactful context to explicate its significance. In-depth articles are often behind a paywall, accessible to members of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section. In-depth articles include “The Corporate Transparency Act Will Change the Way You Practice,” “The Fee Hike Dilemma: The U.S. Supreme Court Resolves Fee Dispute and Holds Fee Hike Unconstitutional,” and “Ethical Implications of the Use of Legal Technologies by Innovative M&A Lawyers.”

TOOLS

Practical resources such as checklists, model forms, sample letters, and flow charts. Tools can be picked up easily to assist in practitioners’ work, whether they provide a quick guide to a topic or can be incorporated directly into a workflow. They consist of both the tool document itself—supported formats include PDFs, text documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows—and 200–600 words of introductory narrative describing in what circumstances the tool is useful and contextualizing the information it contains. Tools are published behind a paywall, accessible to members of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section. Tools include “Model Standstill/Tolling Agreement” and “Summary of Financial Ratios for Emerging Companies.”

Publication Guidelines

Business Law Today publishes articles and tools consistently as they are ready to go, while month-in-briefs are published monthly. Publicity emails go out at the start of the month and at mid-month. A submitted article could take anywhere from a few days to a few months to move from submission to publication, depending on the nearest publication date, available peer reviewers, length of piece, and editorial calendar, though it’s best to plan for about two weeks as turn-around time.

The tone of the site tends toward journalistic and casual, less formal than much of legal and academic writing. Authors are not paid and maintain full publication rights following their appearance on the site. Business Law Today does not reprint pre-published articles. We are, however, able to work with repurposed client alerts. We do not publish book reviews, but we do consider articles based on or excerpted from books.

Submission Process

We accept both pitches and completed pieces. Submit to either the site editor or a practice area editor, listed below. Once an article is received, it will first go out for peer review. Following peer review, it will be returned to the author as needed. Once the author has had the chance to address the comments of the peer reviewer and revise the piece, the article will be returned to staff for copyediting in accordance with house style. The author will have a final chance to revise before publication. The author will also be responsible for drafting a brief summary for use in online publishing, signing a publication agreement, and submitting a biography and photo (440×440 or larger and 72 dpi).

Pitch an Editor

Olivia Stovicek, Staff Editor
Lynette Hotchkiss, Editor-in-Chief

OR

Contact an editor of the practice area you want to write in:

Bankruptcy and Finance: Janet Nadile (Finance), Megan Adeyemo (Bankruptcy), Linda Filardi
Business Litigation and Dispute Resolution: Sara Bussiere, Armeen Mistry Shroff
Business Regulation and Regulated Industries: Dredeir Roberts, Perry Salzhauer, Latif Zaman
Corporations, LLCs and Partnerships: Tarik Haskins, Mark Hobson
International Business Law: Mike Tallim
Internet Law and Cybersecurity: Juliet Moringiello
Legal Opinions and Ethics: Keith Fisher, Christina Houston
Mergers and Acquisitions: Chauncey Lane, Yelena Dunaevsky
Securities Law: Alan Wilson, Rani Doyle