Student Publishing | BYU Law School

Legal Writing Center

Introductions

The introduction to your paper is the first impression you make on the reader. Thus, it should be given extra care, and writing fellows can help students create effective introductions and conclusions.

The introduction should state the problem or issue you are addressing, should clearly articulate your thesis, and should provide a brief roadmap.

To write a compelling introduction, be clear about the problem! Think about why you care about the problem and why someone else might care about the problem. Explain that with as much passion and clarity as possible. Remember that you have been thinking about this problem for months, so for you, the problem may seem huge and obvious. It usually will not feel that way for the reader unless you communicate your problem and solution clearly and succinctly. Try and avoid long and drawn-out introductions.

Examples:

Abstracts

Abstracts are usually published with the article. They’re meant to help readers understand if your article is necessary reading for the research they are conducting.

Abstracts should be formatted like the introduction to your paper, but in a briefer form.

They should do the following:

Introduce the topic of the article more broadly;
Narrow to the specific topic that the article is focusing on;
State what the problem is that your paper explores; and
State what solution your paper poses.

Limit your abstract to around 200-250 words, or one to two paragraphs.

Examples:

CVs

“CV” is short for “curriculum vitae.” A CV is similar to a resume; it’s meant to showcase your relevant professional skills and experiences.

While resumes are used for most employment, CVs are used in academic settings (e.g., most academic employment, grants, scholarships, fellowships, and journal publication submissions).

A CV is largely formatted like a resume (your name and contact information at the top, headings with entries for each experience, most recent experiences listed first). But there are a few key differences:

A CV has no length limit. So, use one-inch margins at one inch and 12-point font.
Because you’re not limited to one page, you’ll want to list every relevant experience. This may mean including additional sections on your CV. Some common CV headings include:
- Education
- Honors & Awards
- Publications
- Professional Experience
  - Could optionally have separate sections for Research Experience or Teaching Experience
- Conferences & Presentations
- Service
- Professional Affiliations/Memberships

Even though you’re listing everything, and even though there’s no length limit, keep the entries concise. Readers will want to be able to quickly skim the document to find the information they need.

In other words, if you only have enough experience to fill a CV with two pages of relevant information, that’s okay! A shorter document with concise entries is better than a longer document with too much irrelevant information.

Take a look at some examples from the University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and University of Notre Dame.

Cover Letters

The purpose of a publication cover letter is “to get journal editors to think, ‘This is a thoughtful, well-written article on an important topic, and if we publish it, many people will read it and cite it. We should be the ones who snag it, rather than letting it go to our rival journals.’” ¹

A cover letter should include:

Information establishing the topic’s importance, relevance, and originality;
A brief summary of the thesis and major arguments of your paper;
Any personal credentials that qualify you to talk about your topic—career experience, education, etc.; and
Your personal contact information.

Keep the letter brief, no more than two-thirds of a page.

There is some debate about whether to explicitly state your student status in a manuscript cover letter. Some think it’s best to disclose so the journal doesn’t have an excuse to reject your article later. The most common opinion, however, is that your student status will be obvious from the rest of your application and does not need to be explicitly stated in the cover letter.

Check out the publication cover letter samples below to get a better sense of how a cover letter should look.

¹ Eugene Volokh, Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review 288 (5th ed., 2016).