How do I promote my legal scholarship?

Friends--It is great to be back on Prawfs. I have to admit that I sometimes dread my time to blog before it comes, like I do work travel when the time comes to do that (especially if there are layover flights).  But, like work travel, it's always one of those things that by the end of it, I'm so happy I did it, and wish I could continue doing it.  I always learn so much researching or thinking about my posts and hearing from others in this process.

Today I want to talk about how to promote your scholarship.  Let's face it, law professors are NOT the best at public relations.  We like to do our work and really want people to read it--but how much time do we spend promoting our work to make sure it has maximum reach among people who care about our topic?  I think we can all do more. One of my colleagues recently asked me advice on this issue so I thought I would write a post on some tips I think are helpful for both junior scholars, fellows, and old timers on how to promote your scholarship, and make it more impactful (read and cited more, and used by authorities more).

1. An Op-ed In an ideal scenario, when you write a piece and it is accepted for publication (so not finalized yet), it is accompanied by an op-ed in a major newspaper (ideally tying your idea to a topic that is “hot” right now) and a legal blog post. Dan Markel used to recommend to me to put a post on Prawfs as an early draft, get feedback from the readers and then turn it into something to submit to a newspaper. Good advice. I did it once with the result being an Op-ed in the NY Times.

2. Send to Textbook Authors Something many people may not think of is reviewing the textbooks in your field on the area you just wrote and cutting out snippets from your article that may help enhance or update a section of that textbook and send an email or letter to the textbook authors informing them of this.  That may seem a bit over-the-top, but trust me, this would have been SUPREMELY helpful for me when I was drafting the Fourth edition of the Criminal Law textbook I’m working on.  Ideally, a textbook author working on a new edition is aware of every new piece of literature that has been published on every topic in the textbook they drafted, but that is an impossible expectation.  I'm working with two great coauthors in my field as well (Paul Robinson and Michael Cahill), but still we aren't able to review everything. So, make us aware of your work if you think it is particularly on point.

3. University PR Reach out to your university and law school public relations staff and let them know about the article being accepted for publication and inform them that they can send out a tweet or announcement that you are willing to discuss that topic in case any media is interested. 

4. Post it Online Posting on Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Bepress, ResearchGate or some of the other online repositories for articles is a great idea as well. I know SSRN has been a bit problematic for some people and some pieces lately, but my thought is that it is still the largest and it is worth posting there. And why not post to as many online repositories as you can?  If I ever get emails asking me to upload my piece for access on these sites, I usually allow it if it looks reputable and if I've retained copyright (which I usually try to do, if possible).

5. The Conversation Another possibility that may be helpful is once you draft a sort of op-ed on your article, you can post it to The Conversation.  This is a way for you to distribute a timely op-ed or article that allows any newspaper to publish it.  It can help distribute your op-ed fast. This may be a better avenue for some of the more technical pieces you write.  The editors there will also help you make it more accessible to a general audience. When the Panama Papers were all the rage, I wrote a brief article on The Conversation that ended up getting picked up the the New Republic and getting me an interview on NPR.

6. Send it to Courts Getting your article to the decisionmaking authorities may require a little bit more effort but is worth it.  I've had colleagues reach out to litigants writing briefs on their topic.  Reaching out to courts considering a topic on point to something you have written or simply sending your article to them is also another way of getting your work read and cited. If you know the topic you wrote about happens to be pending in a certain court, send them a copy of your article and call the chambers and let them know that you are sending it so they can direct it to the appropriate clerk.  This is also a great approach with legislatures or policy makers or nonprofits or think-tanks that are working on policy change in your area. 

7. Email it out! And if you aren’t exhausted already by that point, I still think it is helpful to send emails to everyone who remotely writes in your field to inform them of your piece and see if they have any thoughts or feedback on it.  Even if the people in your field don’t have time to give you feedback, they usually read the abstract and are aware that it is out there. Also send a draft of your article to your entire faculty via email.  Even if they are not in your field, if they travel they may run into similar topics and spread your great ideas by word of mouth.  Because lets face it, academics love to gossip about each other’s work when we run out of things to talk about (which I don't think is a bad thing).

I would love to hear others thoughts on how to promote legal scholarship to add to this list.