Paid readership has declined significantly for may law reviews in the past 30 years, according to a study by Ross Davies of George Mason University School of Law.
Davies based his findings on information collected by the U.S. Postal Service to track the paid circulation of 21 law reviews from some of the most prestigious U.S. law schools between 1979 and 2009, as reported by The National Law Journal.
In 1979, the reported paid circulation for the Harvard Law Review was 8,760, but only 2,029 in 2009 — a nearly 77% decline. The Yale Law Journal dropped from 4,051 in 1980 to 1,725 in 2009.
In the report, Davies said one theory for the decline is that readers no longer need a paid subscription to view content. Legal information services like Westlaw and Lexis has allowed acadamia and attorneys to read review articles without direct subscriptions.
But, he said, the decline in paid circulation probably isn’t hurting reviews much financially, as they are relatively cheap to produce because contributors and editors are mostly volunteers. In February 2008, The National Jurist reported “a proliferation of law journals in recent years” — approximately 505 nationwide to be exact. Some critics argue that there is an overabundance of publications, resulting in poor quality and little value to legal acadamia.
So are law reviews close to extinction? Probably not.
