Virginia Law Review records

The office files of the Virginia Law Review were routinely transferred to the archives between 1978 and 1985. The records consist primarily of administrative correspondence and other materials from the office of the editor-in-chief, and correspondence with writers of articles. There is also some documentation related to the organization and function of law student organizations.

Initially the archives retained all editing material, but subsequently, only selected stages of the editing process were kept, and later only the work of Virginia’s faculty and students was retained. Occasionally a footnote will indicate that the journal staff is keeping source material on file for authors, but not files of that sort were transferred to the archives. The editing of articles to be published is achieved in seven stages. The first step, the departmental edit, involves checking and, if necessary, correcting organization and use of language; this editing is done by more than one board member on the original draft and several copies. Simultaneously a substantive cite-check (“sub cite”) is made in order to examine the citation for accuracy, blue book form and reference to the text. Corrections are marked on the departmental edit copy. At this point, the executive editors do a final substantive edit for clarity, accuracy, spelling and grammar. Subsequently another cite-check is noted on a copy of the executive edit. Ultimately all corrections are incorporated onto one copy which is sent to the printer. The printer returns galley proof for the VLR to correct. Page proof is run in two stages: the first, called “dirty pages,” are without running heads and table of contents and the second, called “clean pages”, have both.