Summer Research Stipend and Assistant Policy

2010 Summer Research Grants

For 2010, the base summer research grant is $8,000.¹   The grant will apply to traditional law review articles, casebooks, treatises, and substantial practice-oriented pieces. A Faculty member whose grant request is approved will receive an initial payment of $4,000 and will receive the balance when the piece is accepted for publication.  In addition, for law review articles only,² a faculty member may receive a bonus of either $6,000, $10,000, or $15,000, depending on the article’s placement.³

The bonus is $6,000 if the law review article is published in a main journal at a Tier 2 or Tier 3 law school. 

The bonus is $10,000 if the law review article is published in a main journal at a Tier 1 law school, a specialty journal at a top 10 law school, or a peer-edited or peer-refereed journal. 

The bonus is $15,000 if:

1. the law review article is published in a main journal of a top 20 school or

• within a 12 month period after the initial summer research grant is approved, the faculty member produces two or more different articles, each of which is accepted for publication in either a main journal at a Tier 1 or Tier 2 school, a specialty journal at a top 10 law school, or in a peer-edited or peer-refereed journal.

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[1] In addition to traditional requests for summer research grants, we continue to welcome requests of support for innovative projects such as developing teaching materials, creating research platforms, or practice-oriented publications for which no other compensation is received.   The amount of these "Professional Development" grants will depend on the breadth, depth and nature of the project.  Professional Development grants will be paid in an installment fashion, similar to the research grants.

[2] For the purposes of the bonus, contributions that are case-notes, book reviews, op-eds, speeches and the like will not be considered “articles,” even if they are published in a law review.  Although it is not possible or advisable to specify a minimum number of words that a work must have before it can be considered an “article,” most “articles” are more than 20,000 words in length, or approximately 40 law review pages. Work on a scholarly book (e.g., a monograph published by a university press) may be substituted for law review articles in the discretion of the Dean and the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development.

[3] For the purposes of these initiatives, we will use the US News rankings in effect on the date of the article’s acceptance (in the case of a law school’s main or specialty journal).  For peer reviewed journals, the article must be selected by a faculty member on a competitive basis and the journal should be in the “Top 10” for combined journals for that specialized field, if any, according to the Washington & Lee Law School Rankings in effect on the date of the article’s acceptance (in the case of a peer-reviewed journal).

March 25, 2010