hlr-workflow

HLR Workflow Router (hlr-workflow)

The orchestrator for a Harvard Law Review submission. HLR is student-edited, not peer-reviewed, and generalist across all of law. The router's first job is to set the right mental model: you write a near-final article, run a preemption check before drafting, place it through Scholastica to many journals at once, leverage offers with expedite requests, and then survive an intensive student-editor edit plus a full cite-check / source-pull. Figure out the stage, then dispatch.

When to trigger

• Starting a new HLR piece and unsure where to begin
• Mid-project and unsure which skill applies next
• Deciding the piece type (Article, Essay, Book Review, or a Supreme Court Foreword/Comment by invitation)
• Holding an offer and deciding whether/how to expedite (route to hlr-placement-strategy)
• An editor sent edits or a source-pull request (route to hlr-student-editor-review)

First question: which piece type?

Situation	Type	Route to
Full original legal argument, novel normative claim	Article (long, heavily footnoted)	normal pipeline below
Shorter, focused intervention or provocation	Essay	normal pipeline, tighter scope
Engaging a recent book to make an independent claim	Book Review	hlr-thesis-and-contribution + hlr-argument-structure
Invited Supreme Court Foreword / Comment / Term piece	Supreme Court issue	hlr-argument-structure + hlr-sources-and-bluebook (invitation-driven)

Notes are student-written and unsigned by HLR editors — not an outside-author track. If you are not an HLR editor, you are writing an Article, Essay, or Book Review.

Routing map (stage → skill)

Is the topic timely and placeable?   → hlr-topic-selection
What is the legal claim / payoff?     → hlr-thesis-and-contribution
Has this argument been made already?  → hlr-preemption-check
How is the argument built?            → hlr-argument-structure
Are authorities cited correctly?      → hlr-sources-and-bluebook
Is the footnote apparatus sound?      → hlr-footnotes-and-cite-check
Does the prose read like a law review?→ hlr-writing-style
Where and when do I submit/expedite?  → hlr-placement-strategy
Ready to upload to Scholastica?       → hlr-submission
Editor sent edits / source-pull?      → hlr-student-editor-review
Working through the edit cycle?        → hlr-revision-and-editing

Default order

topic-selection → thesis-and-contribution → preemption-check → argument-structure → sources-and-bluebook → footnotes-and-cite-check → writing-style → placement-strategy → submission → student-editor-review → revision-and-editing

Run the preemption check early — discovering your claim was already made after drafting is the classic wasted-summer failure. Iterate thesis ↔ argument ↔ sources before polishing prose.

Law-review reality check (force this before routing)

Check	Pass condition	Route if weak
Student-edited model	You expect a generalist student audience, not a subfield peer panel	hlr-writing-style
Preemption	You have searched SSRN / Westlaw / HeinOnline and your claim is genuinely new	hlr-preemption-check
Normative payoff	The piece does more than describe doctrine — it argues for something	hlr-thesis-and-contribution
Source-pull readiness	Every proposition is pin-cited and pullable to a real source	hlr-footnotes-and-cite-check
Placement plan	You know the seasons and the expedite mechanics before you submit	hlr-placement-strategy

Anti-patterns

• Treating HLR like a peer-reviewed journal — it is student-edited; pitch and process differ
• Skipping the preemption check and discovering the claim was published last year
• Submitting outside the seasons, or single-submitting when the norm is multi-submit + expedite
• A descriptive doctrinal survey with no normative thesis (generalist editors reject "no payoff")
• Loose, un-pinpointed citations that cannot survive the source-pull

Output format

【Stage】topic / thesis / preemption / argument / sources / footnotes / writing / placement / submit / edit / revise
【Type】Article / Essay / Book Review / Supreme Court (invited)
【Route to】hlr-<skill>
【Why】one line
【Then】the next skill after that

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — legal research databases + Bluebook/citation tooling
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official HLR URLs behind every fact in this pack