The Board of Editors of the William Mitchell Law Review Volume 42 was elected in January 2015. We were flattered that our predecessors entrusted us to carry on this noble forty-one-year tradition and we were optimistic at the opportunity to make our mark.
As we explored our new workspace, we encountered an old bookcase filled with past volumes of the William Mitchell Law Review. The first words of Volume 1 bear a message from then-Dean Doug Heidenreich comparing “the process of producing the first issue of the first volume of a new law review to the process of human birth.” How startling—nay, how lurid!—that the very first words in our Law Review described its very inception as “bloody and squalling.” It is ironic that one year later we would still find these words startling, not for their boldness, but rather for their clairvoyance.
Shortly after taking office, we learned that William Mitchell College of Law would combine with Hamline University School of Law, and our flagship law reviews, too, had to combine. Our Board of Editors prepared to stride ahead into an uncertain future. But, before moving forward, we had to return to that old bookcase. We needed to learn where we had been before we could determine how to move forward.
In those old volumes, we found that the William Mitchell Law Review published its first issue in 1974 with an ambitious goal of creating an invaluable reference for judges and practitioners—and it did just that. Less than one year after the William Mitchell Law Review published its first articles, the Minnesota Supreme Court cited to one; We also found that, in the Law Review’s forty-one year history, it published nearly 2000 articles, has been cited in hundreds of federal and state judicial opinions; published prominent members of the federal and state judiciary, politicians, and countless professors and practitioners, and its articles have been downloaded over 150,000 times.