As you read this, my responsibilities as Editor of Law & Society Review are rapidly drawing to a close. All the issues for Volume 41 have been filled, and my extremely capable successor, Carroll Seron, is making decisions about articles for Volume 42.

Because of the flow of high-quality manuscripts, I decided relatively early in my tenure not to seek out or commission any symposium issues. At the same time, I have been attentive to the possibility of publishing articles on related subjects together, and have at times adjusted the placement of articles to facilitate this. In this issue, we have what I have labeled a serendipitous symposium: a set of four articles dealing with a pair of contemporary issues facing the legal profession, particularly the legal profession in North America. Two of the articles deal with the issue of lawyers' satisfaction with their work and career choice. One of these articles draws on the panel study of Toronto lawyers begun by John Hagan more than 20 years ago, and the other draws on the new panel study After the J.D., headquartered at the American Bar Foundation. The second pair of articles concerns the debate over pro bono work by lawyers: how do lawyers feel about such obligations, and how does the provision of services on a pro bono basis vary from state to state?

One challenge for a journal editor is balancing the need to be assured that sufficient accepted manuscripts are on hand to keep the journal on its publication schedule with the need to avoid a backlog that requires authors to wait an inordinately long time to see their manuscript in print. During my tenure as editor, we have had a delay of between 10 and 14 months from the time I notify an author that I have decided to accept a manuscript until the article appears in print. While this sounds like a long time, it is in practice about a one-issue backlog, given the production cycle. From the time we need to have the final versions of manuscripts to the publisher to the date an issue is mailed to subscribers amounts to about six months. I want to allow approximately three more months between the time I decide to accept a manuscript to the date we must have the publication-ready version; during this period, I ask a member of the Editorial Advisory Board to read the manuscript and provide advice on what the author can do to broaden the audience for the article as it will eventually appear in print. This takes two or three weeks (occasionally longer). I then send instructions to the author for preparing the manuscript, giving the author at least a month to turn around that revision. About half of the “final” versions I receive require some additional revision (usually minor), and that can involve another week or two. We need some time to get the package of manuscripts for an issue assembled. Altogether, the process takes eight to 10 weeks. As noted above, in practice we have usually been about one issue ahead in the overall process, which makes the Editor's job a bit more comfortable because she or he does not have to worry about coming up short of manuscripts. It would be possible to trim the backlog a bit, but at most such a trimming would speed the time from acceptance to publication by perhaps two months.

As noted above, as you read this, I have accepted manuscripts that will complete Volume 41. The articles that will appear in the remaining issues under my editorship include the following:

Adam Alter, John Darley, and Julia Kernochan, “Morality Influences How People Apply the Ignorance of the Law Defense”

Mark Atlas, “Separate But Equal? State versus Federal Enforcement Stringency in a Delegated Environmental Program”

Vanessa Barker, “The Politics of Pain: A Political Institutionalist Analysis of Crime Victims' Moral Protests”

Pamela T. Brandwein, “A Judicial Abandonment of Blacks? The Supreme Court and Reconstruction, Reconsidered”

Simon Deakin and Beth Ahlering, “Labor Regulation, Corporate Governance and Legal Origin: A Case of Institutional Complementarity?”

Alexes Harris, “Diverting and Abdicating Judicial Discretion: Cultural, Political, and Procedural Dynamics in California Juvenile Justice”

Lesley Jacobs, “Rights and Quarantine During the SARS Global Health Crisis: Differentiated Legal Consciousness in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Toronto”

Stefanie A. Lindquist, Wendy L. Martinek, and Virginia A. Hettinger, “Splitting the Difference: Modeling Appellate Court Decisions With Mixed Outcomes”

Jeffrey Martin, “A Reasonable Balance of Law and Sentiment: Social Order in Democratic Taiwan from the Policeman's Point of View”

Andrea McAtee and Kevin T. McGuire, “Lawyers, Justices, and Issue Salience: When and How Do Legal Arguments Affect the U.S. Supreme Court?”

Scott Meinke and Kevin Scott, “Collegial Influence and Judicial Voting Change: The Effect of Membership Change on U.S. Supreme Court Justices”

Emma F. Phillips, “Maybe Tomorrow I'll Turn Capitalist: Cuentapropismo in a Workers' State”

Deenesh Sohoni, “Unsuitable Suitors: Anti-Miscegenation Laws, Naturalization Laws, and the Construction of Asian Identities”

John Szmer, Susan W. Johnson, and Tammy A. Sarver, “Does the Lawyer Matter? Influencing Outcomes on the Supreme Court of Canada”

Tom R. Tyler, Patrick E. Callahan, and Jeffrey Frost, “Armed and Dangerous(?): Motivating Rule Adherence Among Agents of Social Control”

Tom R. Tyler, Lawrence Sherman, Heather Strang, Geoffrey C. Barnes, and Daniel Woods, “Reintegrative Shaming, Procedural Justice, and Recidivism: The Engagement of Offenders' Psychological Mechanisms in the Canberra RISE Drinking-and-Driving Experiment”

Ellen Wiles, “Headscarves, Human Rights, and Harmonious Multicultural Society: Implications of the French Ban for Interpretations of Equality”