Lawfare Submission Guidelines: Publishing on Law, Security, and Technology

Key takeaways

• Lawfare publishes argued analysis on a live legal question where security or technology is involved. Editors want a claim. A summary of a court filing or a new report will not clear the bar.
• Pitch before you draft at length. A 200-word email costs an hour to write. A 4,000-word draft in the wrong format costs a week.
• AI rules, exclusivity expectations, and word limits differ by outlet. Read the current contributor guidance and ask an editor when a rule is ambiguous.
• Verify the submission address and the guidelines on the live official page during the week you send. Old guides circulate for years and addresses go stale.
• Confirm coauthor approval, funding disclosures, and institutional pre-publication review before the file leaves your computer.

1. Introduction

Every week, editors at law and security publications delete pitches that took someone hours to write. The pitches fail for repeatable reasons. The topic is a report summary. The argument sits in paragraph six. The draft runs 4,000 words where the outlet publishes 1,500. Lawfare sits at the center of this problem because it publishes across three fields that rarely share a house style. A law professor, a former intelligence official, and a software engineer can all write for it, and each tends to misjudge the format in a different direction.

Lawfare covers law, national security, and technology through daily online analysis, longer essays, and a podcast. Its readers include practicing lawyers, government officials, academics, and journalists who follow the same dockets and the same statutes. That readership sets the bar. A submission has to tell a specialist something they do not already know, in plain prose, with links that work.

This guide explains what Lawfare's submission process asks of outside authors, how to separate the pitch from the draft, what disclosure obligations follow from AI tools and coauthorship, and how Lawfare compares with RUSI Newsbrief, Survival, Orbis, Responsible Statecraft, Security Dialogue, and other venues where the same article could land.

2. What Lawfare publishes, and the bar a submission has to clear

An accepted Lawfare piece makes an argument about a live legal question and shows the reader what follows from it. The underlying statute, ruling, or agency action belongs in the first two paragraphs. It does not carry the rest of the article.

The editorial question is narrow. What does this piece say that a well-informed reader would not have concluded alone? If the answer is "it explains the new executive order," the piece is a briefing, and briefings are easy to find. If the answer is "the order's definition of covered data leaves cloud providers outside the licensing regime, which will push workloads offshore," you have a claim someone can dispute.

Several formats get published regularly:

• Analysis of a court decision or pending case, focused on what the ruling settles and what it leaves open.
• Explanations of how a legal authority works in practice, such as a surveillance statute, an export control list, or a procurement rule.
• Technology policy pieces that connect a technical development to a specific legal regime: privacy law, arms control, sanctions, or the law of armed conflict.
• Rebuttals that engage directly with something the outlet already published, including factual corrections.

Length expectations for daily online analysis in this field usually fall between 1,000 and 2,500 words. Longer essays exist, and journals carry 6,000 to 10,000 words. Check the outlet's current guidance rather than guessing, and if no length is stated, propose one in your pitch.

Format habits matter as much as argument. Online pieces use hyperlinks instead of footnotes. Bluebook citations written for a law review do not survive editing, and block quotes longer than a sentence get cut. Write the paragraph you would say out loud to a colleague, then add the citation as a link.

A practical example. You have just published a 12,000-word law review article on autonomous weapons and export licensing. The Lawfare version is not the abstract and not a condensed article. It is one claim from the middle of your paper, aimed at a reader who has fifteen minutes and wants to know whether the current license categories cover software updates delivered over the air.

Authors get accepted on proximity to the material more often than on seniority. A junior lawyer who worked on the case, a technologist who built the system, and a doctoral candidate who has read the full docket all have standing. Career stage matters less than whether you can name the documents.

3. Preparing the pitch and the draft

Send the pitch first unless the outlet's guidance asks for a complete draft. A useful pitch runs 150 to 250 words and contains five things:

1. The claim in one sentence.
2. The reason it is timely now: a filing deadline, a vote, a contract award, an appellate argument.
3. Two or three named sources or documents you will use as evidence.
4. One line on your connection to the material.
5. A statement on exclusivity and prior publication.

The draft that follows should open on the legal instrument or the decision, not on why the topic matters. Editors routinely delete three structures: the literature review, the paragraph explaining that this issue has become increasingly important, and the conclusion that restates the introduction. Your reader arrived because the issue already interests them.

Exclusivity trips up more authors than writing quality does. Most outlets in this space want first publication rights and will not run a piece that is already live elsewhere. That includes a personal blog, a university repository, and a newsletter. Say in the pitch whether a version exists anywhere public. If a draft is posted to SSRN or a preprint server, disclose it and ask whether the outlet treats a working paper as prior publication. Some do, some do not, and the answer changes by outlet.

Simultaneous submissions are handled differently across publications. Some permit them with notice. Others ask for an exclusive look. Ask before you send the same pitch to four editors on the same afternoon.

What to attach:

• The draft as an editable document rather than a PDF.
• A two-line biography with your current affiliation.
• Links to two previous pieces, if you have them.
• A note on whether the piece is under review anywhere else.

4. AI rules, sourcing, and disclosure

Rules on AI use now appear in the contributor guidance of outlets including RUSI's Newsbrief, the RUSI Journal, Survival, Orbis, Responsible Statecraft, and Security Dialogue, and those rules do not say the same thing. Some prohibit AI-generated text. Some require disclosure of the tool and its purpose. Some rely on a general accuracy clause in the author agreement and say nothing about AI at all.

Because the rules differ, a draft that satisfies one outlet can be disqualifying at another. When wording is ambiguous, ask the editor for a specific interpretation. Assuming that the most permissive policy from a neighboring publication applies is how authors lose a commission.

Practical steps that hold up under any policy:

• Keep a short log of which tools you used and for what: outlining, editing, translation, literature search. Two lines per tool is enough.
• Open every citation and confirm it exists. Language models generate plausible case names, docket numbers, and page ranges that do not correspond to anything filed.
• Do not paste client material, unpublished litigation strategy, or sensitive government material into a cloud tool.
• Rewrite anything the tool produced in your own words before it reaches an editor, and be ready to explain the underlying reasoning in a call.

An editor who finds one fabricated citation will read the rest of the piece with a different level of trust. That cost is not recoverable inside the same submission.

5. Administrative checks that prevent wasted weeks

Most submission failures happen before the editor reads a sentence. Run these checks the week you send.

The disclosure list deserves its own attention. Policy outlets ask about funding sources because a reader needs to weigh the argument. A grant from a defense contractor, a board seat at a technology company, and paid expert testimony in a related case all belong in the pitch or in a note to the editor. You do not need to publish a conflict in the piece itself. You do need to tell the editor before they find out elsewhere.

Do not send confidential research material merely because an address appears in an old guide. Confirm the recipient and the channel first.

6. Comparing outlets: where Lawfare sits

The right venue depends on what you have in hand. A legal argument with a two-week news window belongs at a daily publication. A theoretical article with a twelve-month timeline belongs at a journal. Pick two outlets and tailor the pitch to each rather than sending one text to six.

Institutional blogs at research organizations follow a different logic. They usually publish authors connected to the institution, and outside contributions route through a program director rather than a general submission address. If you have a fellowship or a visiting appointment, that is the channel to use.

7. FAQ

Q1. Does Lawfare accept pitches from authors with no prior relationship to the publication?

Yes. Outside authors pitch daily publications in this field regularly, and the contributor guidance exists for that reason. The practical constraint is fit, not connections. Pitches that state a claim, name the documents, and confirm exclusivity get read faster than pitches that describe a topic area. Check the current guidance on whether the outlet prefers a pitch or a complete draft, since that preference changes.

Q2. How long should a submission be?

For daily online analysis in law and security, plan on 1,000 to 2,500 words. Journals in the same field run 6,000 to 10,000 words with formal citation. If the outlet publishes no stated limit, propose a length in the pitch and let the editor adjust. A 900-word piece that makes one sharp point gets accepted more often than a 3,000-word piece that makes four.

Q3. Can I use AI tools to draft a submission?

It depends on the outlet, and the policies are not harmonized. Some ban AI-generated text outright, others require you to disclose the tool and its purpose, and others say nothing and rely on the accuracy clause. Read the guidance for the specific outlet, and when the wording is unclear, ask the editor for an interpretation rather than borrowing a permissive rule from somewhere else.

Q4. Can I submit the same piece to two outlets at once?

Tell both editors what you are doing. Many outlets want an exclusive look during review, and some allow simultaneous submissions if you say so up front. If any version of the piece has appeared on SSRN, a personal blog, or a newsletter, disclose that in the pitch, because first-publication rights determine whether the outlet can run it at all.

8. Conclusion

Submission success at Lawfare and comparable outlets comes down to preparation rather than reputation. Write the pitch first, state the claim in one sentence, and name the documents you will use. Read the current contributor guidance on the outlet's own site during the week you send, because word limits, AI rules, and exclusivity terms change and third-party summaries lag behind them. Ask an editor when a rule is ambiguous instead of assuming the answer.

The venue question is separate from the quality question. A legal argument with a short news window and a technology angle fits Lawfare. The same research recast as a theoretical article fits Security Dialogue, and recast as a two-page brief fits RUSI Newsbrief. One draft rarely serves all three.

The pitches that get accepted tend to arrive with a draft attached, a named contact, a stated length that matches what the outlet actually publishes, and a disclosure paragraph the editor did not have to request.