Editorial & Publication Boards

Family Advocate

Family Advocate, is the quarterly news-and-feature membership magazine of the Section of Family Law. It addresses current family law topics and provides useful how-to articles in every issue. 

Family Advocate board members play an important part in the magazine process. Board members are expected to attend two full-day meetings a year and to serve as a reviewing editor and as an issue editor throughout the year.

Meeting Attendance
The Family Advocate Editorial Board does not meet at the ABA Annual or Midyear meetings, but does meet at the two Section meetings (Fall and Spring). These two day-long meetings we have each year are vital to the process of brainstorming and planning upcoming issues. A board member’s missing a meeting detracts from the group’s sharing of ideas, which helps keep the magazine vital. These meetings also keep individual board members up to date on assignments, issue themes, article development, deadlines, issues in progress, etc.

Members are reimbursed for attendance at board meetings based on our Section Reimbursement Policy.

Reviewing Editor
Reviewing editors read articles sent to them in outline, first, and final draft form and make substantive suggestions. They send those suggestions to the issue editor and to the Editor-in-Chief. The issue editor is the primary person for corralling authors and articles for a given issue. At the fall and spring board meetings, we scope out an issue, with a detailed outline of articles and suggested authors.

Issue Editor
The issue editor takes the issue outline and makes the calls to suggested authors (or others he or she knows) and gets the author's commitment to write, assigns the article and provides deadlines, which are set forth in our annual production schedule. Sometimes, two people are assigned to serve as issue co-editors.

Once the article is submitted, the managing editor sends it out to board members for review and comments. When comments are returned a few days later, the issue editor synthesizes them and passes them on to the author, along with a reminder of the next deadline. When the issue editor approves the final article, he or she sends it to the managing editor and the production process begins.

Family Law Quarterly

Family Law Quarterly is scholarly journal that keeps practitioners current with an analytical view of existing and emerging family law issues. In addition to the wealth of knowledge offered by timely, topical articles, the annual winter issue features a review of the year in family law.

Board members are traditionally lawyers who have been published, been out of law school for ten years or more or who have contacts with lawyers in diverse areas. FLQ board members are responsible for producing the Family Law Quarterly, on a quarterly basis, including generating issue themes, identifying authors, developing articles, monitoring deadlines, issue progress, etc.

Board members are expected to attend the planning meeting held in conjunction with the Fall Conference. Members are reimbursed for attendance at board meetings based on our Section Reimbursement Policy.

Publications Development Board

The Publications Development Board is the oversight committee of the Section’s book publishing program.

Members of the board have the following responsibilities: 

1. Brainstorm ideas for books, new book projects, authors and marketing ideas.
2. Serve as liaison or project manager to facilitate and support communications with authors, including:
   
   - Preparation of the publication proposal form including an  outline/table of contents
   
   - Setting and adhering to deadlines
   
   - Ongoing review of chapters & first and subsequent drafts,
   
   - Review and recommendation of the  final manuscript
   
   - Fulfilling reasonable requests of the author
   
   - Assist with marketing of publication, i.e. CLE speaker, Webinar presentation, etc.
3. Work with ABA Publishing staff to oversee contracts, royalties, copyright, permissions, distribution agreements, etc.
   
   

Members of the Publications Development Board are expected to attend board meetings held in conjunction with the Fall and Spring Conferences, Annual Meeting, as well as an additional winter meeting. Members are reimbursed for attendance at board meetings based on our Section Reimbursement Policy.