Change is Constant in Estate Planning : Reflections of an ACTEC Law Journal Editor

In this essay, the author provides a brief overview of the history of the flagship publication of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, including its past leadership, focus and multiple name changes. The author reflects on her service as editor of the ACTEC Law Journal and the importance of a commitment to publish articles of ever-increasing quality, while simultaneously ensuring that the Journal remains a venue that is inclusive, appealing and useful to all ACTEC Fellows. Although the ACTEC Law Journal explicitly names and norms itself as a law review, as opposed to a newsletter or a venue for publication of CLE materials, it is important that the publication continues to function as resource and target venue for all of the organization's Fellows. Given the reality that busy practitioners and judges simply do not have the same time in their day that academics have to write long law review articles that engage with prior scholarship, solve novel problems, and propose normative solutions and related policy concerns, during the author's editorship, she sought to create multiple opportunities for all Fellows to submit shorter pieces to the ACTEC Law Journal. This included an issue devoted to short commentaries on the estate planning jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States and the inclusion in other issues of brief reviews of articles published in the ACTEC Law Journal