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Pitches wanted (law, politics) | ~50 cents per word
🕑 Added 2025-07-22 21:00:17 +0000 UTCCOMPANY/PUBLICATION: BALLS & STRIKES
Jay Willis, Editor in Chief of Balls & Strikes, is looking for pitches:
Do you want to get paid to write about the world’s worst people? I have terrific news!
Summer used to be the slow time of year for the Supreme Court and everyone in its orbit. The justices were typically off gallivanting around Europe, occasionally cashing checks from law schools willing to pay them to spend a few hours with roomfuls of hungover twentysomethings. In their absence, constitutional law professors would update their syllabi to reflect whatever civil rights the Court most recently decided no longer exist; big-name legal journalists would put the finishing touches on their next proposal for a book with SUPREME in the title; and outgoing clerks would spend their last weeks on the job showing their replacements the ropes, and sitting around thinking about which BigLaw firm’s half-million-dollar signing bonus to accept.
The advent of the second Trump administration, however, has more or less ruined these hallowed traditions of the legal profession. This is because Trump is, to use a technical term, always doing illegal shit, which means that normal people are constantly suing to try and stop him, which means that the members of this Court’s six-justice conservative supermajority have to stay near the office with their phones on, to make themselves available to resolve emergency docket cases in ways that give their favorite president everything he wants.
Most people in most jobs are annoyed by having to do extra work. For Sam Alito, the joy of getting to enshrine casual homophobia in the pages of the Supreme Court reporter probably makes the burden a bit more bearable.
What I am saying here is that as much as I, too, would love to log off until September and possibly forever, Balls & Strikes will have a lot to publish this summer. We’ll continue to cover the fallout from the term that wrapped last month, when the Court declared that federal judges can’t stop Trump from breaking the law, but that America’s most obnoxious parents have an inviolate First Amendment right to veto public school curriculum they don’t like. We’ll follow along with the embarrassing bootlickers and conspiracy-curious weirdos whom Trump is nominating and the Senate is confirming to life-tenured federal judgeships. And we will be there to recap every additional shadow docket decision rubber-stamping some monstrous aspect of Trump’s agenda, because if this Court is going to continue to roll over and show its belly to an aspiriting autocrat, literally the least we can do is blog about it.
Since the workload isn’t getting any lighter, I would like to extend an occasional invitation and/or plea to you to take some of it on: If there is a case you want to unpack, a trend you want to highlight, a nominee you want to scrutinize, or just something happening in the law-adjacent world that makes you upset, you can send Balls & Strikes your pitches anytime at—you’ll want to write this down, it’s complicated—pitches@ballsandstrikes.org. You can find more detailed submissions guidelines here, but I will spoil the most important part: For essays of about 1,000 words, we typically pay $500. Why go outside and enjoy the beautiful weather this summer when you can get paid to write about the worst people on earth instead?
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CONTACT INFORMATION (please do not share the email address publicly):
Questions/submissions: pitches@ballsandstrikes.org
Website: https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com
TO HELP YOU CRAFT YOUR PITCH:
Learn more about the publication: Balls & Strikes is a Substack publication that publishes commentary and reporting on courts, judges, and the legal system. It covers topics such as judicial decisions, confirmation processes, law reform, and the politics embedded in court rulings. The publication seeks to hold the judiciary accountable and to foster deeper public understanding of how legal systems influence democratic and social power. More information here.
Read through a selection of recent articles/stories on its website.
Review the submission guidelines here.
Check out our collection of pitch excerpts on this page and find more sample pitches at The Open Notebook and at SuccessfulPitches.com.
Do not forget to end your pitch with (1) a short introduction about yourself; (2) a few lines highlighting your writing experience, relevant credentials and publication credits; and (3) links to your strongest work or portfolio, and online profile.
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