Patterns in citations to law reviews are similar to citations in scientific literature

About 1/2 of scientific papers are not cited. Similarly, about 1/2 of law review articles are never cited.

Additionally, there are a small number of articles (journals) which are highly cited, in both science and in law.

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Tom Smith (of The Web of Law fame) has an interesting
new post disclosing preliminary results of an
empirical look at law review citation in the Lexis
database. Headlines:

First of all, 43 percent of the articles are not cited
. . . at all. Zero, nada, zilch. Almost 80 percent
(i.e. 79 percent) of law review articles get ten or
fewer citations. So where are all the citations going?
Well, let's look at articles that get more than 100
citations. These are the elite. They make up less than
1 percent of all articles, .898 percent to be precise.
They get, is anybody listening out there? 96 percent
of all citations to law review articles. That's all.
Only 96 percent. Talk about concentration of wealth.