A commenter asked why anyone would want to be on a law review. Here's the answer I give in my book:
Being on a law review takes a lot of effort, often many hours a week that you’d rather spend studying for other classes or having fun. Why do it?
1. The credential: Law review is a valuable credential on your resume. It’s especially valuable if you want to get a judicial clerkship or a teaching job, but it’s also helpful for other jobs, too. Employers assume that if you’ve been on law review, you’ve had more practice editing, proofreading, and writing. Also, because many law reviews (especially general-purpose journals) have selective admissions procedures, having “made law review” is seen as evidence of good grades or of writing skill.
What’s more, unlike grades, law review is a credential that’s socially acceptable to talk about. It’s hard to politely work your grades into casual conversation with potential employers. The grades will be on your resume, but not everyone at your prospective new job will have seen the resume, and those who have seen it may well have forgotten it.
But law review is a project that you’ve been involved in, so you can safely discuss it (of course, so long as you aren’t too blatant about it). “What are you doing at school this year?” “Oh, law review is taking up a lot of my time.” “Oh, really? What do you on the law review?” “I’m the chief articles editor.” Polite but impressive.
2. Editing, proofreading, and source-checking training: The key to good legal writing is the ability to edit and proofread your own work, and care in using sources. The key to these things is practice, both with your work and with others’ work. Law review will give you plenty of such practice — and in the process will teach you to pay attention to detail, another important skill lawyers must have.
3. Incentive to write and opportunity to publish: Many law journals require you to write a student Note, as a condition of being promoted from a staffer to an editor. Some of these Notes (the number varies from journal to journal) end up being published.
As I mention in Part VII.A, you can indeed write a Note and get it published even if you’re not on law review. But writing is hard, and if you don’t have an obligation and a deadline, it’s easy to keep putting it off. Being on a law review commits you to making that effort, and makes it easier for you to get a publication out of your work.
4. Cooperative and valuable work: Most things you do in law school — read, study, take exams — you do by yourself. Even those things that are cooperative, such as study groups or moot court, tend to be exercises, pedagogically valuable but with little effect on the outside world.
Law review lets you work as part of a team that produces something that matters: The articles you edit may end up being cited by courts and by scholars, and might actually make some difference to the development of the law and legal thinking. This sort of team effort can be exciting and rewarding.
5. Exposure to ideas: Working on the law review will lead you to read quite a few law review articles — and if you’re in the articles department, it will lead you to read very many. Many of the articles aren’t going to be very interesting or helpful to you, but some will be. This exposure to ideas can be both exciting for its own sake, and valuable for your future work, either scholarly or practical. (Naturally, you could just decide to expose yourself to ideas by reading articles on your own; but few people have the discipline to do that unless law review forces them to.)
Related Posts (on one page):
- Law Review Write-On Tips, Part 4 -- Why Be on a Law Review?
- Law Review Write-on Tips, Part 3 -- Review Your Professors' Comments on Your Written Work:
- Law Review Write-On Tips, Part 2 -- Set Up the Right Environment for the Write-On:
- The Law and Economics of the Bluebook Market Failure:
- The Case for Abolishing the Blue Book:
- Law Review Write-On Tips, Part 1 -- Read the Bluebook Several Times Before the Competition:
Lots of alcohol.
And sex.
Lots of sex.
Incredible Practical Jokes.
Stories galore.
And some of the best friends you'll ever make.
I realize that this isn't exactly what people think of when they think of a bunch of law nerds dutifully making sure that commas are properly italicized, but our Law Review (UCLA) was an interesting place the years I was there.
Of course, you might well say "if someone is going to open doors for me, I want them to precede rather than follow me," but that point goes to the ultimate uselessness of law review. Still, it's worth your time to try out.
The credentialing value is somewhat questionable as well. It's nice to have as an add-on, but it isn't super helpful by itself. If your journal membership doesn't match up with your grades, be prepared to get a lot of thinly veiled "so, how did you get on law review?" questions in interviews.
All of the other listed benefits can likely be achieved more efficiently through membership in another journal, or through extra-curricular activities.
Besides being very educational, law review is genuinely a great community and excellent source of friends. It also particularly helps when applying for judicial clerkships (law firms care a lot less than judges do about law review).
At UCLA, a staffer gets up to 6 cite-checking assignments throughout the entire 2L year. I never spent much more than 20 hours per assignment, and I don't think any of my fellow staffers spent more than 30. On top of law review I was able to compete in both Moot Court and Mock Trial. And yes, I went to all my classes, had a life, etc. So I would think that if all you're doing is Law Review, it'll make the year harder, but not impossible.
Before Law Review, I was a staffer on other secondary journals. I can say that the quality of work produced and edited under the primary law review (at least in my experience), was far superior. Part of it is just commitment: virtually no one leaves Law Review. On the other hand, people on other journals tell me horror stories of how their staffers just quit on them. Others tell about how they always get crappy articles, because, if the article is good, usually it's sent to and taken by the primary Law Review.
Not saying that secondary journals don't produce anything good or that one must do Law Review to succeed after or during law school. But I think that the benefits are well-worth the costs, especially if you're someone like me, who isn't exactly cut out for law school exams, and thus has less than stellar grades.
7. You'll make friends. Some of the best friends I made in law school, and the ones I'm most likely to keep in touch with both socially and professionally in the years to come, were from law review.
And really, the workload isn't bad. I say this as a recent executive editor of a top-10 law review. (I was one of three people responsible for the technical and stylistic editing of all our pieces and for overseeing the 2L citecheckers. The only people who worked harder, I'd say, were the managing editor, the EIC, and the senior articles editor. It was a lot of work, sure, but it never ruined my life--and you don't have to be one of the most-involved editors your 3L year if you don't enjoy this kind of thing.)
1. Opportunity cost. If what you want out of law school is #4 (working with other people), #6 (fun), and #7 (friends) - there are far more productive ways to spend your time and that will make you a better balanced person and lawyer.
2. Charting your career in the law. For Eugene, a brilliant, academic scholar, #2, #3, and #5 gave him good experience and helped channel him into the right career. For most of us, however, a law degree means that we'll be looking for a job practicing the law. And there is a bewildering variety of experiences you can have. Arvin's experience is hardly typical - most law review people are immersed in a culture that a.) demands most of their free time; and b.) encourages spending the rest of your time earning high grades. If you want to graduate law school with no idea of what you might want to do, except go to a firm and do "appellate work," whatever that is, having talked primarily to law professors and people aspiring to be law professors for most of your time in law school, law review is the way to go.
----
That said, #1 is very, very, important. Extremely important. Your grades will not stay with you long after law school. Your work on other journals, your lead part in the law school play, and your hours playing IM basketball will not stay on your resume long after law school. Law review will. It is a credential that will identify you as an outstanding mind for the rest of your career.
Unless you go to a top, top law school, law review is not something you should pass up. (Exception: if you 1) have no academic or appellate interests; 2) are a highly-skilled networker, 3) you plan to practice in the area where you attend law school, *and* 4) you or your school can create good opportunities for you to get out into the legal, judicial and/or business community and start to make a name for yourself while you're in school - do that instead.)
But don't kid yourself. Unless you are academically-minded or plan a career in scholarship (did you ask for Eugene's book for Hanukkah?), #1 is the reason you're doing law review. And at many, if not most schools, it is a culture that will suck you in -- no matter how good their intentions to simply "belong" and minimize their law review workload, few succeed in escaping the law review vacuum.
But don't kid yourself - it is a credentialing exercise, and
I didn't try out for it. I just had no interest and didn't want the extra work.
Being on law review probably would have helped with my desire to be a better writer and able to produce publishable work. But that desire didn't come until a few years after I graduated law school.
The fact that I wasn't on law review meant absolutely nothing to the full time community college teaching position job I now hold.
If I wanted to teach in a law school (not a likely career prospect for me) or one day move to a 4-year college or (non law school) graduate program (perhaps something I might pursue down the road, who knows?) then the absence of a law review credential might hurt.
Sure. But then it ends, and you have the rest of your career to use the credential. It's not like law school is going to be "fun" or relaxing in any event, and you already survived (and thrived) as a 1L if you've been invited to join.
Do it. No-brainer.
I am not a workaholic or a shocking brainiac. I write well, am diligent and get along with people. That will get you a long way on a journal. The work was hard, but educational, see supra, and rewarding in a "there's pleasure in a job well done" sort of way. As a law student, you rarely get to work with a broad range of peers on a common project of any import – journals provide that opportunity. I also had feared that the journal would be staffed by the most insufferable of the insufferable; it wasn't the case at all. My peers were almost uniformly decent folks, just trying to do a good job.
Don't forget too that the learning boost from law review doesn't stop when you turn the reins over to the next Ed Board – without LR I would have been DOA for an appellate clerkship. As it was, I got one that I considered a plum and loved it.
I say, give it a go -- it can be a meaningful experience. Really.
Your mileage may vary.
Don't you think joining the Marines would have been a better use of your time?
I agree with all the reasons to BE on LR -- heck I was a write on to the my school's LR. Didn't help my career at all, though. And as a credential, it's important only to those who think it's important, meaning other dweebs who think it's great. Mostly, though, I find that it's law school professors who really think its this great thing. After you become partner in a firm, though, no one cares. What they really care about is how much money you bring to the firm.
In the office next door to me is a classmate of mine who did write on to law review, was on the editorial board, graduated with an extremely high average, and clerked for a prominent Circuit Court judge. Yet this person now sits less than 10 feet away from me -- a lot more work to get to the same place.
In one of my cases, we had cause to obtain local counsel. The local counsel was another classmate of mine, who also wrote on to law review, was also on the editorial board, also graduated with an extremely high GPA, and clerked for both a prominent Circuit Court judge and a Supreme Court justice.
This is not to besmirch either of my classmates, both of whom I count as good friends. They made the choices that were right for them, and I'm sure their hard work, their law review experiences, and their clerkships were all wonderful experiences for them. My point, though, is they were not experiences I wanted for myself.
Before you reflexively push yourself to go for law review, think about what you want for yourself. How do you want to spend your law school career? How do you want to spend your career after you graduate? Law review may well be the right choice for you. So may clerkship. So may pushing yourself to be the class valedictorian. But it's not necessarily so, and don't blindly follow the pack and wind up putting yourself in a situation where you've bitten off more than you can (or want to) chew.
Pre-emptive sour grapes? Perhaps.
2) Something else to do with your time? If you have a father with a terminal illness and you want to spend as much time as possible at his bedside before he dies, that's one thing. If you have to work to avoid being evicted and forced to spend your 2L year living in a cardboard box in an alley, okay. Otherwise, what else could you possibly have to do that's more important than building your resume? (You may even get something out of the experience, but even if you don't, it will appear on that resume.) Are you in law school to have fun, or for your career?
Other commenters have pointed out that law review is a credential that follows you long after grades are forgotten. Check any lawyer's law firm website bio and see for yourself. So the marginal benefit of law review may not be as high for purposes of obtaining 2L summer employment (assuming membership is determined primarily by grades), the marginal benefit increases in the future. Furthermore, if you think you will have grades that are borderline law review eligible, membership on the law review may be the deciding factor in job searches, even for 2L summer.
1. Most people probably don't read law review articles all the way through, and those that do, probably don't look up the cites (unless they're writing their own paper or something strikes them as implausible). But they don't look them up because they trust that the Law Review that published the article already vetted it. At UCLA anyway, an article goes through extensive work before being published, with primary, secondary, and at times tertiary rounds of cite checks, as well as chief proofs. On the substantive side the paper goes through primary and secondary edits, as well as chief proofs. Mistakes are still made I'm sure, but as a reader (and an editor), you hope that all the major ones have been caught.
2. It's true that if you're not going on certain career paths, Law Review is probably not necessary. Larry H. Parker was probably not on his school's law review. But, at the end of my 1L year, I didn't know yet what I wanted to do. Turns out, I decided I wanted to work at a small firm, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm probably not going to try to teach. But if in ten, twenty years I decide I want to try? I'm sure it'll help that I can put Law Review on my resume. If I hadn't written on, I couldn't later decide to do that.
So if you're not sure and want to keep options open, you might as well try, unless you're positive you just can't handle the extra workload. On the other hand, if you think there's only a very little chance you'll want to do anything that would be helped by Law Review, and you don't think you'd have fun being on it, then there's no reason to be on it. Do Moot Court instead! ;)
The bulk of the work was just showing up in the library once a week and spending a couple hours cite checking. There were other people there at the same time, but there was nothing "cooperative" about the work. We all just got a few pages, did our cite checking, and left.
It probably helped me to be good at bluebooking, and that is a useful skill for clerking. But what really helped bluebooking was writing on my own. (And the Journal provided no opportunity for writing.)
Maybe the credential mattered. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten the same jobs without it. There's no way to know. If it did matter, that may just show that judges and employers are unduly swayed by resume fluff. If so, they shouldn't be, and everyone should decided whether or not to join for other, better reasons.
long hours of detail-oriented drudgery spent working on a project of little personal interest to you in the service of someone you don't particularly care for while many of your friends are out enjoying their more abundant free time.
Such vitriol! If that's your perception of either law review or your BigLaw job, don't do either.
But neither has to be that way.
But that's also because I put in the minimum amount of work required in the rest of law school. I averaged Cs and Bs largely and ranked low in my class.
For me, law school was pretty laid-back and enjoyable (except for the three or four weeks of frenzied cramming prior to finals each semester). The work on the law review was something tangible that I could be proud about.
I also took a perverse sense of pride in being one of those to "buck the trend" and "make law review" solely based on my writing skills.
Such vitriol! If that's your perception of either law review or your BigLaw job, don't do either.
I'm not! I do cutting-edge constitutional litigation for an outstanding public interest firm -- a job I probably couldn't have gotten without my law review and big firm experiences, both of which were extremely valuable even though they weren't all that much fun in the actual doing. That was more the point of the post.
I suggest that the primary resume value comes from being on law review as a 2L, not from any editorial position in the 3L year. I refused to be an editor and I think set foot a total of 3 times in the LR office as a 3L. Note: although mine did not, some schools will make 3L slackers (i.e., non-editors) cite-check with the 2Ls. I heartily recommend rejecting any editorial position other than Editor-in-Chief.
My job search seemed unaffected by my lack of an editorial position. One firm, a very prominent and credential conscious DC firm, did ask me: "Why are you not an editor?" I replied: "I have better things to do as a 3L with my time." They seemed satisfied with this answer and offered me a position.
A second point that I don't think has been raised directly is that I did not feel like we were doing a great job. We published some good articles, but I don't think most of us were qualified to judge what the best articles were. My opinion is not specific to my school. I know peer review takes too long but more faculty involvement seems necessary. Maybe 2 professors and 2 law review members assigned to each article to vote on it (in addition to the editors) and then follow through to publication.
When people learn the demands of law review membership and respond by self-selecting OUT of the organization, the system is working perfectly.
I wasn't intending to make a value judgment, for the record. I just think it helps a lot in the job market, and if you haven't noticed, jobs can be tough to come by these days. Law review means extra work, sure, but it's a worthwhile investment as long as you intend to use your law degree to practice law. A balanced life is important, but you're spending way too much money on law school to focus merely on maximizing your leisure time.
I don't think going to a top-10 school has any extra educational value whatsoever as compared to attending schools 11-30, but if those are your choices, it's pretty valuable to take the higher ranked school.
Personally, I found law review to be very worthwhile from an intellectual standpoint, but clearly that's a matter of personal taste. I think membership on a secondary journal is equally worthwhile as a matter of intellectual challenge - assuming you're into that aspect of it - but worth considerably less in the job market.
Most people who attend law school have no idea what their future career path will look like. If you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't need to worry about it, bully for you. For the rest, you can coast a long time on the time investment you make in law school.
The advantage of being on a law review is not that you get the best (or highest paying) job. Rather, being on law review means that you are more likely to get whatever job you want. For instance, a classmate of mine used her law review credentials and skills to “vacation” from law practice by taking temporary clerkships (i.e., positions created when other law clerks went on maternity leave). She spent a summer clerking in Alaska, a winter clerking in Hawaii, and then parts of the summer and fall in Washington D.C.
The absolute best job on a law review is Articles Editor. It may be, in retrospect, even better than editor-in-chief. I read over 100 articles in a single year... on my own schedule and wherever I chose. I breathed legal scholarship for an entire year. That's an incomparable benefit that deserves mentioning here.
Plus the alcohol, sex, and practical jokes.
My point is this: if I went to a top 10 school, law review membership would be icing on the cake, but from my perspective, this credential is necessary if I want to compete with the "big boys" (and girls).
As far as the amount of work goes, it's pretty reasonable at my school. How onerous you find it also depends on how much you enjoy legal scholarship and legal writing (as an above poster pointed out). If you like both of those things, you will enjoy law review. If not, it's more of a credentialing exercise.
Opus, the rest of my life after law school will be like a "vacation" - I get to spend it all in Alaska and Hawaii. Actually, I am grateful that there are plenty of people willing to work big-firm jobs in NYC, Washington, Chicago and LA. More mountains for me!
2) I learned more about writing from writing a law review note than from anything else I did in college, graduate school or law school. There's nothing like writing five drafts and having each handed back with heavy comments. Not many (if any) law school professors will do that for you, but your student editor will, for free. Remember, there's no such thing as good writing, only good re-writing.
3) Law review was fun (if you like the law, which I did and do). You'll make friends.
4) Law review is the Special Forces for lawyers, Ranger and Seal training rolled up into one. Yes, the time commitment is heavy; that's why only the best students are invited to join, because they can handle the load. Review members are the few and the proud. That's why law review membership carries weight far into the future.
As someone on my firm's hiring committee, I agree with the commentator above who said, rightly or wrongly, we tend to assoicate Law Review with a willingness to go above and beyond and do work that takes up more time than the credits you get (if you get them) are worth. That shows a certain drive, competitiveness, and maturity (some might say stupidity, but I go with maturity).
When I do on-campus recruiting at my law school, it is very hard for someone not on the Law Review to get a call-back or offer. Now, those at better law schools can get offers without law review, but for my alma mater, again a top 40-50ish school, we rarely consider anyone who wasn't on the top law review at the school.
Face it... law review is a trophy for good students that has very little to do with the experience itself. It's the fact that you made it on that counts.
If it were merely making it, then GPA would be just as useful.
Ultimately, I think the only worthwhile thing about law review (which, with apologies to Mr. Law Review from UCLA, was not exactly AMERICAN PIE: BAND CAMP) was the opportunity to write and publish scholarly work. That said, the professors I had the closest relationship with generally advised me to publish my work as full-fledged articles in other law reviews, rather than as a student note or comment in my home law review.
That was very sound advice in that I know the articles went through a vetting process and were not merely published as “affirmative action pieces” because of my affiliation with my school’s law review. Nonetheless, it’s not something that required law review membership to accomplish. Indeed, one of my law review colleagues made law review not through the usual write-on process, but because he had published full-fledged scholarly articles elsewhere and was invited to join on that basis.
Moreover, in some contexts, the notes and comments department can be a hinderance to publishing. One of my articles, which I originally wrote in fulfillment of my law review writing requirement, dealt with a niche topic related to international development. When the notes and comments editors evaluated it, the feedback I received was extraordinarily unhelpful and amateurish.
I think the article and notes and comments editors are well-qualified to evaluate conventional submissions related to constitutional law, because it’s the one substantive area of law they understand. They’re very likely to be bewildered at quantitative law and econ scholarship, articles on corporate and securities law, and so forth. (Indeed, the articles editor once handed me a submission to evaluate precisely because it contained regression analysis that had him bewildered.)
To this extent, I found the weekly law and econ seminar a vastly more rewarding intellectual exercise than law review, notwithstanding the fun of publishing. As an added bonus, the law and econ seminars brought real networking benefits: students got to meet the leading authorities in the area and offer substantive critiques of their work. That, in my view, opens vastly more doors – and influences legal scholarship far more – than, say, yelling at Cass Sunstein over the quality of his bluebooking.
I don’t disagree with many of the points Eugene makes. Law review is an invaluable, indeed essential, credential for anyone aiming for a prestigious clerkship or legal academia. (In my own case, as much as I enjoy academia, I quickly realized that my research interests lay more in the social sciences than law, and I'm planning to do a PhD in the next couple of years.)
That said, most law students opt for different career paths, and I can easily see that time spent on alternative pursuits – learning a foreign language, networking, etc. – can bring more benefits than law review. I’ve been in private legal practice at top firms for five years now, and I can categorically say that both of these activities have opened far more doors for me than law review.
This brings me to the main flaw of Eugene’s post, which is, I think, his failure to discuss the concept of opportunity cost. Do activities foregone in favor of law review offer more value than law review? Although the answer obviously varies from person to person, in many cases the answer is yes.
One of the better things I did as a 2L was to enter my campus’ annual business plan competition – ironically, with an idea I thought of shortly after the law review write-on competition. I learned a lot more from the seminars on entrepreneurship and venture capital offered as part of the competition than I did on law review.
At one of these seminars, I distinctly remember the presenter, a mid-tier venture capitalist, saying that “when you write a business plan, you should proofread it, but ultimately, no one cares if there’s a comma missing on page 14.” That comment made me seriously question the point of my work on the law review – which is, as Eugene points out in his “attention to detail” point, very much about spotting the missing comma on page 14.
Building organizations and innovating is often about big-picture issues, not about being detail-oriented. (Look at David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue, who credits his entrepreneurial flair to ADD. The key to his leadership is that he’s constantly evaluating new information, moving from idea to idea, developing gut reactions, and innovating in response.) Lawyers are detail-oriented people, which is why, in my opinion, the all too often lack leadership skills.
To this extent, if your career ambitions after law school involve non-legal employment, I’m particularly dubious that the opportunity costs of law review are worth it – and I think that alternatives such as taking an exciting course, learning how to understand regression analysis, networking, language learning, and so forth, are far more productive activities.
In the end, I guess it all comes down to the individual. If you’re aiming to be the next Edwin Chereminsky or Bruce Ackerman, by all means, go for law review. If you’re an out-of-the-box thinker, whether in the academic world or the private sector, the choice is less clear.
To start, there's my family. No one's terminally ill, but we do have a new son on the way this summer. There's also a directorship of a local branch of a non-profit well respected in what I hope to be my eventual field. I have a weekly radio show on legal issues with leading local and regional practitioners as regular guests. I'm also planning to work at the clinic to gain experience, you know, being a lawyer.
Oh, yeah, and I'd like some leisure time, too.
I'm not so far out of college to be considered "non-traditional," but I have several years experience in the field I plan to enter after law school. I don't think the "You don't know what you want to do" condecension applies to me, at least not as it would to a straight-from-undergrad greenhorn. Like I said, for many people, law review is a what they need: A secret handshake that will open doors for them. I'm not one of those people and I'm very confident I never will be.