Why, I wrote onto the UCLA Law Review. (I was smart enough to resign before they gave me cite-checking assignments.)
What was I smoking when I decided to do this? Why did I decide to do this? My Academic Legal Writing book gives advice to students who are trying to write on to law review, but I realized that this advice is based on my now 16-year-old experience of writing onto law review during my first year of law school, coupled with my general knowledge about legal writing. Not nothing, but I figured I could do better. So I took several days — which, valuable as I think law review is, proved to nonetheless be several not very pleasant days — and did the write-on.
I naturally cleared this experiment with the higher-ups at the law review, both because I was creating more work for them (though less than 1% more, since I was one of about 140 people who participated) and because if they wanted 35 people and I made it as one of them, I wanted to make sure they understood that they'd also need to take the 36th. (It would be a pretty nasty turn if I ended up edging out some deserving law student.) But though the top people at the law review knew I was doing it, they didn't know my anonymous exam number, and most law review editors didn't know that I was participating at all.
And as it happens, I think my experiment did indeed prove very valuable to me. I learned quite a bit about the process that I hadn't thought of before, confirmed some things I thought I had known, and concluded that a few recommendations that I'd made were a good deal less sound than I thought they were. I plan to use what I learned when I'm working on the Third Edition of my book (which should be out in Fall 2007). And I plan to blog much of it here in the next few weeks, since I know that at many schools the law review competition is still coming up.
In the meantime, I just thought I'd mention my having done this, just as a reminder that, yes, I'm as odd a duck as I seem.
UPDATE: My favorite comment so far, from commenter wt: "How very Drew Barrymore in 'Never Been Kissed' of you!"
I got an exam number from the Records Office just like all the other applicants did. The law review didn't know which exam number was mine until they submitted the list of successful numbers to the Records Office.
In general, I just want to know whether you've properly ensured against potential infection in constructing this study. I know you're doing it more for the process than the results, but it seems that the most telling conclusions can be derived from analyzing both simultaneously.
The UCLA Records Office is staffed by employees of UCLA. The UCLA Law Review is staffed by students. There is no way that there could be any cross-polination. The UCLA Law Review DOES have one university employee to help with stuff, but this person does not participate in the write-on grading in any way, and, AFAIK, does not communicate with the Records Office regarding exam numbers anyway.
It's possible that if a member of the Law Review Board really wanted to find out who a certain exam number was, there'd be ways to do so. But this would take an intentional (and possibly unsuccessful) effort, and it'd be pretty difficult (I'd venture to say almost impossible) to do accidentally. So as long as the people on the Law Review Board took the commitment to anonymity seriously (and, jokes aside, I think most Boards entrusted with this type of responsibility do try to take the requirements seriously), then Eugene's anonymity would only be compromised (one hopes) by exceptionally good writing for a 1L.
I'm not sure how other law reviews operate, but at my school getting on law review is much more contingent on your first year grades than your performance in the write-on competition. Much much more.
The last real test I took was the Bar Exam, yet when I am stressed out I still have that dream from law school where someone catches me and says "we were looking for you, your ______ exam has already started". I don't miss the tests.
The law review competition is all write-on, though they will add some grade-ons after the end of the Spring semester.
Writing on in a Week, Tom, Humble Law Student: Read the blog -- I'll be posting the corrections (which I'm happy to say are relatively few) shortly.
Seriously, this is similar to dunking over the heads of third grades in a playground basketball game.
I agree, though: publish (or at least post!) the write-on!
Eugene is really on to something. I admire, as always, his intellectual intrepdiness. I encourage all of my fellow lawprofs to spend an hour sitting in a large lecture class some time. They will speedily regain the empathy that slowly drains away the further one's law school career recedes over the horizon.
Where the hell was this process when I was a 1L?
I could have had a spring break....
1) Anonymously rank all essays.
2) The first N-M make law review.
3) Look at the races of these N-M students. Let K be the number of minorities in this group.
4) Now you have M law review spots to assign of which at least M-K must be minorities. But this is the same kind of problem as the original problem with M taking the place of N and M-K taking the place of M. So simply repeat this process until all spots are assigned.
If there is more than one type of quota (whoops! I mean "diversity requirement") the same type of process works.
I thought the book was excellent, though I didn't make the cut for the journal I wanted. It's impossible to say why, since the journal staffs refused to say how many slots they fill by write-on vs. grades--or indeed, if they fill any slots at all with write-on candidates.
The only advice that specifically didn't work for me was the suggestion that candidates find out which style manual a journal uses. I asked the staffer who was designated to field questions, and he refused to answer it because it would give me an unfair advantage over those who hadn't thought to ask!
The only addition I'd make to the book is that candidates should note any peculiar rules. For one of the cases we were to use, we were only supposed to cite a dissenting opinion. This was extremely awkward; how are you supposed to put the dissent in context if you can't talk about the majority? (By the way, now that I've taken the course in the area of law in question, the rule makes even less sense, since the majority opinion is still good law.)
Finally, ask in advance if the journals will notify you of rejection. After receiving an offer from a journal that really didn't interest me (we have several and they all use the same write-on) I e-mailed the editor of the journal I had wanted to join, to ask if I just hadn't heard yet. I got back a snotty reply that they didn't have time to notify unsuccessful candidates, cc'ed to the editor of the journal that had invited me on.
As an older student, all this pretty much convinced me that 24-year-olds shouldn't run anything, except perhaps any infantry platoon.
please post a few of your new tips soon--my law review competition starts a week from friday!
thanks!
Whoop ti do.