A student, who asked that his name not be used, writes (paragraph break added):
[I]n the week before the [transfer student] law review competition, I noticed your book in the library [Academic Legal Writing] and spent some time reading it. At my previous school, I performed horribly on the law review competition, and was looking for any advice on how to turn things around.
I changed my habits during the competition in line with the advice in your book. Most importantly, I took extra time to edit, and to do the bluebooking section anew four separate times over the course of the week.
The advice in your book, combined with some time reading the sample packets on reserve helped solidify in my mind what I needed to do to write a successful competition packet. It paid off, and I was one of three transfers to be admitted to the law review.
Naturally, I'm delighted to hear this.
I'll say.
Prof. Volokh, are you still offering autographed copies of the book?
Really, though, congratulations to this student - it sounds like he's well-prepared to handle the rigors of law review, and I hope he settles in comfortably to his new school.
I'm curious: Is this common or unique among law reviews? If it's the norm (and perhaps the book addresses this), a book on general skills for writing law school exams would be much more useful.
Insomuch as it produces better product, sure, why not? Now, it's arguable that a law review write-on product is never used again, and so it doesn't produce better usable product. But hopefully the rules used and methods learned will have sunk in a bit more, and the 1L will think, hey, if it worked to get me onto law review, I should do it in my comment as well.
For the remainder, spaces are allocated by pure writing, but everyone must still write.
The best writers and workers were undoubtedly the write-ons, and I say that because the top students didn't do crap for the publication. We were the ones that got the damn thing out on time.