Best secondary journals at HLS? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

JCL seems more organized than some other journals which helps… you know when the next edits are coming. Reg review was a huge huge mistake for me

What's wrong with Reg Review?

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

JCL seems more organized than some other journals which helps… you know when the next edits are coming. Reg review was a huge huge mistake for me

Yeah JCL is run like a law review. It’s very well organized. I’m just saying that it also is about the same work as law review too. You can decide whether that’s worth it. I think you also might need to make JCL too if enough people pick that as their number two.

[Anonymous User]

There’s a big difference between a 4.0 in English at the University of Arizona and at Princeton

I mean, maybe, in that maybe it is easier for an English major at U of A to get a 4.0 than an English major at Princeton (really not sure how you measure that, but fine, let's assume it). But it being easier to get that GPA at U of A on average doesn't mean that someone with the U of A 4.0 wouldn't also be capable of getting a 4.0 at Princeton. Lots of *really* smart people go to their local flagship school not because they couldn't have gone to an Ivy and excelled, but due to cost/class expectations/culture/lack of exposure to other options. So if the U of A 4.0 is *such* a walk in the park, not everyone who earns one is getting into HLS on the strength of their GPA alone; the U of A 4.0 people at HLS are the ones who *also* excelled on the LSAT and got glowing recommendations and wrote good essays.

Which is to say, if Harvard undergrad and other Ivies are that overrepresented on HLR, it's not because they are inherently so much smarter/better writers than the state school kids who made it to HLS.

Or maybe Ivy grads just are better and the numbers-oriented admissions process puts them at a disadvantage relative to their true merit. At my T6, the Ivy grads are way overrepresented in honors and awards.

And the year I graduated at my T6, there were about 3 Ivy grads with honors (including Cornell).

What about T20 schools. No one is laser focused on the athletic conference it’s a shorthand

Clearly HLS Law Review is, because they weren't accepting people from T20 schools.

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

JCL seems more organized than some other journals which helps… you know when the next edits are coming. Reg review was a huge huge mistake for me

Yeah JCL is run like a law review. It’s very well organized. I’m just saying that it also is about the same work as law review too. You can decide whether that’s worth it. I think you also might need to make JCL too if enough people pick that as their number two.

JCL is simply nowhere near as much work as law review. I never spent more than 2.5 hours on a first edit and my friends on law review spent multiples of that on each one. You have about the same number of edits (6 JCL, 7 LR) but expectations are way lower and the citations are less annoying. You do need to rank it second, I think.

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

JCL seems more organized than some other journals which helps… you know when the next edits are coming. Reg review was a huge huge mistake for me

What's wrong with Reg Review?

Lots of tedious requirements, ridiculous amount of group work that makes everything so much more difficult than it needs to be (having to coordinate among three people to do very short writing pieces, etc), some difficult personalities during 22-23

Also, Cary stopped giving all As in the seminar and people get Bs now

[Anonymous User]

Perhaps TLS should add a tab: Legal Employment, OCI, Clerkships, Penn

[Anonymous User]

.

[Anonymous User]

Can we talk about how rigged board selection was for Law Review at Penn this past year?

[Anonymous User]

Penn people seem pretty bitter ...

We definitely are, yeah. Something something "collegiality" my ass

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

There’s no legal writing at all. Creative essay (no legal sources/content or citations), personal/diversity statement, and bluebook test (correcting citations).

?? The Bibas article in the source pack was definitely a legal source...

[Anonymous User]

Penn people seem pretty bitter ...

We definitely are, yeah. Something something "collegiality" my ass

The problem is that Penn acts like its HYS but it’s just not and the top students are the ones most negatively affected by the bullshit policies. The Law Review “writing” competition is 2/3 speed blue booking. And many people have cheated on it over the past few years because it has been administered virtually. Then 1/3 “creative essay” and a bullshit personal statement. It says nothing at all about good legal writing.

Penn’s grading policy is idiotic too. They use traditional letter grading but for some reason don’t list a GPA which just pisses judges and employers off. The classes also have wildly different curves.
Some black letters literally give out 60% As while others give out 15%. And the honors calculations don’t account for any of this either. Not to mention the horrendous clerkship support and abysmal clinics.

Yeah I’m bitter too.

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

There’s no legal writing at all. Creative essay (no legal sources/content or citations), personal/diversity statement, and bluebook test (correcting citations).

?? The Bibas article in the source pack was definitely a legal source...

Don’t forget the Godzilla v Kong trailer

[Anonymous User]

Yup. I have to agree -- Penn is in disarray. The old dean was basically MIA so I won't hold that on the new dean. But things need to change.

OCS let so many people strike out. If you want to clerk outside of Philly, you're out of luck. Ditto for unicorn public interest jobs.

The clinics are a disaster too and the only good ones are basically glorified externships.

And that's all ignoring the Wax situation.

[Anonymous User]

I heard JBL at Penn is very toxic, I'd stay away

[Anonymous User]

Penn people seem pretty bitter ...

We definitely are, yeah. Something something "collegiality" my ass

The problem is that Penn acts like its HYS but it’s just not and the top students are the ones most negatively affected by the bullshit policies. The Law Review “writing” competition is 2/3 speed blue booking. And many people have cheated on it over the past few years because it has been administered virtually. Then 1/3 “creative essay” and a bullshit personal statement. It says nothing at all about good legal writing.

Penn’s grading policy is idiotic too. They use traditional letter grading but for some reason don’t list a GPA which just pisses judges and employers off. The classes also have wildly different curves.
Some black letters literally give out 60% As while others give out 15%. And the honors calculations don’t account for any of this either. Not to mention the horrendous clerkship support and abysmal clinics.

Yeah I’m bitter too.

[Anonymous User]

Does any school other than Penn have a writing competition with a “creative” essay based on memes and tiktoks among other sources?

Is there actually no legal writing at all at Penn?

There’s no legal writing at all. Creative essay (no legal sources/content or citations), personal/diversity statement, and bluebook test (correcting citations).

?? The Bibas article in the source pack was definitely a legal source...

Don’t forget the Godzilla v Kong trailer

Or the Arby’s diss track!

The only legal sources for ‘24 were: constitution of Bhutan, complaint in infamous case where DC lawyer sued his dry cleaner, and one law review article by professor hoffman. Unless you also count the screenshot of the Strict Scrutiny podcast feed? This is out of 40+ sources.

[Anonymous User]

Which secondary journal is best at Penn?

JCL is the highest ranked by a significant margin, but that only matters if you’re on a journal board and doing articles selection and the like. JBL is also pretty highly ranked. Those two are also generally well run. They’re also slightly more work. Do ALR, JIL, or JLPA if you want to be a journal EIC because they’re small. JLASC, JLI, and Reg Review offer non traditional experiences. Reg Review editor work seems quite tedious, and you can also just take the seminar to write for it and get published.

Do not do reg review and do not take that seminar. Tons of work for no bump. JCL is basically law review amount of work so idk if it’s worth it either.

JCL seems more organized than some other journals which helps… you know when the next edits are coming. Reg review was a huge huge mistake for me

Yeah JCL is run like a law review. It’s very well organized. I’m just saying that it also is about the same work as law review too. You can decide whether that’s worth it. I think you also might need to make JCL too if enough people pick that as their number two.

JCL is simply nowhere near as much work as law review. I never spent more than 2.5 hours on a first edit and my friends on law review spent multiples of that on each one. You have about the same number of edits (6 JCL, 7 LR) but expectations are way lower and the citations are less annoying. You do need to rank it second, I think.

Crazy to suggest JCL is anywhere near as much work as Law Review

[Anonymous User]

Penn people seem pretty bitter ...

We definitely are, yeah. Something something "collegiality" my ass

The problem is that Penn acts like its HYS but it’s just not and the top students are the ones most negatively affected by the bullshit policies. The Law Review “writing” competition is 2/3 speed blue booking. And many people have cheated on it over the past few years because it has been administered virtually. Then 1/3 “creative essay” and a bullshit personal statement. It says nothing at all about good legal writing.

Penn’s grading policy is idiotic too. They use traditional letter grading but for some reason don’t list a GPA which just pisses judges and employers off. The classes also have wildly different curves.
Some black letters literally give out 60% As while others give out 15%. And the honors calculations don’t account for any of this either. Not to mention the horrendous clerkship support and abysmal clinics.

Yeah I’m bitter too.

I wish I had gone to Georgetown, and that’s saying something considering the difference in big law %

[Anonymous User]

Penn students, please make a general Penn discussion thread?

[Anonymous User]

Penn students, please make a general Penn discussion thread?

Or, you know, just use the thread that already exists on Penn clerkship stuff instead of clogging up a thread that literally has a different law school in the title…

[Anonymous User]

I wonder if our new dean knows about these sentiments...

[Anonymous User]

I wonder if our new dean knows about these sentiments...

How would anyone in administration know? It’s not like they’re soliciting feedback. And writing competition is run by students anyways. It does seem like they are aware the clinic options are insufficient given they’re expanding, but it’s too little too late.

[Anonymous User]

Another argument no one made. They’re admitted because it’s a numbers game for US News rankings.

And you really think that there’s a significant number of people who have a 4.0 from ASU who are getting into T14 schools without having competitive LSAT scores? If it’s so easy to get a 4.0, why aren’t all the stupid people who undeservedly get them and benefit from ASU’s inability actually to evaluate student work eliminating themselves by being too stupid to succeed on the LSAT?

Yeah the kids that end up at tippy top law schools mostly do well on the LSAT but the LSAT is extremely learnable and there’s plenty of students at better colleges who will kill the LSAT with minimal effort but got 3.6s at Cornell and so won’t get into HLS

This is objectively wrong. LSAC used to publish data on this; iirc the schools with the highest LSATs were HYP and Chicago, where the average was “only” a 167. I went to one of those and know many people who did reasonably well academically (say 3.7-3.8 ) but scored in the mid-160s. Remember that the median LSAT score overall is only 150; when you’re in an elite law school environment with people who mostly found the LSAT easy, it’s easy to underestimate how hard it is for most people. Jeff Sutton bombed the LSAT.

[Anonymous User]

Another argument no one made. They’re admitted because it’s a numbers game for US News rankings.

And you really think that there’s a significant number of people who have a 4.0 from ASU who are getting into T14 schools without having competitive LSAT scores? If it’s so easy to get a 4.0, why aren’t all the stupid people who undeservedly get them and benefit from ASU’s inability actually to evaluate student work eliminating themselves by being too stupid to succeed on the LSAT?

Yeah the kids that end up at tippy top law schools mostly do well on the LSAT but the LSAT is extremely learnable and there’s plenty of students at better colleges who will kill the LSAT with minimal effort but got 3.6s at Cornell and so won’t get into HLS

This is objectively wrong. LSAC used to publish data on this; iirc the schools with the highest LSATs were HYP and Chicago, where the average was “only” a 167. I went to one of those and know many people who did reasonably well academically (say 3.7-3.8 ) but scored in the mid-160s. Remember that the median LSAT score overall is only 150; when you’re in an elite law school environment with people who mostly found the LSAT easy, it’s easy to underestimate how hard it is for most people. Jeff Sutton bombed the LSAT.

The LSAT is a very different test now than when Jeff Sutton took it. There are also other issues with Malcom Gladwell's takedown of the LSAT featuring Sutton. For starters, Sutton apparently only applied to Michigan and Ohio State, and its entirely possible Michigan's admissions staff was just incompetent or yield-protected him. We don't know for sure, hence why anecdotes aren't terribly persuasive. Regardless, the LSAT today is not a difficult exam, is easily learnable, and remains the number 1 predictor of 1L grades. There is a reason there is basically a one to one correlation with average LSAT score and the difficulty of one's college major.

[Anonymous User]

I would only recommend Penn to someone who wants to do transactional work