Law Review Derailment Thread Forum

[Anonymous User]

AE is much closer to the work you do as an academic - editing academic writing to create a final article. It gives you information about how the publication process works for the author. It also involves reviewing a ton of articles so you get good exposure to what law review publications look like and to some extent the current trends in scholarship.

(At least, that’s what AEs did at my school and how it would relate to academia. The EIC was obviously involved in that process, but their job was more big picture management of everything, which is great experience for most people but not as directly applicable to academia.)

This. AEs also have the most direct contact with authors (usually professors at other schools).

AE is incredibly helpful experience for academia because it exposes you to a ton of legal research and gives you a good window into what's good and what's not (and maybe more importantly, what the AE committee thinks is good and what's not). I still think that EIC is a significantly more helpful credential, but neither really matters unless you're EIC of HLR or YLJ or SLS.

What makes you say? In addition to not making experiential sense, this would be inconsistent with the revealed preferences of aspiring academics. In recent years, YLJ and SLR have struggled to find candidates interested in running for EIC, and HLR has had its own controversies. The most accomplished students rarely run for EIC these days.

[Anonymous User]

I was on law review at my law school (HYS). It was a colossal waste of time, and I wish I had never done it. Also, legal "academia" is a complete joke. Coming from a STEM background, I can't believe what passes as "research." Law review was probably the worst thing I ever did in law school...and that's saying a lot.

yeah the fact that it's students reviewing articles is just pure clownery. i pretty much readily admit this to any friend who asks about my job. even if it were other professors reviewing, there would still be problems but that just makes it worse. i absolutely love writing academic articles, but im not surprised and think it's probably a good thing even that 99% of people who go to law school would hate it

Nah, it's not because it's students. I was in a seminar that was a series of presentations of papers by profs, with a bunch of guest profs sitting in. Some of these papers were really bad but the profs never uttered a word of criticism, "wow how interesting, what a novel idea". Students would ask more substantive questions and point out flaws. It's just not a very academically rigorous field.

The seminar thing is law school/seminar-dependent, and also isn't unique to law. Chicago's can be brutal, a culture that I assumed rubbed off from the econ department's seminars, which are infamous.

Also, if you're talking about a seminar with many profs presenting papers, that's unusual and probably part of why it was shallow. Visiting work in progress talks are more typically one paper for an hour or so.

The seminar had a different visiting prof each week, each presented for an hour then took questions

[Anonymous User]

I was on law review at my law school (HYS). It was a colossal waste of time, and I wish I had never done it. Also, legal "academia" is a complete joke. Coming from a STEM background, I can't believe what passes as "research." Law review was probably the worst thing I ever did in law school...and that's saying a lot.

yeah the fact that it's students reviewing articles is just pure clownery. i pretty much readily admit this to any friend who asks about my job. even if it were other professors reviewing, there would still be problems but that just makes it worse. i absolutely love writing academic articles, but im not surprised and think it's probably a good thing even that 99% of people who go to law school would hate it

Nah, it's not because it's students. I was in a seminar that was a series of presentations of papers by profs, with a bunch of guest profs sitting in. Some of these papers were really bad but the profs never uttered a word of criticism, "wow how interesting, what a novel idea". Students would ask more substantive questions and point out flaws. It's just not a very academically rigorous field.

The seminar thing is law school/seminar-dependent, and also isn't unique to law. Chicago's can be brutal, a culture that I assumed rubbed off from the econ department's seminars, which are infamous.

Also, if you're talking about a seminar with many profs presenting papers, that's unusual and probably part of why it was shallow. Visiting work in progress talks are more typically one paper for an hour or so.

The seminar had a different visiting prof each week, each presented for an hour then took questions

I’d imagine a prof would be unlikely to shred another prof in a student seminar (or seminar with students, not sure exactly the set up you mean), especially when they’d invited the prof in question. Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have any criticism at all, just that that wasn’t the setting for it (both out of a desire to be polite and also to give students the opportunity to critique).

[Anonymous User]

AE is much closer to the work you do as an academic - editing academic writing to create a final article. It gives you information about how the publication process works for the author. It also involves reviewing a ton of articles so you get good exposure to what law review publications look like and to some extent the current trends in scholarship.

(At least, that’s what AEs did at my school and how it would relate to academia. The EIC was obviously involved in that process, but their job was more big picture management of everything, which is great experience for most people but not as directly applicable to academia.)

This. AEs also have the most direct contact with authors (usually professors at other schools).

AE is incredibly helpful experience for academia because it exposes you to a ton of legal research and gives you a good window into what's good and what's not (and maybe more importantly, what the AE committee thinks is good and what's not). I still think that EIC is a significantly more helpful credential, but neither really matters unless you're EIC of HLR or YLJ or SLS.

What makes you say? In addition to not making experiential sense, this would be inconsistent with the revealed preferences of aspiring academics. In recent years, YLJ and SLR have struggled to find candidates interested in running for EIC, and HLR has had its own controversies. The most accomplished students rarely run for EIC these days.

Actual hiring committee experience for tenure-track non-clinical positions. (I've also seen this play out while on the faculty of a different school.) This might be one -- of many -- examples of how priorities on the hiring side don't perfectly match the realities on the ground.

I’d imagine a prof would be unlikely to shred another prof in a student seminar (or seminar with students, not sure exactly the set up you mean), especially when they’d invited the prof in question. Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have any criticism at all, just that that wasn’t the setting for it (both out of a desire to be polite and also to give students the opportunity to critique).

100% this. At most law schools, serious criticism of colleagues' papers is generally reserved for more private settings, typically 1:1 discussions. Even at schools with a more publicly critical culture, it's really difficult for me to imagine a professor seriously criticizing her colleague's work in front of students. That's particularly true if we're talking about colleagues from other schools who are presenting at some sort of joint faculty-student seminar as invited speakers.

Also, faculty present different kinds of work in different settings. A lot of professors would see this as an opportunity to talk about projects they might not otherwise workshop, or exceedingly early-stage projects. The presenters in these circumstances are often doing their friends a favor, presenting on something mid-semester even when they're mostly between projects. Nobody's going to outright say that to students, and faculty are pretty good at polishing something up so that it doesn't look totally half baked, but that reality significantly shapes both the quality of these presentations and the faculty "criticism" that follows.