Law Review Derailment Thread Forum

[Anonymous User]

My two cents (not that anyone should care) is that Law Review is a somewhat poor proxy for writing ability. Even if it is a good proxy for writing ability during write-on, the clerkship won't start for another few years. I know a ton of students who did not come from *prestigious* backgrounds and learned to write while working during their summers and writing papers during 2L/3L. Whether or not someone made the Law Review is really a lagging indicator. I think calling the professors who supervised the students papers 2L/3L would be much more useful to determine whether the student is a good writer.

[Anonymous User]

The value of extremely pedantic bluebooking is very overrated in legal practice, speaking from experience: in biglaw, associates are generally not doing the citations in a brief (that is what legal assistants are for) and literally no one more than five years out of law school can tell the difference between "passable" and "perfect" bluebooking. It just doesn't matter. Even Supreme Court opinions have bluebooking errors.

And extremely pedantic bluebooking is most of what working on a law review is. 2Ls and 3Ls are not equipped to seriously edit and comment on a law professor's dense legal article, so the focus is mostly on burning dozens of hours ensuring that citations are perfect because law students don't want to go near the text itself. Of course this state of affairs is unlike other academic disciplines, in which professors are accepting/rejecting articles and the articles are submitted blind. Law reviews pick articles based on the prestige of a professor a lot of the time.

[Anonymous User]

Law Review is a powerful signal that someone knows how to BlueBook, and also knows English grammar.

Those are extremely important skills that not all candidates with good grades offer.

Okay, but how is it a better signal of those things than, say, a writing sample? There are plenty of journal (and yes, even LR) staffers who do okay work that then gets fixed by other staffers/editors.

Also how is it a better signal than secondary journal, or being published, or getting a good grade in an advanced writing course.

Some of this is going to depend. At my school, LR was definitely a better signal than being on a secondary journal, b/c LR got the first pick of applications and no one got rejected from all secondary journals. Now, I'm not claiming LR makes you a better writer, just saying that it can select for people who are already good writers, and the secondary journals were stuck with people who were worse writers (to the extent write-on accurately represents writing ability). And at least one of the secondary journals at my school was really bad and got very few submissions, so members weren't really learning whatever it is that LR can teach you because they had almost nothing to do. I agree with the person above that people's writing can improve (but also, some judges hire really early so you won't have a lot of opportunity to improve much from the time you do write-on).

I wouldn't say that LR is a *better* signal than being published somewhere else, but honestly, in some contexts it's easier to get on LR than to get published. Getting a good grade in an advanced writing course is nice, but subjective (and in my school, still graded on a curve), so better than nothing, but not a super useful signal for writing ability.

Frankly you can find fault with any of these measures, if you try really hard (LR considers diversity/AA; secondary journals are less selective; we've all read really crappy publications; the advanced writing prof could be susceptible to brown-nosing or teach class weird; you can't guarantee that an applicant didn't get help with their writing sample). Different people will weight each of these differently and it will depend on the whole applicant.

But I think too the value depends in part on whether you see value in it. People who loathed law review with all their being baffle me, because like, the work is really not that hard (but then, my law review's board was normal about it, too). But if you think the whole thing is incredibly pointless and all scholarship is bullshit then yeah, you're not going to enjoy it. I don't think legal academic scholarship is going to save the world (and I think a lot of it is methodologically terrible b/c no one teaches lawyers how to do research), but I think plenty of it is interesting and insightful, and I like writing and editing stuff. If you're going to loathe it that much, don't even bother - it's not a magic wand that's going to open all the doors and resenting it years later will make any advantage not worth it.

[Anonymous User]

But I think too the value depends in part on whether you see value in it. People who loathed law review with all their being baffle me, because like, the work is really not that hard (but then, my law review's board was normal about it, too).

Speak for yourself, being an articles editor that also had to review submissions killed my soul.

[Poldy]

I enjoyed LR. Work wasn't that hard, I learned a lot, and made several good friends. Maybe it is full of assholes at other schools, but I'd do it over again even though I'm sure it made no difference for my job.

[Anonymous User]

Anon because someone dedicated enough could probably figure out my school from this.

I'm surprised law review was ever considered useful, even back in the old days when it meant the person had good grades and/or was a good writer. What good are "signals" about an applicant's grades or writing ability when you have their transcript and writing sample right in front of you? I get that reading writing samples is a pain, but if you care enough about writing ability to consider it in hiring decisions, you really ought to read the sample you asked for rather than making assumptions based on awards or journal memberships.

Current trends, though, have made law review even more useless. My T14 had enough secondary journals that anyone who wanted to be on a journal was effectively guaranteed to get one. Some people were on more than one. From what I can tell, that's the norm now. Also from what I can tell, they all did all the same crap - submission review, cite checks, etc. - that goes along with publishing. If law review cite checks teach people how to bluebook, then so do cite checks for the Journal of Bird Law.

Another trend is the shift away from performance-based selection. At my T14, maybe 5-10 people were selected solely based on grades and/or a writing sample. It changed every year while I was there, but the number only ever got smaller. For the overwhelming majority, the contents of a mandatory "diversity statement" played a role. Last I heard, half of them were selected *solely* based on the contents of that statement (but it's probably changed again since then). In theory, it's supposed to be about overcoming disadvantages and adding a diversity of viewpoints, so the best case outcome is that someone gets on based on identity or socioeconomic factors rather than performance. Maybe that's fair, maybe it isn't. But in practice, it's impossible to meaningfully discuss how your life experiences have shaped your views and character while remaining unidentifiable to your fellow students, so popularity and politicking also play a large role. At my school, both the FedSoc and ACS contingents frequently accused each other of manipulating the system to get as many of their friends and ideological allies as possible onto law review. They were both right.

So if an employer is considering two candidates with similarly good-but-not-amazing grades and similarly meh writing samples, and one is on law review, the difference is probably that the one on law review said all of the right things in their diversity statement. That doesn't mean they're a bad candidate, of course, but it doesn't mean they're better than the other one in any way that's relevant to an employer. If law review ever signaled anything worth caring about, that stopped being true a long time ago.

[Anonymous User]

Law review is a strong signal of attention to detail and work ethic. To me, those are some of those most important characteristics for a junior attorney, and they're some of the most difficult to suss out in other ways: school quality, class rank, etc., don't tell you all that much about how reliable a junior associate (or law clerk) is going to be at doing a mostly thankless task carefully.

In my experience, law review is -- and should be -- an important hiring consideration for most junior-level positions. Given the diminished ability to 'grade on' to most law reviews, it signals something different from grades, which makes it more independently valuable: we can figure out your class standing in other ways. That said, I don't think law review is all that helpful for getting a spot in legal academia, unless you're an EIC or maybe on the articles committee.

Is it? Exactly how hard-working and attentive to detail does one need to be to avoid getting kicked off? At my T14, at least, the answer was "not very." There were more than enough type A overachievers to pick up the slack, which was fortunate, because there was often a lot of slack to be picked up. Willingness to work hard has never been a factor in law review selection, and to the extent hard work affects grades, it's now even less of a factor than it was in the past. So I don't think it logically follows that those not on law review are, on average, less willing or able to work hard at a thankless task that they perceive as useless.

[Anonymous User]

But I think too the value depends in part on whether you see value in it. People who loathed law review with all their being baffle me, because like, the work is really not that hard (but then, my law review's board was normal about it, too).

Speak for yourself, being an articles editor that also had to review submissions killed my soul.

I mean, I thought I made it pretty clear that I was speaking for myself?

(But you’re mostly making my point; the articles editors I worked with were legal nerds who liked reading articles, even if a lot were shitty. It’s not like you have to spend a lot of time on a shitty article, once you know it’s shitty you just stop reading. I’m not saying *you* also have to enjoy reading LR articles - I get that most people don’t - just that if you hate reading law review articles but sign up to be an articles editor, of course you’re not going to get anything out of it and will hate it and I don’t have *that* much sympathy for you.)

[Anonymous User]

But I think too the value depends in part on whether you see value in it. People who loathed law review with all their being baffle me, because like, the work is really not that hard (but then, my law review's board was normal about it, too).

Speak for yourself, being an articles editor that also had to review submissions killed my soul.

I mean, I thought I made it pretty clear that I was speaking for myself?

(But you’re mostly making my point; the articles editors I worked with were legal nerds who liked reading articles, even if a lot were shitty. It’s not like you have to spend a lot of time on a shitty article, once you know it’s shitty you just stop reading. I’m not saying *you* also have to enjoy reading LR articles - I get that most people don’t - just that if you hate reading law review articles but sign up to be an articles editor, of course you’re not going to get anything out of it and will hate it and I don’t have *that* much sympathy for you.)

OP here - Our law review couldn't find enough people who wanted to be on articles and had to beg some of us to join, to my everlasting detriment. A large amount of the pain was not reading the articles, it was corresponding with extremely rude authors, constantly getting expedited submission requests, etc.

[Anonymous User]

That’s fair enough. There’s nothing you can really do about expedited review requests, that’s just how the system works, but rude authors are super fucking annoying.

[Anonymous User]

New poster in this thread with a similar background to OP (feeder clerk, etc.). Strongly agree that law review is not valuable for T6 applicants. With the new selection criteria, membership is no longer a real signal, and whatever small bump it still gives is usually outweighed by other activities applicants could do with an extra 10+ hours a week not spent bluebooking. The students with the best grades are increasingly not even trying to write on, and I see that trend continuing.

Person that originally derailed the prior thread. As I said there, the “changing selection criteria” thing is bullshit, though it’s become CW among right-of-center types. Most schools have added a small AA component but otherwise kept the traditional criteria in place. If you cared about membership before, there’s no reason not to care about it now. I think LR is largely useless, and doesn’t signal anything (esp without board, esp at write-on-dominated schools where you see 2.7s on LR), but selection criteria aren’t the reason why.

Also fwiw Articles was the most selective group on my LR because it had the academia gunners. It also seemed like one of the least BS LR jobs. But they worked really, really hard during “dump.”

*I can’t speak to T14 anon above’s specific journal, and it’s possible some have gone way off the rails, but the T6 all have very traditional processes.

[Anonymous User]

New poster in this thread with a similar background to OP (feeder clerk, etc.). Strongly agree that law review is not valuable for T6 applicants. With the new selection criteria, membership is no longer a real signal, and whatever small bump it still gives is usually outweighed by other activities applicants could do with an extra 10+ hours a week not spent bluebooking. The students with the best grades are increasingly not even trying to write on, and I see that trend continuing.

Person that originally derailed the prior thread. As I said there, the “changing selection criteria” thing is bullshit, though it’s become CW among right-of-center types. Most schools have added a small AA component but otherwise kept the traditional criteria in place. If you cared about membership before, there’s no reason not to care about it now. I think LR is largely useless, and doesn’t signal anything (esp without board, esp at write-on-dominated schools where you see 2.7s on LR), but selection criteria aren’t the reason why.

Also fwiw Articles was the most selective group on my LR because it had the academia gunners. It also seemed like one of the least BS LR jobs. But they worked really, really hard during “dump.”

*I can’t speak to T14 anon above’s specific journal, and it’s possible some have gone way off the rails, but the T6 all have very traditional processes.

The reason why you're wrong is that plenty of us, through actual firsthand experience on both sides of the hiring process, have SEEN Law Review lose its signaling effect as a credential relative to even the recent past. That coincides perfectly with the changing selection criteria. It's not some bizarre conspiracy theory among "right-of-center types".

There's reason to credit the relationship as causal rather than correlative, though obviously there's not gonna be some deductive proof of it. And you don't have to bring in the politics to see that. Also, for some top schools (mine was H/Y/S, LR membership is not big to begin with, so the AA component makes a material difference, it's not "small."

[Anonymous User]

New poster in this thread with a similar background to OP (feeder clerk, etc.). Strongly agree that law review is not valuable for T6 applicants. With the new selection criteria, membership is no longer a real signal, and whatever small bump it still gives is usually outweighed by other activities applicants could do with an extra 10+ hours a week not spent bluebooking. The students with the best grades are increasingly not even trying to write on, and I see that trend continuing.

Person that originally derailed the prior thread. As I said there, the “changing selection criteria” thing is bullshit, though it’s become CW among right-of-center types. Most schools have added a small AA component but otherwise kept the traditional criteria in place. If you cared about membership before, there’s no reason not to care about it now. I think LR is largely useless, and doesn’t signal anything (esp without board, esp at write-on-dominated schools where you see 2.7s on LR), but selection criteria aren’t the reason why.

Also fwiw Articles was the most selective group on my LR because it had the academia gunners. It also seemed like one of the least BS LR jobs. But they worked really, really hard during “dump.”

*I can’t speak to T14 anon above’s specific journal, and it’s possible some have gone way off the rails, but the T6 all have very traditional processes.

I don't think the entire conservative critique of the process has to do with AA. Law Review used to be a reliable signal for great grades when a judge didn't have intimate knowledge of the school's grading system. However, now that the T6 don't do "grade on," that signaling value is significantly reduced. In addition, "wholistic" doesn't just mean AA. It means whatever piques the interest of the reviewers, which also adds a bit of randomness to the process. Adding to that is the fact that the write-on is not a great proxy for writing ability years down the line. Overall, I think most conservative judges view it as a small plus, but not anything near a necessary condition.

[Anonymous User]

I don't think the entire conservative critique of the process has to do with AA. Law Review used to be a reliable signal for great grades when a judge didn't have intimate knowledge of the school's grading system. However, now that the T6 don't do "grade on," that signaling value is significantly reduced. In addition, "wholistic" doesn't just mean AA. It means whatever piques the interest of the reviewers, which also adds a bit of randomness to the process. Adding to that is the fact that the write-on is not a great proxy for writing ability years down the line. Overall, I think most conservative judges view it as a small plus, but not anything near a necessary condition.

Also, the fact that many LRs (including top ones) have what amounts to a black-box admissions process given that "holistic" analysis is usually undefined (plus an even more black-box process for selecting committees/boards/senior membership) means that the entire process, whether membership or board membership, is more questionable in what it signals.

[Anonymous User]

Law review is a strong signal of attention to detail and work ethic. To me, those are some of those most important characteristics for a junior attorney, and they're some of the most difficult to suss out in other ways: school quality, class rank, etc., don't tell you all that much about how reliable a junior associate (or law clerk) is going to be at doing a mostly thankless task carefully.

In my experience, law review is -- and should be -- an important hiring consideration for most junior-level positions. Given the diminished ability to 'grade on' to most law reviews, it signals something different from grades, which makes it more independently valuable: we can figure out your class standing in other ways. That said, I don't think law review is all that helpful for getting a spot in legal academia, unless you're an EIC or maybe on the articles committee.

Is it? Exactly how hard-working and attentive to detail does one need to be to avoid getting kicked off? At my T14, at least, the answer was "not very." There were more than enough type A overachievers to pick up the slack, which was fortunate, because there was often a lot of slack to be picked up. Willingness to work hard has never been a factor in law review selection, and to the extent hard work affects grades, it's now even less of a factor than it was in the past. So I don't think it logically follows that those not on law review are, on average, less willing or able to work hard at a thankless task that they perceive as useless.

I wrote the post to which you were responding. At my law school (HYS), the law review selection process was exclusively a test that measured hard work and attention to detail. There are a lot of really hard working and detail-oriented students at my school, and I still think that this process -- both because of self selection and the test itself -- had significant value in sussing out hard working and detail-oriented students.

Also, the experience of law review was largely 18 months of attention to detail and hard work being drilled into us. Were there some editors who kicked back and free loaded? Of course. But I would bet a great deal of money that almost all of us who went through that process came out the other end much more careful, even when it came to pretty menial and silly-seeming tasks. Part of the reason why a lot of people dislike law review is that this is a fairly unpleasant process. It's the same reason why a lot of junior associates really dislike the work of being a junior associate: there's a lot of thankless work requiring a huge amount of attention to detail, where a single small mistake could actually derail something important.

Now I don't think that 100% of the best students at my school were on law review, nor do I think that every law review editor was harder working or had more attention to detail than everyone not on law review. Far from it. The way signals work, though, is that they give you useful information; they're a short hand for predicting how a candidate will do when you have incomplete information. I don't think law review is anywhere close to a perfect signal for hard work or attention to detail. Still, put me in the camp of people who think that it's nevertheless highly useful for ascertaining this incredibly important trait.

That's particularly true because we -- those hiring -- don't have anything else that gets at this super well. There are loads of students at top law schools who do really well with their grades because they're brilliant and/or because it's easy to motivate yourself with so much personally at stake (and grades generally track substantive mastery, which for most of those who excel is fun). The problem is, these people don't all make great junior associates. A lot of doing well in law, especially early career, is being able to work incredibly hard and incredibly carefully even when it's not that personally rewarding or interesting to do so. Grades and writing sample are pretty good signals of the reasonable potential for a lawyer. Law review is a better signal for the reasonable floor. When I hire, I don't just want someone who is capable of brilliance and eloquence; I want someone who is reliable and careful. Law review is useful -- maybe the most useful signal we have -- for assessing that latter set of characteristics.

[Anonymous User]

Law review is a strong signal of attention to detail and work ethic. To me, those are some of those most important characteristics for a junior attorney, and they're some of the most difficult to suss out in other ways: school quality, class rank, etc., don't tell you all that much about how reliable a junior associate (or law clerk) is going to be at doing a mostly thankless task carefully.

In my experience, law review is -- and should be -- an important hiring consideration for most junior-level positions. Given the diminished ability to 'grade on' to most law reviews, it signals something different from grades, which makes it more independently valuable: we can figure out your class standing in other ways. That said, I don't think law review is all that helpful for getting a spot in legal academia, unless you're an EIC or maybe on the articles committee.

Is it? Exactly how hard-working and attentive to detail does one need to be to avoid getting kicked off? At my T14, at least, the answer was "not very." There were more than enough type A overachievers to pick up the slack, which was fortunate, because there was often a lot of slack to be picked up. Willingness to work hard has never been a factor in law review selection, and to the extent hard work affects grades, it's now even less of a factor than it was in the past. So I don't think it logically follows that those not on law review are, on average, less willing or able to work hard at a thankless task that they perceive as useless.

I wrote the post to which you were responding. At my law school (HYS), the law review selection process was exclusively a test that measured hard work and attention to detail. There are a lot of really hard working and detail-oriented students at my school, and I still think that this process -- both because of self selection and the test itself -- had significant value in sussing out hard working and detail-oriented students.

Also, the experience of law review was largely 18 months of attention to detail and hard work being drilled into us. Were there some editors who kicked back and free loaded? Of course. But I would bet a great deal of money that almost all of us who went through that process came out the other end much more careful, even when it came to pretty menial and silly-seeming tasks. Part of the reason why a lot of people dislike law review is that this is a fairly unpleasant process. It's the same reason why a lot of junior associates really dislike the work of being a junior associate: there's a lot of thankless work requiring a huge amount of attention to detail, where a single small mistake could actually derail something important.

Now I don't think that 100% of the best students at my school were on law review, nor do I think that every law review editor was harder working or had more attention to detail than everyone not on law review. Far from it. The way signals work, though, is that they give you useful information; they're a short hand for predicting how a candidate will do when you have incomplete information. I don't think law review is anywhere close to a perfect signal for hard work or attention to detail. Still, put me in the camp of people who think that it's nevertheless highly useful for ascertaining this incredibly important trait.

That's particularly true because we -- those hiring -- don't have anything else that gets at this super well. There are loads of students at top law schools who do really well with their grades because they're brilliant and/or because it's easy to motivate yourself with so much personally at stake (and grades generally track substantive mastery, which for most of those who excel is fun). The problem is, these people don't all make great junior associates. A lot of doing well in law, especially early career, is being able to work incredibly hard and incredibly carefully even when it's not that personally rewarding or interesting to do so. Grades and writing sample are pretty good signals of the reasonable potential for a lawyer. Law review is a better signal for the reasonable floor. When I hire, I don't just want someone who is capable of brilliance and eloquence; I want someone who is reliable and careful. Law review is useful -- maybe the most useful signal we have -- for assessing that latter set of characteristics.

Feeder clerk from earlier in the thread who opted out of law review.

I will actually kind of agree with the bolded. I did super well in law school because I enjoyed the material and knew it was important to get great grades. But I don't think I've been as successful a litigation associate as other friends of mine who didn't do that well in law school but are just grinders. These are people who grind even at the most mind numbing tasks and similarly did that to prepare/get on to law review. I envy them.

[Anonymous User]

A surprisingly sizable chunk of people on Harvard Law Review didn't even graduate cum laude (top 40%). On the other hand, plenty of people who graduated magna (top 10%) weren't on law review.

[Anonymous User]

If the complaint is that LR used to be just a marker for grades and now it isn't, doesn't that mean that LR as such never actually mattered?

[existentialcrisis]

I find the hardworking and attention to detail thing to be so dumb.

Law Review identifies people who are willing to spend lots of time working on tedious tasks FOR FREE.

Like it’s a whole different ball game when it’s your job that you get paid for and I don’t think failing to sign up for a striving exercise with little to no tangible benefit for your career (at least at a t14) says anything about someone’s work ethic or attention to detail or lack thereof.

[Anonymous User]

If I'm a 1L at HYS and leaning corporate, I assume there is absolutely no reason to do the write-on? Culturally, there's definitely a sense that you should go for that extra gold star but I don't see how it's beneficial if I'm interested in corporate work.

[Anonymous User]

I find the hardworking and attention to detail thing to be so dumb.

Law Review identifies people who are willing to spend lots of time working on tedious tasks FOR FREE.

You think that’s not a type of person that an employer wants to hire? Like it doesn’t mean other people can’t also be good employees, but it’s probably a pretty good sign of someone you can work to death.

[existentialcrisis]

I find the hardworking and attention to detail thing to be so dumb.

Law Review identifies people who are willing to spend lots of time working on tedious tasks FOR FREE.

You think that’s not a type of person that an employer wants to hire? Like it doesn’t mean other people can’t also be good employees, but it’s probably a pretty good sign of someone you can work to death.

Idk I think it’s more a lesson about law students feeling the need to collect every gold star possible.

Also I really don’t think most firms, to the extent they value LR at all, look at it this way.

[Anonymous User]

Vast majority of students do not know what LR entails and are not intentionally signing up for extra work. They know it's a status symbol they're conditioned to want, and it's just before OCI and they are nervous. So they do write on. I'm not sure as an employer you can really assume that those selected are more hard working than those not.

[Anonymous User]

If I'm a 1L at HYS and leaning corporate, I assume there is absolutely no reason to do the write-on? Culturally, there's definitely a sense that you should go for that extra gold star but I don't see how it's beneficial if I'm interested in corporate work.

None whatsoever unless you want to clerk or go into academia.

[Anonymous User]

Vast majority of students do not know what LR entails and are not intentionally signing up for extra work. They know it's a status symbol they're conditioned to want, and it's just before OCI and they are nervous. So they do write on. I'm not sure as an employer you can really assume that those selected are more hard working than those not.

Sure, but the ones who get selected are the ones more likely to put the work in to get a good outcome. Write-on is usually right after exams and I know plenty of people who did it but didn’t exactly knock themselves out over it (because they don’t enjoy it and they were tired after exams and I’m not knocking that). Of course if it’s pure grade-on, your point makes more sense.

Also LR is turning into a Rorschach test. The person who thinks it’s a sign of hard work etc will bring that to hiring, the person who thinks it’s a scam will bring that to hiring. There isn’t an objective reality, however strongly people feel on either side.

(I do think some of the hate comes from corporate folk thinking they have to do LR, because it’s a brass ring, and *really* hating it. I agree that someone going into corporate shouldn’t bother.)