Top Law Schools

AKA The Official WTF Does "Contingent Upon Consistent Performance" Mean Thread.


Anyone else out there want to join what will undoubtably become a stress thread until grades come out?

I know I'm not alone.


Oh, and congrats on getting in. lol.

Don't forget to block out time in June to do the write-on competition. Some of the Ed folks last year completely dropped the ball on that.

Yea I am in the same boat. To think that one line in the acceptance letter that states "that your offer of admission is contingent upon your consistent performance" is giving me more stress than the application process itself. The problem is I found out while I am in the middle of my write-on competition.

I figure if I admitted to Chicago and there is no chance of it being rescinded than I would rather not spend the next three days of my life writing and blue booking. However, the risk adverse side of me says that it is best to write-on just on the off chance that I fall out of the top 10% and Chicago Rescinds which will leave me without law review and without a T6 school to rely on.

kevzez wrote:Yea I am in the same boat. To think that one line in the acceptance letter that states "that your offer of admission is contingent upon your consistent performance" is giving me more stress than the application process itself. The problem is I found out while I am in the middle of my write-on competition.

I figure if I admitted to Chicago and there is no chance of it being rescinded than I would rather not spend the next three days of my life writing and blue booking. However, the risk adverse side of me says that it is best to write-on just on the off chance that I fall out of the top 10% and Chicago Rescinds which will leave me without law review and without a T6 school to rely on.

Yea. I turned my write-on in yesterday. lol. I did not have the pleasure/ terror of making that decision.

EDIT: I would do your school's write-on. If anything, it'll be preparation for Chicago's in June.

Yea that is the exact same thing I have been telling myself. As much as I hate it, any additional familiarity with the blue book is probably a good thing. Motivation just got significantly harder to find in the last 24 hours.

Totally understandable. But unless you and I are the only transfers, lol, we'll need to be on top of our game because LR only takes two transfers (see the letter to transfers on the website).

At least you guys are done with exams. I had civ pro today, and let me tell you it was difficult to study last night after getting the call. Like everyone else, I'm also worried about the consistent performance thing. A couple of my exams were so straightforward and easy that I have no idea how the professor is going to distinguish A's from B+'s.

Feels great to be accepted, but it probably won't sink in until it's "official."

Are either of you two giving up good scholarships to transfer? I sure am, and my dad thinks I'm making a horrible decision.

Just to clarify: Law review only takes a max of two transfers. No transfers made the cut in the competition this year (or last year). One person last year and one person this year managed to get on via Topic Access. Keep in mind, Law Review only takes ~10 write-ons total... it is mostly grade-on. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news on that front.

Edit: And the Bluebook won't save you. You'll be introduced to the Maroonbook soon enough. Tremble.

ToTransferOrNot wrote:Just to clarify: Law review only takes a max of two transfers. No transfers made the cut in the competition this year (or last year). One person last year and one person this year managed to get on via Topic Access. Keep in mind, Law Review only takes ~10 write-ons total... it is mostly grade-on. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news on that front.

I know it's online, but can you briefly explain Top Access?

Well, I didn't do it (I got on to a secondary journal via the write-on competition,) but basically you write a Comment. You have to go through the Comment-writing procedure that all journal members go through (topic proposal, topic analysis, several outlines, drafts, final submission). If it is accepted as publishable, you get on the journal. If you do that by mid-December, you're eligible for board consideration for 3L (no one has managed to do that, AFAIK). If it isn't accepted as publishable, you are screwed and have wasted a whole lot of time unless you wrote the paper for a class BEFORE you submitted it. If you wrote the paper BEFORE you took the class, you cannot use it to get credit, because you can't get credit for anything that other students have commented on.

It's a really tough process--Law Review seems to be much harder on Topic Access people than they probably should be. I know a 3L transfer who was denied "publishability" by Law Review... and turned around and got his paper published in a freaking peer-reviewed ABA journal. A transfer student in my class got shot down on Topic Access as well--so, 2 transfers tried to get on via Topic Access, 1 succeeded, 1 didn't.

Fortunately, the two secondary journals don't have seperate write-on competitions, so if you miss out on Law Review, you still have a chance at a secondary. The secondaries are 100% write-on. I can't give much insight in to that process, because I'm a CDE for the international journal and can't be giving 'unfair' advice to people, but I can answer general questions about life on a secondary journal. I will say that it isn't nearly as impressive a resume line as law review, but it isn't meaningless either (and it seemed to mean more to employers that I wrote-on as a transfer than it did for 'natives'--it kind of proves that you can at least match punches a bit with the people at your new school,) and I certainly wouldn't turn down an offer from a secondary under the assumption that you will make Law Review via Topic Access.

Law Review makes its calls on day X, the secondaries make the calls on X+1-2, so you don't have to worry about obligating yourself to a secondary and missing out on Law Review.

As far as the secondary journals go, do students get their pick of which one to join based on who scores highest, or is there some other process involved? About how many spots are there for the five secondary journals?

Thanks for all the help TToN. I'm sure I'm not the only transfer student who's going to buy you a beer or three this fall (assuming consistent grades of course, can't forget that for a second).

First, note, there are only 2 secondary journals. The other journals you're thinking of are faculty-edited journals. The only student secondary journals are Legal Forum and the Chicago Journal of International Law.

Basically, Law Review makes their calls, then CJIL and Legal Forum make their calls. You don't get to "pick" between the secondaries--the boards on the respective journals all grade all of the submissions according to their own internal procedures. In other words, Legal Forum may give a call to someone who didn't make the cut at CJIL, and vice-versa. You indicate which journals you're interested in when you do the write-on.

If I remember correctly, CJIL takes ~19, but I could be remembering wrong. I should probably know that number cold, given that I'm one of the people doing the grading, but eh I don't know how many Legal Forum takes.

Also, stop worrying about consistent performance. In the worst case, there's nothing you can do about it now. But frankly, no one got rescinded last year. That isn't going to change. You don't suddenly just tank everything after you pull top of the class in the first go-around.

TToN -- thank you so much!


My school just released some grades. I have all but one class. And it all comes down to this one class. The universe loves to keep me hanging.

megaTTTron wrote:TToN -- thank you so much!


My school just released some grades. I have all but one class. And it all comes down to this one class. The universe loves to keep me hanging.

Heh, yeah, I had one grade that didn't come out until middle/late June. That was frusterating. Of course, then the grade came back and confirmed that UChicago managed to palm me out of HY with their devious ED program, but oh well

I'm sure it probably doesn't all come down to that class, though. Unless you fail that class (which you won't,) or you did pretty badly on the grades you've gotten back (which it doesn't seem you did,) you're going to be fine.

megaTTTron wrote:TToN -- thank you so much!


My school just released some grades. I have all but one class. And it all comes down to this one class. The universe loves to keep me hanging.

Mega: Do you mean you did poorly on your other classes and you need to ace this last one to redeem your GPA? If you really did do bad (which I doubt for some reason) I guess you'll be a good test case to see just how low we can go

TToN: Sorry for my noob questions about the journals! I know you can't dish out too much advice about the write-on, but do you recommend any books to read or other preparation methods? I'm not holding out much hope for the law review, but secondary would still be awesome. Were you the only transfer to write on to a secondary last year?

Would you guys mind sharing what school you're from? If not the specific school, t14? t30 etc? I just wanna know my chances.













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bizen boat wrote:

megaTTTron wrote:TToN -- thank you so much!


My school just released some grades. I have all but one class. And it all comes down to this one class. The universe loves to keep me hanging.

Mega: Do you mean you did poorly on your other classes and you need to ace this last one to redeem your GPA? If you really did do bad (which I doubt for some reason) I guess you'll be a good test case to see just how low we can go

TToN: Sorry for my noob questions about the journals! I know you can't dish out too much advice about the write-on, but do you recommend any books to read or other preparation methods? I'm not holding out much hope for the law review, but secondary would still be awesome. Were you the only transfer to write on to a secondary last year?

I think I was the only transfer who accepted an offer from a journal via the write-on. (I know I'm the only one on CJIL. Another transfer is on Legal Forum, but I think he did Topic Access for it, though I could be mistaken.) I think one or two people got offers from secondaries, and turned them down assuming they would be able to hammer through Topic Access. I don't know if the either of the Topic Access people (either the one who made it or the one who didn't--also, other transfers may have tried, I'm not close with all of the transfers) were the ones who turned down offers from secondaries.

I would say about half the transfers did the write-on: obviously, most of the ED people did it, while fewer of the regular decision people did (for obvious reasons).

I don't want to say anything about prep or materials that might be good to look at; sorry. I have a few ideas for things I would say, and I don't think any of them are unfair, but I don't want to risk it. Hope you understand. The one thing I will say to put you at ease--1Ls here don't use the Maroonbook in their LRW classes. Maroonbook is only for the journals--the school recognizes that the Bluebook is still it for real legal work. So, don't feel like you are at some disadvantage because you haven't seen the Maroonbook.

bizen boat wrote:

megaTTTron wrote:TToN -- thank you so much!


My school just released some grades. I have all but one class. And it all comes down to this one class. The universe loves to keep me hanging.

Mega: Do you mean you did poorly on your other classes and you need to ace this last one to redeem your GPA? If you really did do bad (which I doubt for some reason) I guess you'll be a good test case to see just how low we can go

TToN: Sorry for my noob questions about the journals! I know you can't dish out too much advice about the write-on, but do you recommend any books to read or other preparation methods? I'm not holding out much hope for the law review, but secondary would still be awesome. Were you the only transfer to write on to a secondary last year?

Haha. No I did well. My GPA is .05 less right now that is was last semester but that's missing one more big class. So we'll see what happens!!

NervousInKC wrote:Would you guys mind sharing what school you're from? If not the specific school, t14? t30 etc? I just wanna know my chances.

t40 (used to be t30 ), top 12%.

megaTTTron wrote:

NervousInKC wrote:Would you guys mind sharing what school you're from? If not the specific school, t14? t30 etc? I just wanna know my chances.

t40 (used to be t30 ), top 12%.

Congrats on getting in, by the way. Honestly, I'm surprised, but I'm sure you'll do great here. UChicago ED was the perfect move for you though, HYS probably wasn't going to happen.

yea I am from a school around rank 30 and top 1-2% after the first semester.

Also as for the consistent performance I was told that if you drop around .2 or more then they may choose to review your file. To me that suggests if I get above below a 3.8 I may be under review again. If that is true that seems incredibly stupid and it seems that ED does not help in any way. Personally, if I did have to get a 3.8 I would have taken a shot at HYS(and Michigan).

The only thing it ED seems to do is lock you out of other schools and creates a presumption in your favor, which is helpful but gives very little security.

kevzez wrote:yea I am from a school around rank 30 and top 1-2% after the first semester.

You, on the other hand, will have HArvard regret every time you see the color crimson or the letter H, but welcome anyway;)

ToTransferOrNot wrote:

kevzez wrote:yea I am from a school around rank 30 and top 1-2% after the first semester.

You, on the other hand, will have HArvard regret every time you see the color crimson or the letter H, but welcome anyway;)

I am starting to believe that this is true and this may be made worse due to the fact that it is starting to seem likely that my girlfriend of three years may be attending havard medical school. But regardless, I am happy with U Chicago and can't wait to start there .

kevzez wrote:yea I am from a school around rank 30 and top 1-2% after the first semester.

Also as for the consistent performance I was told that if you drop around .2 or more then they may choose to review your file. To me that suggests if I get above below a 3.8 I may be under review again. If that is true that seems incredibly stupid and it seems that ED does not help in any way. Personally, if I did have to get a 3.8 I would have taken a shot at HYS(and Michigan).

The only thing it ED seems to do is lock you out of other schools and creates a presumption in your favor, which is helpful but gives very little security.

Honestly I don't think the .2 number is accurate.

I'm curious though.. you would have taken Michigan over Chicago? That's.. kind of odd?

Yea I don't think .2 is accurate but I think that is the number admissions gave me to err on the side of caution.

I would have had a hard time choosing between Michigan and Chicago. The only reason this would be true is letting history play a role in my decision. I went to Michigan undergrad and could not have loved the city or the people more. I had great experiences from working in Detroit to just enjoying life living on campus. I don't know something about the people and the city just captivated me, but I think if it really came down to it I would choose Chicago, but it would be close. I'm not sure if it is a good idea to let factors like those influence my choice, but I guess I don't have to worry about that now.