moot court or secondary journal? Forum

[mollie]

Curious as to which is better to have

[Leeroy Jenkins]

DO BOTH

[djjf39]

Around what school? TX - TX, or XT?

[RudeDudewithAttitude]

DO BOTH

Agreed. A secondary journal should not be as time consuming a law review.

[CanadianWolf]

May depend upon your interests & what type of legal practice you are seeking. If you want to be a litigator, then moot court will strengthen your resume & enhance your skills; if a secondary journal focuses on a specific area of law in which you are interested, such as criminal law, then it may provide valuable training & insight for your post law school years while embellishing your resume. In short, the answer really depends on you, your interests & your career goals.
Doing both may be quite difficult due to time demands & potential conflicts; better to do one really well than to do a mediocre job at both, in my opinion.

[bradley]

X

[CanadianWolf]

If you do not make the editorial board of a secondary journal & have not been published, then that activity might be regarded by potential employers simply as a light weight resume booster about which you were not serious & suggests that you may have had too much time on your hands while in law school. Typically, in order to be published or to become an editor, a substantial time committment is required. Moot Court usually demands significant time committments. While doing both is possible, doing both well may be quite demanding & might interfere with your grades. Nevertheless, it depends upon the individual & upon the particular law school as to whether or not doing both is a good option.

[ggocat]

Curious as to which is better to have

Better for what?

Employment generally? Moot court.
Employment in a DA's office? Moot court.
Employment as a law clerk? Journal.
Employment in a small firm? Moot court.
Employment in academia? Journal.
Employment not as a lawyer? Journal (kinda).
Experience useful for litigation? Moot court.
Experience useful for transactional work? Journal (kinda).

There is no universal answer.

[270910]

Curious as to which is better to have

Better for what?

Employment generally? Moot court.
Employment in a DA's office? Moot court.
Employment as a law clerk? Journal.
Employment in a small firm? Moot court.
Employment in academia? Journal.
Employment not as a lawyer? Journal (kinda).
Experience useful for litigation? Moot court.
Experience useful for transactional work? Journal (kinda).

There is no universal answer.

Neither moot court nor a secondary journal is more than passingly helpful for any of those endeavors. They're soft factors. Do what you want and try not to appear lazy. Keep in mind that journal work is important to judges. Your distinctions are way too fine.

[ggocat]

Curious as to which is better to have

Better for what?

Employment generally? Moot court.
Employment in a DA's office? Moot court.
Employment as a law clerk? Journal.
Employment in a small firm? Moot court.
Employment in academia? Journal.
Employment not as a lawyer? Journal (kinda).
Experience useful for litigation? Moot court.
Experience useful for transactional work? Journal (kinda).

There is no universal answer.

Neither moot court nor a secondary journal is more than passingly helpful for any of those endeavors. They're soft factors. Do what you want and try not to appear lazy. Keep in mind that journal work is important to judges. Your distinctions are way too fine.

Passingly helpful for obtaining employment, I agree. But for actual "usefulness," each activity will help develop different skills. OP should work on developing skills that are useful for his/her professional goal. (This is, I suppose, similar to "Do what you want.")

I don't think the distinctions are too defined. As you said, a journal is more important to judges. And moot court will look better for small litigation firms or DA/PD work (primarily because moot court provides the participant with different skills compared to journal membership). Distinctions can be made.

[BunkMoreland]

i'm doing law review, moot court, AND a clinic this sem. Should be fun. lol.

[ahshav]

At some schools it's one or the other - they don't allow you to do both.

[Black-Blue]

Employment generally? Moot court.
Employment in a DA's office? Moot court.
Employment as a law clerk? Journal.
Employment in a small firm? Moot court.
Employment in academia? Journal.
Employment not as a lawyer? Journal (kinda).
Experience useful for litigation? Moot court.
Experience useful for transactional work? Journal (kinda).

CR. Although neither activity is really decisive, OP's question was just about what was better, and I think this addresses it pretty well.

Perhaps a simple way to restate the above is to group everything into two main categories

Non-Courtroom-intensive employment -> Secondary journal
- Bigger firms; transactional work; non-legal (nobody outside of law knows what moot court is); academia; judicial clerk/intern; practice areas with fewer but bigger clients; areas such as corporate, tax or regulatory law; if your practice is related to the specific topic of the journal

Courtroom-intensive employment -> Moot Court
- Smaller firms; litigation work; prosecution; public defender; practice areas with small-size clients; practice areas like criminal law, family law, personal injury, etc.

[A'nold]

I really want to do moot court and am actually kind of relieved that I just missed the grade-on cutoff at my school so I wasn't obligated to take the "better of the two." This is why I did not try to write on.

Anyway: is a journal required even for lower level state clerkships? That would suck as I'd rather just stick to moot court.

[ggocat]

Anyway: is a journal required even for lower level state clerkships? That would suck as I'd rather just stick to moot court.

I can think of eight non-supreme state court law clerks. Two of them did not have a journal; both were trial level clerkships.

I would recommend trying to get on a journal as a 3L if possible or writing some articles for publication or writing competitions (take a seminar course or two; anything where you can "double up" school work and writing work). User Mattheis talks about how he had numerous articles published in other schools' journals while he was a student. So I that might help.

Rocking moot court and getting a best brief award would help.

[IzziesGal]

DO BOTH

+1.

[mollie]

Thanks guys. I am scared that doing both might be a bit much in terms of workload (going to do an externship during the semester). I suppose I could, but that would mean I would not be doing my best work in either the moot court or journal. I was thinking maybe I would try hard to get some kind of editor position on the journal--not sure if it is worth it, tho.