NYT/Justice Roberts: Law Review is stupid pointless bullshit Forum

[thesealocust]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/la ... share&_r=0

This is breaking news to almost nobody, but if you're new to law school there's not enough time to realize the absurdity of the system before you're thrust into its inner workings.

Question everything / trust no one / etc.

(not to say it can't be a good - or outright necessary - credential, even while being stupid pointless bullshit. Quantum superposition, etc.)

[worldtraveler]

Best decision I made in law school was not doing a journal.

[soj]

far be it from me to deny that student editors are incompetent, but it doesn't sit well with me when tenured law professors, who have the power but not the talent or motivation to change the system, call us incompetent. nearly all law journal submissions are poorly written, shoddily researched, borderline intellectually dishonest, and not that fucking interesting or impactful. i used to think the low quality was due to being spoiled by student editors who do all the work, but i'm starting to think law professors are generally incapable of scholarship in any setting.

[Dogg]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/la ... share&_r=0

This is breaking news to almost nobody, but if you're new to law school there's not enough time to realize the absurdity of the system before you're thrust into its inner workings.

Question everything / trust no one / etc.

(not to say it can't be a good - or outright necessary - credential, even while being stupid pointless bullshit. Quantum superposition, etc.)

funny read

part-time amateurs who know little about the law or about editing prose

Law reviews are such a target-rich environment for ridicule that it is barely sporting to make fun of them.

[Gorki]

far be it from me to deny that student editors are incompetent, but it doesn't sit well with me when tenured law professors, who have the power but not the talent or motivation to change the system, call us incompetent. nearly all law journal submissions are poorly written, shoddily researched, borderline intellectually dishonest, and not that fucking interesting or impactful. i used to think the low quality was due to being spoiled by student editors who do all the work, but i'm starting to think law professors are generally incapable of scholarship in any setting.

Yeah. LR/journal is just a mindless hazing ritual, yet unless this article make some profound impact on practicing attys, they will all still require a journal on the resume before they bother interviewing 90% of their candidates.

[A. Nony Mouse]

far be it from me to deny that student editors are incompetent, but it doesn't sit well with me when tenured law professors, who have the power but not the talent or motivation to change the system, call us incompetent. nearly all law journal submissions are poorly written, shoddily researched, borderline intellectually dishonest, and not that fucking interesting or impactful. i used to think the low quality was due to being spoiled by student editors who do all the work, but i'm starting to think law professors are generally incapable of scholarship in any setting.

Yeah, FWIW, I'm part of the problem because I was one of those incompetent student editors. And sure, I didn't know much about law or legal scholarship, but I spent 9 years in academia before going to law school, so I get academic scholarship generally. I was really impressed with most of the students on LR with me, and way less than impressed by certain authors. I should be clear that some were great (especially the one who sent us money to buy beer for everyone after we finished his article ). But the ones that were bad were ABYSMAL. We had to essentially recreate the notes for one whole article because what the prof delivered was NOT what we'd accepted, and apparently research meant "let RAs make shit up." The only reason that piece came out remotely acceptable (even by LR standards) was due to the hard work of the "incompetent" student editors. (And that's leaving aside the THOUSANDS of crap articles we reviewed and didn't accept.)

[3|ink]

Justice Roberts is my favorite shit-con.

Pick up a copy of any law review that you see and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was of great interest to the academic that wrote it, but isn’t of much help to the bar.

[shepdawg]

I hated law review. It's an academic circle jerk.

[gaud]

Pick up a copy of any law review that you see and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was of great interest to the academic that wrote it, but isn’t of much help to the bar.

[hephaestus]

far be it from me to deny that student editors are incompetent, but it doesn't sit well with me when tenured law professors, who have the power but not the talent or motivation to change the system, call us incompetent. nearly all law journal submissions are poorly written, shoddily researched, borderline intellectually dishonest, and not that fucking interesting or impactful. i used to think the low quality was due to being spoiled by student editors who do all the work, but i'm starting to think law professors are generally incapable of scholarship in any setting.

I think this is spot on. Professors could create several peer reviewed publications at each school with the huge budgets given to student run journals. However, that would result in them doing significant work on the journals themselves, as well as having to up the quality of their submissions so that it would actually be selected for publication by peer reviewed journals.

[KD35]

This was a great article.

[Flips88]

xposting my comment:

Does this guy think we enjoy doing hours upon hours of unpaid labor for no academic credit? Or that we enjoy churning out shitty articles that maybe dozens of people will read? Also we usually don't edit your prose so that the article can maintain your goddawful writing style and sentence construction.

The law review problem is a two way street. Professors purposefully produce half-assed, shitty work that is in large part researched for them by 1L and 2L research assistants. They know journals will have people fix all their shitty grammatical and bluebooking errors for them. And they know that there are a billion journals so someone will publish their piece of shit esoteric article that 5 people in the world care about.

Journals are the worst and should be switched to peer review, but acting like it's all the students fault is fucking dumb.

[chup]

far be it from me to deny that student editors are incompetent, but it doesn't sit well with me when tenured law professors, who have the power but not the talent or motivation to change the system, call us incompetent. nearly all law journal submissions are poorly written, shoddily researched, borderline intellectually dishonest, and not that fucking interesting or impactful. i used to think the low quality was due to being spoiled by student editors who do all the work, but i'm starting to think law professors are generally incapable of scholarship in any setting.

PREACH.

[hephaestus]

xposting my comment:

Does this guy think we enjoy doing hours upon hours of unpaid labor for no academic credit? Or that we enjoy churning out shitty articles that maybe dozens of people will read? Also we usually don't edit your prose so that the article can maintain your goddawful writing style and sentence construction.

The law review problem is a two way street. Professors purposefully produce half-assed, shitty work that is in large part researched for them by 1L and 2L research assistants. They know journals will have people fix all their shitty grammatical and bluebooking errors for them. And they know that there are a billion journals so someone will publish their piece of shit esoteric article that 5 people in the world care about.

Journals are the worst and should be switched to peer review, but acting like it's all the students fault is fucking dumb.

Standard boomer blaming the victim rationale.

[Stinson]

I can hate on journals all day long too (sending in articles with footnotes that read, "Please find citation for this." Really earning your $200k a year, Mr. Professor!) but I don't think what Justice Roberts is talking about is really the result of incompetent student editors choosing weirdo articles.

Tons of legal scholarship is irrelevant crap because

1. Published legal scholarship is important for getting hired as a professor and there's only so much stuff to write about, so people choose more and more esoteric topics to research and discuss. (This is true in many fields besides law.)

2. Most law schools are so insulated from real legal work that they couldn't really care less whether their scholarship is useful to anyone. Tuition covers the money, and scholarship studies the preftige. No one really cares about being useful.

3. From most schools, journal experience is a de facto requirement for many kinds of legal hiring, and as there are only so many law review spots students sensibly create the Law School Review of Law and Oh Who Cares Please Just Hire Us Look We Know How to Bluebook. This creates more forums for the Kant/Bulgaria type articles Justice Roberts discusses.

If students editors were ten times more competent then they are, this would all still be true. All the actors - students, would-be tenured professors, etc. - are just responding sensibly to incentives. And I doubt Justice Roberts has ever even interviewed a clerkship candidate that hadn't participated the silly LR ritual he purports to hold in such low esteem.

[timbs4339]

Cue the whining and baldly self-interested justifications. Goddamn law professors.

[Mroberts3]

Not doing law review as a 3L was the best decision I ever made. Saved myself a year of grief.

[BeautifulSW]

There are good law journals, though. The Tax Lawyer is a joint effort of Georgetown Law and the ABA Tax Section and at its best it is very good.

[LSATNightmares]

far be it from me to deny that student editors are incompetent, but it doesn't sit well with me when tenured law professors, who have the power but not the talent or motivation to change the system, call us incompetent. nearly all law journal submissions are poorly written, shoddily researched, borderline intellectually dishonest, and not that fucking interesting or impactful. i used to think the low quality was due to being spoiled by student editors who do all the work, but i'm starting to think law professors are generally incapable of scholarship in any setting.

I wholeheartedly agree.

[bjsesq]

Best decision I made in law school was not doing a journal.

Amen.

[Bless]

Probably 9/10 of the law review members at my school are only on the journal because it opens doors and is a legitimate selling point on the resume. I assume the same correlation extends to other schools too.

Hence, the quality of the articles and the amount of times they are cited is really irrelevant. Law students care about employment, not scholarship, and being on law review certainly has an impact on the former.

[bjsesq]

Probably 9/10 of the law review members at my school are only on the journal because it opens doors and is a legitimate selling point on the resume. I assume the same correlation extends to other schools too.

Hence, the quality of the articles and the amount of times they are cited is really irrelevant. Law students care about employment, not scholarship, and being on law review certainly has an impact on the former.

DAT CORRELATION VERSUS CAUSATION

[Bless]

Probably 9/10 of the law review members at my school are only on the journal because it opens doors and is a legitimate selling point on the resume. I assume the same correlation extends to other schools too.

Hence, the quality of the articles and the amount of times they are cited is really irrelevant. Law students care about employment, not scholarship, and being on law review certainly has an impact on the former.

DAT CORRELATION VERSUS CAUSATION

I don't think the lackluster performance of law reviews in the past decade is a causation. Most law students are not even aware of the "problem," nor do they give a shit. It's about the credentials, period.

[romothesavior]

I hated law review. It's an academic circle jerk.

[apollo2015]

Pick up a copy of any law review that you see and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was of great interest to the academic that wrote it, but isn’t of much help to the bar.

I am not sure why Roberts thinks that academics should have to usually cater to the interests of practicing attorneys. Law programs do not claim to be vocational schools.