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I am a 1L and understand that this is a LONG way off, but what goes into the law review write on? I'm just curious since we're starting to go more in depth on citations and things like that, which is making my head spin, and I'm told that is a lot of what it takes to write on to law review.

Understand grades are a very large component, but I'm just curious about the write on competition.

Was kind of surprised there wasn't more info on the site about this. There are 100 "how to get good grades" articles (most of which are fantastic help, btw) but no "how to write on to law review" posts. Is it just editing? I assume it varies from school to school, but any overall info would be great!

gobosox wrote:I am a 1L and understand that this is a LONG way off, but what goes into the law review write on? I'm just curious since we're starting to go more in depth on citations and things like that, which is making my head spin, and I'm told that is a lot of what it takes to write on to law review.

Understand grades are a very large component, but I'm just curious about the write on competition.

Was kind of surprised there wasn't more info on the site about this. There are 100 "how to get good grades" articles (most of which are fantastic help, btw) but no "how to write on to law review" posts. Is it just editing? I assume it varies from school to school, but any overall info would be great!

Law review write on is just writing a paper. Read a few law review articles to get a handle on academic writing. Legal methods class will help you learn "legal writing."

WHJTMG178 wrote: Law review write on is just writing a paper.

Unless your school's competition also includes cite checking and/or editing, and I believe your school does have something more than the written product.

If it involves cite check, that will probably be 12-20 different sources where you're given a copy of the source and you have to provide a proper bluebook citation. It won't be all cases like in LRW. It will include some domestic cases and statutes, maybe some foreign material, maybe some pop culture, some secondary sources of various types (LR, treatise, etc.), books, speeches/interviews, etc. Basically, if there's a bluebook entry about citing to it, it's fair game.

If it involves editing, there will likely be between 7 and 20 pages from one or more draft law review articles and you will be given a copy of the LR's proper editing marks. Using that, you will be required to edit the article.

As far as grades: All schools use grades in some way. Here are some of the ways they can do that (you need to look into what your school does and doesn't use... it can be a combination of these, and this is not meant to be exhaustive):

Automatic Admission Floor: LR takes everyone top X% (5 or 10) who applies. Alternately, some schools require that you not only apply, but also put faith some minimum quality effort.

Weighting: They give a raw score to the application and then add in or multiply in some bonus for grades.

Eligibility Floor: You must be in top Y% to qualify for LR (e.g. 50%). Among those who are in top Y% (occasionally applied only to those who are not also in top X% if there's an Automatic Floor), the best scores on the application get in.

our school doesn't produce exact rubrics, but they award 15 spots for write-on exclusively, which has a citation portion (but its not anything you could try to "learn" fall of 1L), and the remaining 30 based on *roughly* 1/3 grades, 1/3 write-on, 1/3 diversity

BVest wrote:
Unless your school's competition also includes cite checking and/or editing, and I believe your school does have something more than the written product.

If it involves cite check, that will probably be 12-20 different sources where you're given a copy of the source and you have to provide a proper bluebook citation. It won't be all cases like in LRW. It will include some domestic cases and statutes, maybe some foreign material, maybe some pop culture, some secondary sources of various types (LR, treatise, etc.), books, speeches/interviews, etc. Basically, if there's a bluebook entry about citing to it, it's fair game.

If it involves editing, there will likely be between 7 and 20 pages from one or more draft law review articles and you will be given a copy of the LR's proper editing marks. Using that, you will be required to edit the article.

This doesn't sound especially time-consuming. Why is it a 2-3 day marathon event? Is there also a paper as a previous poster noted?

There is usually also a paper, yes - the above is on top of the paper.

And there are schools where grades are a really really minimal factor (but my sense is that grades are huge at most T-14s).

jbagelboy wrote:our school doesn't produce exact rubrics, but they award 15 spots for write-on exclusively, which has a citation portion (but its not anything you could try to "learn" fall of 1L), and the remaining 30 based on *roughly* 1/3 grades, 1/3 write-on, 1/3 diversity

1/3 diversity? Do the handouts ever end?

FuturePanhandler wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:our school doesn't produce exact rubrics, but they award 15 spots for write-on exclusively, which has a citation portion (but its not anything you could try to "learn" fall of 1L), and the remaining 30 based on *roughly* 1/3 grades, 1/3 write-on, 1/3 diversity

1/3 diversity? Do the handouts ever end?

Yes. At UChicago, the law review journal doesn't reserve any spots based on diversity.

FuturePanhandler wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:our school doesn't produce exact rubrics, but they award 15 spots for write-on exclusively, which has a citation portion (but its not anything you could try to "learn" fall of 1L), and the remaining 30 based on *roughly* 1/3 grades, 1/3 write-on, 1/3 diversity

1/3 diversity? Do the handouts ever end?

Just fyi mods this wasn't what I was trying to communicate/start

FuturePanhandler wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:our school doesn't produce exact rubrics, but they award 15 spots for write-on exclusively, which has a citation portion (but its not anything you could try to "learn" fall of 1L), and the remaining 30 based on *roughly* 1/3 grades, 1/3 write-on, 1/3 diversity

1/3 diversity? Do the handouts ever end?

nope, you can go from birth to president without doing any work

patogordo wrote:you can go from birth to president without doing any work

How does GWB qualify as "diversity"?

BVest wrote:

patogordo wrote:you can go from birth to president without doing any work

How does GWB qualify as "diversity"?

He's in the 1 percent. How much more diverse can you be?

gobosox wrote:

BVest wrote:
Unless your school's competition also includes cite checking and/or editing, and I believe your school does have something more than the written product.

If it involves cite check, that will probably be 12-20 different sources where you're given a copy of the source and you have to provide a proper bluebook citation. It won't be all cases like in LRW. It will include some domestic cases and statutes, maybe some foreign material, maybe some pop culture, some secondary sources of various types (LR, treatise, etc.), books, speeches/interviews, etc. Basically, if there's a bluebook entry about citing to it, it's fair game.

If it involves editing, there will likely be between 7 and 20 pages from one or more draft law review articles and you will be given a copy of the LR's proper editing marks. Using that, you will be required to edit the article.

This doesn't sound especially time-consuming. Why is it a 2-3 day marathon event? Is there also a paper as a previous poster noted?

You have to write a paper too. My competition was a week, and I spent every waking hour not eating or sleeping on the application for a week straight. It was extremely stressful, and probably the most stressful part of law school. The competition at my school started the day of my last final. I ended up writing on to LR, but the process certainly wasn't fun.

*Edit*

Oh, I got the lowest possible graded score in legal writing both semesters of 1L year. So I don't believe that success in the competition amounts to anything more than just putting more work in than others. Or maybe my legal writing professor and I just weren't on the same wavelength. Who knows, because other than those terrible grades, there's nothing that makes me believe I'm a bad writer, legal or otherwise.

SilverE2 wrote:Oh, I got the lowest possible graded score in legal writing both semesters of 1L year. So I don't believe that success in the competition amounts to anything more than just putting more work in than others. Or maybe my legal writing professor and I just weren't on the same wavelength. Who knows, because other than those terrible grades, there's nothing that makes me believe I'm a bad writer, legal or otherwise.

Yeah that's kinda what I'm interested in. Do others have the same experience? Are these truly just brute strength after being drained during finals, or is it more of an overall understanding of the 1L year/legal writing class?

gobosox wrote:

SilverE2 wrote:Oh, I got the lowest possible graded score in legal writing both semesters of 1L year. So I don't believe that success in the competition amounts to anything more than just putting more work in than others. Or maybe my legal writing professor and I just weren't on the same wavelength. Who knows, because other than those terrible grades, there's nothing that makes me believe I'm a bad writer, legal or otherwise.

Yeah that's kinda what I'm interested in. Do others have the same experience? Are these truly just brute strength after being drained during finals, or is it more of an overall understanding of the 1L year/legal writing class?

My experience (going through and then grading write-ons) is that it's mostly brute strength - willingness to grind through all the materials and actually put the work in to do a thorough job right after finals. Doing the work and following all the directions to the letter is a huge part of success. Also, at least at my school (and I think most, though not all, schools), for LR write-on you write a mini/pseudo law review article, not a brief or memo. So you're not really even trying to write the way you were taught to write in LRW.

OP, first you're correct its going to very across schools

At my school it was a combination of class rank and score on the write on (you were graded on the content and the citations/structure with a rubric)

I ended up getting the highest scoring write on for my class--I just read prior LR articles written by students (particularly those who had gotten the highest score in previous years). Honestly, having graded write ons and writing the "best" one I can say, in my experience, the biggest issues were following instructions (students didnt follow page limits for instance)/making grammar/citation errors. In other words, students didn't really differentiate themselves based on substance.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Law-Review ... law+review

This was a very helpful little book. Read it in the weeks before your competition. It offers good tips on organizing your time and approach.

salix wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Making-Law-Review ... law+review

This was a very helpful little book. Read it in the weeks before your competition. It offers good tips on organizing your time and approach.

I can attest that this book was golden for my preparation for the Write-On Competition. I got accepted into every Journal at my school. I would also recommend looking over the BlueBook at least 2-3 weeks prior to the competition. This may be difficult because in most schools the write-on is right after finals. I was lucky in that regard because as a Transfer I participated right before classes started in the Fall.

Hope this Helps

Writing onto law review is a waste of effort. It's not valuable because everyone knows you didn't have the grades for it.

Desert Fox wrote:Writing onto law review is a waste of effort. It's not valuable because everyone knows you didn't have the grades for it.

Do employers necessarily know whether you wrote on or graded on? I don't know enough about the timeline to know whether the GPA you have when you're considered for grade-on is the same GPA the employers see at OCI.

ScottRiqui wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:Writing onto law review is a waste of effort. It's not valuable because everyone knows you didn't have the grades for it.

Do employers necessarily know whether you wrote on or graded on? I don't know enough about the timeline to know whether the GPA you have when you're considered for grade-on is the same GPA the employers see at OCI.

At 2L OCI, it's the same grades.

The only time it really helps is if you are on the fringes on "grade on" and people will just assume you graded on.

Desert Fox wrote:

ScottRiqui wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:Writing onto law review is a waste of effort. It's not valuable because everyone knows you didn't have the grades for it.

Do employers necessarily know whether you wrote on or graded on? I don't know enough about the timeline to know whether the GPA you have when you're considered for grade-on is the same GPA the employers see at OCI.

At 2L OCI, it's the same grades.

The only time it really helps is if you are on the fringes on "grade on" and people will just assume you graded on.

Gotcha, thanks.

gobosox wrote:

SilverE2 wrote:Oh, I got the lowest possible graded score in legal writing both semesters of 1L year. So I don't believe that success in the competition amounts to anything more than just putting more work in than others. Or maybe my legal writing professor and I just weren't on the same wavelength. Who knows, because other than those terrible grades, there's nothing that makes me believe I'm a bad writer, legal or otherwise.

Yeah that's kinda what I'm interested in. Do others have the same experience? Are these truly just brute strength after being drained during finals, or is it more of an overall understanding of the 1L year/legal writing class?

I always struggled in my legal writing classes, but by sheer effort managed OK grades. I ended up writing on to LR. (So don't appraise your own legal writing ability based on your LRW grades)

And yes, it is largely brute strength and willpower to press on when others are tired (similar to much of law practice). But all that brute strength won't matter if you don't understand the fundamentals of how to read and interpret cases and statutes. Make sure you know how to do that.