Law review for transactional wannabes Forum

[Tygra]

Recently transferred, did law review write-on competition for transfers and just starting to hear back about law review offers. I have heard from some attorneys that transactional lawyers don't gain anything by having been on journals. If I think that I want to practice transactional law, should I bother doing law review? Thanks for any thoughts/advice.
*Note: have not heard back from my new school's main journal yet.

[thesealocust]

Nobody gains anything from journal work. It's archaic, mindless hazing.

Some judges and a very small number of firms care about the credential specifically for hiring. It's otherwise an honor and so a very painful (and not massive) resume bump. The experience itself is tedium and nothing else.

[CanadianWolf]

Cite checking may be tedious & somewhat mind-numbing, but getting published as well as editorial board participation sharpens one's writing skills.

[jbagelboy]

I mean, if you're at all concerned about recruiting/getting a job and you think you might need the credential, do law review. If you already have an SA offer and you have no interest in clerking or academia, then yea, it's pretty silly.

We get credit for editorial board positions at my school, which is kind of cool I guess (you aren't literally working for nothing). And if there are cool people on your journal/law review, that softens the blow.

[RedGiant]

I am the MOST TRANSACTIONALIST, and I can say that I know it won't help with any transactional work.

But my SA job really wanted to pretend we were well-rounded attorneys who liked litigation and corporate, even though I was hired into an office that didn't have non-IP litigation (ie - I was directly hired into a Corp group). That is to say, I was forced to write a bunch of BS memos and other things, all of which needed perfect footnotes, in the middle of working on a ton of corporate stuff. So even though journal is THE WORST, I am glad I did it. It mattered only for that.

[Seffer15]

Transactional associate here. Law review is useful for a few things: (1) it makes you better at painstakingly paying attention to details, a skill that is necessary as a junior associate, (2) it gives you a good network of other smart people at your school who are likely to get good jobs and are valuable to have in your network for the future (I know this sounds cheesy, but you'll form relationships with these people more so than if you just took a random class with them), and (3) it's a good resume credential. It's not worth turning it down, IMO, even though it is pretty terrible.