Doing both law review and moot court. Not wise? Forum

[JoblessAndHopeless]

I go to a regional state T2 school, and I have just been invited to both my school's flagship law review and moot court team. I had to compete to get into both. Currently, I'm around top quarter of the class.

My question is, is it wise to do both for the next academic year? I know each requires significant time commitments, and I really don't want to sacrifice my GPA if I have to stretch myself too thin.

Right now, I'm leaning towards doing both, but if I end up choosing one, I will definitely pick law review.

Anybody did both, and if so was it worth it? Coming out of a regional school, I doubt I will be able to get biglaw unless I'm top of the class, but I would still like to get a competitive job out of school.

Thanks in advance!

[BobLoblaw18]

Moot court programs vary so much from school to school that this is going to be a question best answered by a more-senior student at your school.

Plenty of people do both at my T20 for whatever that's worth though

[decimalsanddollars]

I did both, and like the above poster, plenty of people at my T20 did both. Most people who were on moot court teams were on a journal and often either were on law review non-exec board or exec board of a secondary journal. If you're wondering about the impacts on GPA, I'd ask people in each org what the "busy season" is for that org. If they're the same and overlap with the finals rush (or even the month before finals), I'd consider only doing one. I'd also consider only one if you, say, want to be in the most time-consuming role in one org (here, EIC or ME of law review). Otherwise, if you want to do both, do both.

[nixy]

I did both (as well as an off-campus externship), and agree what others have said. In practice, at my school, moot court was a much more limited time commitment in terms of how it was spread over the semester (plenty of work, but more concentrated in time), so you could manage the schedule fairly well. But that may vary by school (mine gave credit for both moot court and LR, for instance; and I’m pretty sure my LR board would have cut someone a break on work when moot court was most intense. That may not be the case for all schools).