EIC worth it after getting a COA clerkship? Forum

[Elston Gunn]

I don't think the difference in workload between articles and ed board is that high. And it's probably true that judges prefer articles editors (I've heard this elsewhere too), who cares? Don't you already have a COA clerkship lined up?

No, not OP. I probably won't have any more interviews until Fall grades come out.

Is the articles workload really that high? I don't really mind it if it is, but I was thinking there would be a noticeable difference given how much work our e-board puts in.[/quote]
It probably depends on the journal, but on mine it's like 45-50 hours a week all spring semester. (Or at least that's what they tell me--I wasn't on it myself.)

[Anonymous User]

Related question: is EIC worth it if we don't have a clerkship lined up yet? With my grades at my T20 I can likely get a COA, so the only benefit I see would getting a more prestigious judge or court, but I don't know if it's worth it. I'm thinking about just being an articles editor and forgetting about the e-board altogether.

I assure you, speaking from experience, that landing a clerkship is a crapshoot. Don't think that just because you've got good grades that it will pan out. But if you've got stellar grades, recs, etc., being EIC is probably not worth the effort. Some judges consider it a sizeable boost, some truly don't care at all about journal.

I was EIC of my secondary and my judge liked it. She said it "shows leadership and initiative" and confirms that I know the Bluebook well (I do). Frankly, the only reason I did it was because my grades were mediocre and I had no job lined up going into 2L summer, so I was willing to do anything to boost my resume at that point. I really found 0 benefit to being EIC aside from it forcing me to learn the Bluebook embarrassingly well, and at the district court level, judges are all over the place when it comes to Bluebooking and whether they care about it.