0L to write for law review? Forum

[singNdance]

currently an 0L. have a couple of subjects i am passionate about. willing to do the research and writing (that passionate) to be submitted to law reviews.

thoughts? if published i would assume it'd give me a boost in the event i apply for law school, would it?

[Richie Tenenbaum]

I would think that most law school journals would not consider anything you write to be a student note, since you would be submitting it before you're a law student. (Maybe this is wrong though.) If that's the case, then you have very little shot of actually publishing a full-fledged article, assuming you're not a PhD candidate with an area of interest that overlaps nicely with a certain area of law.

Buy Volokh's Academic Legal Writing book and maybe sketch out some possible paper ideas. Then, when you're in law school, you might be able to turn these ideas into a seminar paper or note for the journal you're on.

Without more details, your current plan seems very unrealistic.

[EvilClinton]

currently an 0L. have a couple of subjects i am passionate about. willing to do the research and writing (that passionate) to be submitted to law reviews.

thoughts? if published i would assume it'd give me a boost in the event i apply for law school, would it?

LOL.

Passion does not get you published.

[Davidbentley]

Jesus Christ.

[Scotchandsoda]

currently an 0L. have a couple of subjects i am passionate about. willing to do the research and writing (that passionate) to be submitted to law reviews.

thoughts? if published i would assume it'd give me a boost in the event i apply for law school, would it?

No.

[DCDuck]

Save the passion for law school and write your note on one of the subjects. Don't do it now.

[BCLS]

Please don't come to BC.

[guano]

currently an 0L. have a couple of subjects i am passionate about. willing to do the research and writing (that passionate) to be submitted to law reviews.

thoughts? if published i would assume it'd give me a boost in the event i apply for law school, would it?

what on earth makes you qualified to write a law journal article? Do you even know how to research cases, case law, etc.? Do you know what to look for and how to extract the information?
This isn't something you can just wing.

[Scotchandsoda]

currently an 0L. have a couple of subjects i am passionate about. willing to do the research and writing (that passionate) to be submitted to law reviews.

thoughts? if published i would assume it'd give me a boost in the event i apply for law school, would it?

what on earth makes you qualified to write a law journal article? Do you even know how to research cases, case law, etc.? Do you know what to look for and how to extract the information?
This isn't something you can just wing.

Yea...but he/she is passionately passionate about the subject.....

[guano]

currently an 0L. have a couple of subjects i am passionate about. willing to do the research and writing (that passionate) to be submitted to law reviews.

thoughts? if published i would assume it'd give me a boost in the event i apply for law school, would it?

what on earth makes you qualified to write a law journal article? Do you even know how to research cases, case law, etc.? Do you know what to look for and how to extract the information?
This isn't something you can just wing.

Yea...but he/she is passionately passionate about the subject.....

Unless you're einstein, it ain't gonna happen. If you are einstein, you're about 100 years too late

[BaiAilian2013]

Journals publish things written by law professors and other academics, law students, and practitioners. So yeah, if you're already in academia in some related field, then sure (although you might still want to link up with someone in law). If not... wth do you have to say?

ETA: I'm not defending the content of law school journals. The overall standard of scholarship is not great, compared to academic disciplines. There are just too many damn journals out there. But there is still a standard, and that standard is that you have to know something about law, and most people outside of law don't know enough about law to know that they don't know anything about law. To be meaningfully informed on a certain subject, there is a hell of a lot of background that you're really not going to get outside of an actual class in civ pro, criminal law, etc. So you should wait.

[A. Nony Mouse]

My school's LR wouldn't even look at your article unless you had a JD or a PhD in a related topic. And it was incredibly rare for us to have any interest in articles by PhDs (unless they also had a JD), because they just didn't write/analyze in the way that we were looking for. I know there are LRs that publish student work, but I'm pretty sure they only mean law students. So, what everyone else has said.

All that aside, publications are nice but not that big a deal for admissions anyway. You'd be MUCH better off getting good grades or upping your LSAT score. Place an article in the Harvard Law Review? Sure, that might merit an extra glance. But basically, if you have the legal qualifications somehow to get an article into an elite LR, you probably don't actually need to publish to get a boost, if that makes sense.

If you have a burning desire to try to publish a LR article, go for it, but it's unlikely to matter for admissions.

[BullShitWithBravado]

Writing a publishable note takes a lot of time and effort that could be better used to study for the LSAT and to prepare your law school application materials. Breaking 170 will give you a much most significant boost than publishing a note, guaranteed.

[Cavalier]

It's not completely impossible. A former UVA law professor was published in the Yale Law Journal before attending law school, and thus began 1L as a member of the Journal. He also had a Ph.D. before attending law school, however. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jody_Kraus

I don't think my journal had a formal policy against accepting articles by authors who lacked a law degree, but I'd be surprised if any such articles received serious consideration. Unless you have an advanced degree in a field that has some overlap with law (e.g., you have a Ph.D. in economics and are publishing on antitrust policy), your submission will most likely be discarded after the reviewer reads your CV. "Passion" isn't a substitute for a legal education, which I suspect would be necessary if your only degree is a bachelor's.

[utlaw2007]

Journals publish things written by law professors and other academics, law students, and practitioners. So yeah, if you're already in academia in some related field, then sure (although you might still want to link up with someone in law). If not... wth do you have to say?

ETA: I'm not defending the content of law school journals. The overall standard of scholarship is not great, compared to academic disciplines. There are just too many damn journals out there. But there is still a standard, and that standard is that you have to know something about law, and most people outside of law don't know enough about law to know that they don't know anything about law. To be meaningfully informed on a certain subject, there is a hell of a lot of background that you're really not going to get outside of an actual class in civ pro, criminal law, etc. So you should wait.

This.

And that this is the silliest question I have seen on this site. Passion is not going to make you a great law student or lawyer. It can only insomuch that passion makes one more willing to do grunt work to help you get what you need to get accomplished. But if you have no ability, all the passion in the world isn't going to do anything. But do not assume you will get ahead because you "think" you are so passionate about law. You don't even know anything about law study or law practice. So how would you even know if you are passionate about it?

Your thinking that you know about law is only going to aid in your failure as you stubbornly cling to self anecdotes that you think are important but have no actual value in the legal field.

[09042014]

You guys laugh at this, but journals across the country print 2L notes about shit they have no clue about.

[utlaw2007]

You guys laugh at this, but journals across the country print 2L notes about shit they have no clue about.

Nevermind. I just saw your 2L in your comment. You have a point there.

[09042014]

You guys laugh at this, but journals across the country print 2L notes about shit they have no clue about.

This is absolutely true. But I suspect those journals produce writings from people who have some sort of experience about which they write. The problem is that they don't know if the info being written about is sound. But, at least, the writer's experience gives the writer some credibility with those journals.

It goes beyond 2/3Ls being in charge. 2L's actually write a huge chunk of the content as notes/comments. And since it's the blind leading the blind, they often publish shit that is totally wrong.

Legal academia is a joke. Student notes/comments is a bad joke.

[utlaw2007]

You guys laugh at this, but journals across the country print 2L notes about shit they have no clue about.

This is absolutely true. But I suspect those journals produce writings from people who have some sort of experience about which they write. The problem is that they don't know if the info being written about is sound. But, at least, the writer's experience gives the writer some credibility with those journals.

It goes beyond 2/3Ls being in charge. 2L's actually write a huge chunk of the content as notes/comments. And since it's the blind leading the blind, they often publish shit that is totally wrong.

Legal academia is a joke. Student notes/comments is a bad joke.

I just just saw 2L in your comment so you are right. Good point. And legal academia is a joke.

[utlaw2007]

That was always one of the things that floored me in law school. The "that" being the joke aspect of legal academia. I always thought it was odd that there were no studies using statistics, not numbers but the academic discipline, on issues about which professors wrote. And those professors would imply that we just wing it and use sound reason when it came to the theoretical issues. Well if the discipline of psychology only used sound reason to conduct research and write articles, psychology would be a mess. I understand that this is the best law can do, but the "science" behind legal academia is highly suspect. So the findings or conclusions drawn are highly suspect.

[A. Nony Mouse]

You guys laugh at this, but journals across the country print 2L notes about shit they have no clue about.

True, but most of those are going to be students on that journal, and the journal usually HAS to publish some of its own students' notes. I know some journals do publish student work by outside students, but I also think that in most cases, someone who hasn't gone through 1L-2L isn't going to know how to make their article sound like a LR article is supposed to sound or address the issues that a LR wants an article to address. (Note I'm not saying anything about the value of the content here...)

I think it really depends if the OP has any kind of experience writing scholarly articles (beyond doing some kind of undergrad thesis). If they do, they might be able to pull it off; but chances are good they won't. It just doesn't seem like the effort would be worth the result.

OP, if you really do have a passionate desire to write about various legal issues, wait until after you get into law school; even if you do have the scholarly chops to get published now, publications as a law student will be much more valuable than publications as a pre-law student, and you might be able to get academic credit as well (say if you write the paper for a seminar and then get it published). The role a publication would play in getting admitted is so small, it's not worth it - study for the LSAT.

ETA: There is a school of legal writing (empirical? forget how it's referred to) that relies on quantitative analysis. And I don't think use of quant/statistics is the only way to study society - lots of humanities disciplines don't rely on that kind of analysis. (You, personally, may think those disciplines are bunk, but in academia, they are established and accepted. And even anth/soc don't always rely on quantitative analysis - there are qualitative approaches out there.) Or to put it another way, I don't think law has to be a "science" to be a valid field of scholarship. That said, though, yeah, legal scholarship is a weird no-man's-land of poaching other disciplines' methodologies in a totally ad hoc manner. There are almost no other disciplines where someone with as little formal methodological training as most law profs could get to be sole author on an article. All hail lack of peer review!

[utlaw2007]

All that being said, I still think his/her original question is silly. As an 0L, the LAST thing you need to worry about is trying to walk on water so to speak. You'd have an easier chance of scoring over a 170 on the LSAT. I'd direct all of my efforts towrds that goal before trying to write some article for law review before I'd even enrolled in law school.

I don't care if you wrote a masterpiece of genius that has never ever been seen before in the legal field. I'd bet a ton of money that your article would go straight into the trash can before anyone that matters reads it. I know I wouldn't read it.

So if you don't mind using all that time to create trash can filler, knock yourself out and go right ahead.

[A. Nony Mouse]

All that being said, I still think his/her original question is silly. As an 0L, the LAST thing you need to worry about is trying to walk on water so to speak. You'd have an easier chance of scoring over a 170 on the LSAT. I'd direct all of my efforts towrds that goal before trying to write some article for law review before I'd even enrolled in law school.

I don't care if you wrote a masterpiece of genius that has never ever been seen before in the legal field. I'd bet a ton of money that your article would go straight into the trash can before anyone that matters reads it. I know I wouldn't read it.

So if you don't mind using all that time to create trash can filler, knock yourself out and go right ahead.

Yeah, I agree with all this.

[09042014]

You guys laugh at this, but journals across the country print 2L notes about shit they have no clue about.

True, but most of those are going to be students on that journal, and the journal usually HAS to publish some of its own students' notes. I know some journals do publish student work by outside students, but I also think that in most cases, someone who hasn't gone through 1L-2L isn't going to know how to make their article sound like a LR article is supposed to sound or address the issues that a LR wants an article to address. (Note I'm not saying anything about the value of the content here...)

I think it really depends if the OP has any kind of experience writing scholarly articles (beyond doing some kind of undergrad thesis). If they do, they might be able to pull it off; but chances are good they won't. It just doesn't seem like the effort would be worth the result.

OP, if you really do have a passionate desire to write about various legal issues, wait until after you get into law school; even if you do have the scholarly chops to get published now, publications as a law student will be much more valuable than publications as a pre-law student, and you might be able to get academic credit as well (say if you write the paper for a seminar and then get it published). The role a publication would play in getting admitted is so small, it's not worth it - study for the LSAT.

ETA: There is a school of legal writing (empirical? forget how it's referred to) that relies on quantitative analysis. And I don't think use of quant/statistics is the only way to study society - lots of humanities disciplines don't rely on that kind of analysis. (You, personally, may think those disciplines are bunk, but in academia, they are established and accepted. And even anth/soc don't always rely on quantitative analysis - there are qualitative approaches out there.) Or to put it another way, I don't think law has to be a "science" to be a valid field of scholarship. That said, though, yeah, legal scholarship is a weird no-man's-land of poaching other disciplines' methodologies in a totally ad hoc manner. There are almost no other disciplines where someone with as little formal methodological training as most law profs could get to be sole author on an article. All hail lack of peer review!

I'm not arguing this person will be able to pull this off. I'm just saying it's about as ridiculous as journals publishing 2L comments.

And journals don't HAVE to publish student comments, they do it because they want to.

And empirical legal analysis sucks because it's never peer reviewed.

[utlaw2007]

You raise a good point about the non quantitative academic disciplines. I don't think they are bunk. But those things do cite tons of other works, I assume they do, but I don't know for sure. Law cites too, but it doesn't site nearly as often to established works that have been accepted for long periods of time.

Don't get me wrong, I like this aspect of law because it makes anyone with a law degree, a scholar. Haha. Those outside the profession don't know how suspect it is. They just see that you have a juris doctor.