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Now that your on journal, how do you advance from staff editor to something greater? Any and all advice appreciated

A ritualistic series of trials often culminating in a fatal duel with the current occupant of the position you want

To the extent any board position is “greater” (debatable): It depends a little on how people are chosen, but generally, do your work well and cheerfully, make people like you, and convince the current board that you will be able to do the job.

Also avoid letting your naked ambition for EIC show. It’s a bad look.

Capitol_Idea wrote:A ritualistic series of trials often culminating in a fatal duel with the current occupant of the position you want

Lucky bastard. We have to learn complex and arcane rituals to summon the Elder Beings of the J'rnahl.

joining eboard was the biggest mistake i made in law school, by a mile. save yourself from working with the kinds of people who do journal eboard before it's too late

but i guess in terms of actionable advice if you won't listen, the general evaluation process for us for picking eboard for next year was:
- did the person's work suck / did they turn things in late
- did they seem responsible
- did they not seem like a raging asshole striver (more important consideration for some of our voting than for others)
- for some specific positions, did they have a helpful background

you can also get in danger by being too liked by some groups, like for us it was the readthrough group. if they liked you and you applied at all, they got you unless you signalled very strongly that you didn't want to do it (which would take you out of the running for eic, etc). not much you can do about this except state your preferences clearly if you have them. if you don't want a specific board position, don't apply for it.

or just don't do eboard which is a much better decision overall

As an EIC of a journal- it was the worst decision of my life. Don't.

IMO, editing positions are the worst in terms of the substance of your work. (Executive editor, senior executive editor, etc.) You have to bluebook and proposition check 100 page articles. It’s not about the hours—the nature of the work sucks.

The team that does article selection, whatever it’s called at your school, seems dope. You have a hellish spring 2L in terms of work load, but no work basically during 3L. Although the hours are long, you’re reading articles and discussing. I’d rather do 120 hours of that shit than 60 hours of bluebooking and proposition checks (in a semester).

PeanutsNJam wrote:IMO, editing positions are the worst in terms of the substance of your work. (Executive editor, senior executive editor, etc.) You have to bluebook and proposition check 100 page articles. It’s not about the hours—the nature of the work sucks.

The team that does article selection, whatever it’s called at your school, seems dope. You have a hellish spring 2L in terms of work load, but no work basically during 3L. Although the hours are long, you’re reading articles and discussing. I’d rather do 120 hours of that shit than 60 hours of bluebooking and proposition checks (in a semester).

I do notes and articles on a secondary journal. I actually really like it. The bulk of our work was over the summer though, not the spring, which was even better because I basically just did my journal work at my summer firm (where I did no real work anyway). I will say that you slog through a lot of poorly written articles to find a very few that are actually interesting/publishable. This might be different for flagship journals.

stoopkid13 wrote:. . . you slog through a lot of poorly written articles to find a very few that are actually interesting/publishable. This might be different for flagship journals.

Fixed that for you.