This is probably the least interesting post ever at ATL

I am on Law Review right now and I was having this debate with a fellow student. I find it very interesting.

Journal work is a ridiculous waste of time that is a necessary line on a resume. Nothing more, nothing less. I have not learned anything from any of the articles I have worked on this year, and the only skill I have learned is to Bluebook.

You don't find the button-down-shirt with suit debate interesting?

10:39--- If all you care about it pay raises, go back to Greedy Associates... we don't need you here. Personally, I found this pretty interesting.

I don't find the pay raises interesting either. This "debate" has been had before on the blogs.

Usually it starts with some blogging lawprof (Blogger 1) posting something like "my awesome blog has made law reviews irrelevant."

Then another blogging lawprof (Blogger 2) says "my awesome blog has also helped to make law reviews irrelevant."

Then another (Untenured)jumps in: "I am untenured, and I hope that my song lyrics and pictures of my cat will be considered by the tenure committee"

Blogger 2: behold the power of the blogosphere!
Untenured: It is indeed a wonder!
Blogger 1: The light of my blog shines almost as brightly as the light shining from my download statistics at SSRN. Btw, check out my awesome piece on how James Madison was actually a libertarian!
Untenured: We should go to a symposium somewhere so that people can look at us while we're having this conversation.
Blogger 2: my friend Blogger 3 has a powerful and important post at annoyinglegalesepun.blogspot.com. Read the whole thing, as they say!

Then the blogger circle jerk goes on for about a week or so until some other subject distracts them, like a new Supreme Court case, or an op-ed whose author claims to be the first to discover subtle differences between Justices Scalia and Thomas.

this post needs the "dubious conferences" tag

The best part about Barnett's comments is that he pairs his second point (that student-run law journals are good for students because they educate the editors) with his first point (that student-run law journals are good for law professors because the students are good, hardworking editors).

Law professors should not be tempted, as some are, to believe that the second point stands alone--that is, that the whole point of student-run journals is to serve as an educational experience for the editors and as a "teaching moment" for the author. Taken to the extreme, this argument has led some professor-authors to believe that it is unnecessary to cooperate with journals' editorial processes because it is all just a learning experience for the editors, who should just feel grateful for the privilege of learning from the professor-author's work.

It's great if journal editors learn from the process (although any 2L editor could tell you that it's way more tedious than it is enlightening) but authors should not kid themselves into thinking that submitting an article for publication is a teacher's act of generosity toward faraway students. Law professors need these publications for their reputations and careers, and they need hardworking student editors (free labor) to get their ideas, in polished form, to the marketplace.

Posner has written at length on this topic. While using students to fact/cite check is certainly useful, most find it much more dubious that students have a say in selecting articles for publication. Not to mention that the push for giving a resume item to more students has led to ever more less-prestigous journals (a.k.a. "Mad Magazines for Law") as an increased outlet for professorial drivel, AND increased the pressure on academia to publish said drivel.

Careful how much weight you give to law professors asserting that they (law professors) would be best at picking the good articles. Law professors probably think that law professors would be best at doing lots of things.

Students selecting articles for publication probably has both pros and cons. On the one hand, students in some cases may not know enough to separate the good articles from the bad, either because they are not educated enough to understand a particular great argument, or because they are not well-read enough to spot something that has been done before.

On the other hand, students are much more removed from the kinds of politics in academia that some say characterize selection processes at peer review journals. Students may therefore be more willing to publish a great work by an unknown author, an unconventional argument, or a controversial essay. Students also have the advantage of being generalists rather than experts in a particular subfield, so they may in fact be better judges of what articles would appeal to a generalized legal audience.

am I the only one who thinks that the traditional law review is an outdated forum and there aren't enough alternatives? I agree with Althouse that blogs and such have provided a place for quick comments and analysis -- but what about something in between? As a practitioner, you rarely have time to write an exhaustive 50-60 pg piece (i've written them before and it takes good 80-100 hrs, if not more). On the other hand, you want to write something more than a 3 pg comment in a bar publication. There are some specialized publications that cater to specific practice areas, but not enough. perhaps law reviews should consider creating more forums for practitioners. After all, we don't live in the 1950's and law professors are no longer the only ones with something interesting to say about the law. Isn't it time modern law review do more than buttress professorial claims to tenure?

calibiglaw, you're looking at it from the perspective of places *you* can publish instead of from the perspective of what people want to read.

I've heard no complaints that there is an unmet demand for material. There are plenty of ways to publish something between 3 and 50 pages.

Basically, no one wants your opinion

2:04,

First, of course i'm looking at this from my perspective. And my point was that law reviews are geared too much toward professors and primarily continue to serve their interests and accomodate their views. As someone mentioned before, what professors think is important is not necessarily what "people want to read" -- it's what professors want to read, and their highly academic perspective is often disconnected from the rest of the legal world.

Second, it's not that there aren't enough places to publish -- it's that there aren't enough journals that find the balance between purely academic and practical publications -- usually either one or the other. It would be great if there were more forums that successfully did that.

Finally, there is no need to be rude -- learn to make arguments without resorting to personal attacks.

Blogs - even respectable legal blogs - hardly provide "quicker [but thoughtful, of course] legal commentary". They essentially offer (i) synopses of hot issues; (ii) occasional off-the-cuff musings; and (iii) snipings from within an echo chamber.

There is the rare exception, like Balkin's. But Ann Althouse's meandering and opinionated drivel certainly doesn't fall into that rarified company.

She certainly ought not be the spokesperson for the "blogs as a healthy alternative to law reviews" campaign. (Although I soundly despise law reviews and their sycophantic staff, as well!)

I accepted a journal offer, then refused to sign the contract. I just looked at the work and asked "Why on earth would anyone want to do this shit?" I called the employers who had made me offers that I was considering accepting and asked if they cared that I wasn't goign to go through with my Journal -- every one of them laughed at the question, and these were top tier firms, including CWT and Sidley.

To say it is necessary is rediculous, it's just a lie that Law Schools tell you so that you'll be too scared NOT to waste your time there.

If word got out that no one cares about Law Review, Law review would quickly die.

Where I went to law school, law review/journal membership was pretty much the only way to get an interview with a large firm. Quitting was practically unheard-of and was looked at as a real asshole move because membership was very limited (about 13% of the class). Taking the offer simply to get interviews and then quitting was extremely frowned-upon - it happened just once during my time in law school and the faculty advisor (normally mild-mannered) pretty much went ballistic. Maybe it's different in other places.

I might be a ninny (I probably am), but I actually got a lot out of my journal experience. I think it made me a much better editor/writer than I was going into law school. I ended up being Editor-in-Chief, though, so I did more than just Bluebooking/cite-checking. Like law school, I think you can get out of it what you put into it. It's not a great experience for everybody, but I don't think it's totally worthless.

As for the question of their utility, I can say that law reviews/journals are a far cry from the peer-reviewed journals in humanities academia (English, History, etc.). That process is a hell of a lot more rigorous than that of law school publication. That said, I can't imagine many of my professors putting in the time that it would take to do serious peer review, so I really don't know what they're complaining about.

I too spent an inordinate amount of time with the Bluebook. I'd rather not in the future, tho, so I've been working on this:

http://www.cite-r-us.com

Enjoy!

Law review still matters if you are at a tier 2 or lower school. At my school, which is near the bottom of tier 2, the dozen or so big-law firms who recruited there specifically wanted people with law review on their resume