Law Revue Video Contest 2014: Dishonorable Mentions

The worst Law Revue submissions for 2014.

First, some good news: law students are starting to feel like the market has normalized. This year’s law revue submissions contained less of the “Oh Noes, Sweet Jobs Are Gone” parodies that have dominated the contest in previous years. This year was actually full of people whose greatest life tragedies apparently involved getting onto/not getting onto law review. The “new normal” is normal.

The bad news: videos about people getting onto/not getting onto law review are generally boring. Dear lord, every prospective law student and their mothers talk about wanting “practical training” and “clinical experience,” but the minute they get into law school they become obsessed with getting the most impractical résumé builder around. There wasn’t one “client” or clinical experience to be found in this year’s submissions. That should tell you a lot about the difference between what law schools say they’re teaching, versus what they’re actually teaching.

Anyway, we’re doing the worst of the worst at 3:00 p.m. on Good Friday. Joe Patrice says not to worry, we’ll have something better for you in about three days…

All the law revue law review parodies were too boring to merit dishonorable mention. But these four schools went out of their way to embarrass themselves.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW: “Everything Is Awful”

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In 2011, BU won the whole contest. But this is the second year in a row they’ve earned a dishonorable mention.

I’m a professional hater, and even I think the BU kids in this video need to take a Xanax. There’s something manic and off-putting about setting such an upbeat song to these lyrics. It’d have been funnier to keep the original “everything is AWESOME” trope and use it ironically. This way, I just feel like they all need to talk to Will Meyerhofer while someone takes all the knives out of the dining hall.

But make sure you watch it at least till you get to the totally flat and uncomfortable Jewish joke. Man, I wish they had just bought some Legos.

COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL: “Fat Law School Books”

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Columbia, you’re being graded on a curve. A curve that you set for yourselves with years and years of strong performances. Remember your contest-winning performance in 2012? Or last year’s submission that made the finals? Columbia has three things that make for good law revues: people who can actually sing, attractive people who can actually sing, and attractive people who can actually sing and make funny jokes about the law.

Fundamentally, Columbia did all three of those things again this year. This video is not bad. It’s just… not funny. They forgot to bring the funny. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’m sure it looked good on the page, but your joke here is: BOOKS ARE HEAVY. There’s only so much you can do with that.

I would like to go to karaoke with you guys, though. Singing Queen is hard.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL: “Dice Rolls”

We’ve said countless times that submitting your law revue video from a recording of a stage performance is the wrong way to go. It’s the 21st century, video editors are available.

But there are other problems with this video. First of all, f**k Robin Thicke. Secondly, substituting women dressed in plastic wrap with Midwestern men in their underwear is problematic. The singing here is good, the lyrics are underwhelming, and once you get over the half-naked men, they’re just half-naked men. They’re not doing anything “funny” beyond being half-naked.

While we’re here, I’ll point out that we got this “Blurred Lines” thing, but zero parodies of “Get Lucky.” Why is that? Did Stephen Colbert scare you guys? The song is PERFECT for this kind of thing:

We’ve, come too far, to get out, without jobs.
So let’s, pass the bar, and become, Biglaw stars.
She’s up all night on Westlaw, I want to avoid IBR,
She’s up all night to get done, I’m up because I owe money.
We’re up because we owe money, no one told us that we’d owe money.

This isn’t hard.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS LAW SCHOOL: “I Screamed a Scream”

The highlight of watching this video was when Staci put down her Smirnoff Ice and started singing loudly about how much she hated everybody involved in this video. Turns out Staci can sing. These UT people cannot. At one point one of the male “vocalists” gave up any suggestion of “trying” and went for full on intentional comedy with his shrill yodeling, but it was too late. I don’t even want to talk about the harmony. I’m going to have nightmares about the harmony. Don’t you people live in Austin? You can’t take a piss in Austin without tripping over a very talented musician. I don’t know how something like this even happens.

The other problem is that Texas is at least a year late on the Les Mis parodies. We’ve already been through that. Also, they took a song that is already slow and plodding and slowed it down even further. Why would you do that? Why am I still talking about this video? Protip Texas: leave Broadway parodies to the coastal schools and stick to what you know. You can’t tell me that there’s not enough talent there that you can’t give me some kind of awesome “Radioactive” thingy.

Have a nice weekend. The finalists are coming.