Law Reviews

Non-Sequiturs: 07.08.11

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Chief Justice Roberts: not a fan of law reviews.

* Chief Justice Roberts tries to explain why law reviews are so damn useless and boring. [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]

* Look, I like Jimmer Ferdette Fredette. I think that he was discriminated against because he’s white and I’ll bet all the money in my pocket that he ends up having a better career than Kimba Walker. But the childhood contract thing is silly. Derek Jeter’s is silly. Unenforceable fake contracts are silly. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Gun owners, why do you need to be able to practice shooting at things at ranges located close to schools? It’s like gun nuts won’t be happy until they’ve turned society back into game of Red Dead Redemption. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Here, let me trying using “gun nut” rhetoric to defend something that doesn’t kill anybody: Michele Bachmann will have to pry my pornography from my cold, lubricated dead hand. [Slate]

* Federal prosecutors should not have kiddie porn on their government computers (unless it’s pursuant to a child pornography investigation). [Not-So Private Parts / Forbes]

* Cataphora Legal + Ernst & Young = WIN. [Above the Law (sponsored content)]

* Do not forget to vote in Above the Law’s Fictional Lawyer Contest this weekend. You can vote from as many different IP addresses as you like. The battle of between McCoy and Hutz is close while it seems people have abandoned Elle Woods. [Above the Law]

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Hey, Fourth Tier: We Do Not Need Coloring Book Law Journals

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For editorial use only.

When I signed on to write full-time for Above the Law, I thought that I might be able to make some of our readers and commenters see the sunnier side of things at lower-ranked law schools. I had a very positive experience, and I don’t have very many regrets about the school I chose to attend.

But sometimes lower-ranked law schools do things that make even me cringe.

News came to us that the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law has created what the school is calling an Illustrated Law Journal. UDC Law’s new journal aspires to provide visual illustrations of laws and legal concepts so that laypeople and jurists can get a handle on the law in the world around them.

In other words: “Hey John Q. Public, you’re pretty dumb, here’s a comic book about law.”

When about 95% of the legal profession is centered around the written word, why do we need a coloring book law journal?

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Setting The Harvard Law Review Write-On Competition Ablaze

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I don’t think it’s going to come as a galloping shock to anybody that law review was not my kind of thing. My conversational style, inattention to detail, and aversion to boredom really didn’t mesh with anything law review was selling.

And after my 1L year, my grades were strong enough that I knew I’d get a Biglaw job somewhere during OCI; I didn’t need the résumé bump. Why in the world would I want to compete with individuals who really wanted it and would cut me to get on, when at the end the “prize” was being on boring-ass law review? No thanks.

When I received my law review application, I quickly ushered it into the trash.

A current Harvard Law student had a more expressive way of saying no to law review — a more combustible rejection…

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.09.11

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* This identical-twin date-rape ad probably wasn’t vetted through legal. [Copyranter]

* Adultery is still illegal in Colorado because…? Maybe state legislators are worried that a “favors adultery” attack ad could work? [WSJ Law Blog]

* The legal industry added jobs in April. [Am Law Daily]

* Law firms still find the time to be charitable. [Street Law]

* Do Republicans spend too much time in the gym, and not enough time passing laws? Check out Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) — and his awesome abs. [Towleroad]

* Are there simply too many law reviews? [Truth on the Market]

* Above the Law commenters can be excellent correctors. [What About Clients? (see "Note" at end)]

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Quote of the Day: Judge Posner Benchslaps the Bluebook

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[N]eedless to say, I have not read the nineteenth edition. I have dipped into it, much as one might dip one’s toes in a pail of freezing water. I am put in mind of Mr. Kurtz’s dying words in Heart of Darkness — ‘The horror! The horror!’ — and am tempted to end there.

— Judge Richard Posner, in a scathing Yale Law Journal review of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (19th ed.).

(For additional discussion and funny excerpts, see Paul Horwitz, Ilya Somin, and Eugene Volokh.)

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Inside Straight: Hire This Unemployed Chicago-Kent Editor-in-Chief!

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s new column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

First, a story; then, an attempt to find a job for an unemployed former editor-in-chief of the Chicago-Kent Law Review.

Here’s the story: After I wrote The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law, I thought about how to maximize sales of the book. I had the clever (if I do say so myself) idea of sending free copies to the editors-in-chief of a bunch of law reviews. I figured that those folks were likely to (1) read a book and (2) be “opinion leaders” on their respective campuses, so word of the book would spread.

But there was a fly in my ointment. If you send a law student a book, the student is likely to read the book and pass it on to a friend, who will do the same in turn. That generates readers (which is nice), but it doesn’t generate sales (which is nicer).

How do you prevent this?

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Ranking the Law Reviews

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Home to the Lord of all law reviews, Gannett House on the HLS campus.

All law reviews are not created equal. We all know this.

But the prestige of your law review isn’t directly correlated to the prestige of your law school. One obvious case of that is the fact that the Harvard Law Review is widely considered to be the most prestigious law review, even though Yale has a better law school (according to U.S. News… and people who don’t like crowds).

Unfortunately, U.S. News does not rank law reviews — at least not yet. One day, U.S. News will rank everything from high school debate programs to cremation operations; for now, we are left with only our general assumptions about who has the best law review.

But not anymore. The good people at Concurring Opinions have found a website that puts together a fairly competent rating of the nation’s best law reviews. Finally, students who edit the best law reviews, and professors who publish in them, can point to a list when they are trying to use their prestige to pull digits at a bar.

And this list passes the smell test, which is to say it pretty much tells us what we already think we know…

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The Ladies of Law Review: Mostly Good News

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We’ve been doing a series of posts looking at whether women and minorities are adequately represented on the mastheads of the nation’s law reviews. The subject is definitely a contentious one, and our posts have generated a high number of comments.

Perhaps we should shift our focus to underrepresented minorities (URMs) — sayonara, Asians — since women are actually doing just fine for themselves. And you don’t have to take our word for it. This conclusion comes from a report (PDF) that was just released by Ms. JD, which conducted a study of law reviews at the 2009 U.S. News “Top 50″ law schools for the 2008-2010 academic years. Based on the study, Ms. JD made the following findings:

  • The overall percentage of women who are members of law reviews, 44.3 percent, correlates strongly with the number of women awarded law degrees during the same time period, 45.7 percent.
  • The percentage of women in leadership positions on law reviews, 46.2 percent, also correlates strongly with the number of women awarded law degrees during the same time period, 45.7 percent.

But there was one area where women remain underrepresented….

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Minorities and Women and Law Reviews, Oh My!

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Earlier this month, roughly around the time that newly minted law review editors were hearing the good news, we raised the issue of how many minorities and women are being selected for law review.

It’s not a new debate; whether underrepresented minorities (URMs) and women are adequately represented on the nation’s leading law journals has long been a subject of controversy. But in light of the tough legal job market, in which credentials like law review membership are more valuable than ever, it’s certainly a subject worth revisiting.

We kicked off the discussion with this tip:

You may want to investigate proportions of URMs [underrepresented minorities] and women at some top 5 law reviews. I hear that [one school] took 29 1Ls, but only 7 women and no African-Americans. [Another school] took 45 first-year editors, about even male/female, but only 2 URMs in the bunch.

Which law journals are being referred to here? And how are URMs and women doing at other law reviews — perhaps yours is mentioned — around the country?

UPDATE: Please note that a few updates and corrections have been added since this post was originally published. Check them out after the jump.

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Congratulations, New Law Review Editors!
(And a question about minorities on law review.)

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It’s early August. Law students are getting ready to go back to school. And some students — lucky or unlucky, you be the judge — are going back earlier than others, to work on their schools’ law reviews.

Over the summer, rising 2Ls around the country received the rather important news: whether they made it on to their school’s law review. Serving on the school’s official law review can involve a lot of work. But it’s generally regarded as worth it, in terms of the prestige / résumé boost, intrinsic value of the experience, and networking opportunities with current and former editors. If you’ve been selected, congratulations!

New editors of the Harvard Law Review — former home of President Obama and still the nation’s most prestigious law journal, despite various incidents of ridiculousness over the past few years (scroll through our past coverage) — were notified last month, around the week of July 19. The good news was delivered primarily by phone.

The Yale Law Journal also welcomed its new editors last month, after selecting them through a Bluebook and editing competition. At a mixer I attended here in New York, for YLJ alumni and newly accepted editors, one joyous new recruit told me that he celebrated his acceptance by going out to Hugo Boss and buying shiny silver pants dress shoes. (“I went to Prada at first, but they did not treat me the way I should be treated!”)

Silver pants New shoes from Hugo Boss? Making law review is clearly a big deal.

But is the prize of law journal membership being distributed fairly? This year, at certain law journals, controversy appears to be brewing about the new editors….

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(And a question about minorities on law review.)“

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