Every year, incoming 1Ls are faced with a seemingly difficult choice: whether to participate in the lamest extracurricular in the law school or whether to spend their time doing better things. After struggling with this decision for several minutes, approximately 95% of you will sign up for Law Review (or some other journal). The remaining minority will regret your choice for the rest of the year. Don’t. Here’s why:
10. The work that assistant editors actually do sucks. What do assistant editors actually do? Read every paper that the editors assign to your aptly-named “cell” group; decide which, if any, don’t suck; and pass those up to people who know more about the law than you do. You are also individually assigned the privilege of reviewing one or two articles for originality and authenticity. If an article from your cell group gets passed up, you THEN get to check every footnote to make sure it’s correct. FUN!
9. Nine out of ten papers that you read won’t even be good enough to make it in. The tenth paper will be critically flawed, but out of a sense that you must have read something decent in all that tripe you will pass it up to the law review “conference.” This is basically a forum for members of the legal intelligentsia to shit all over the papers and tell their authors what’s wrong with them. Which is a HUGE honour for the authors by the way.
8. There’s mad pressure. You’re the last line of defence in keeping Fareed Zakaria types from publishing under our esteemed masthead. If Time and CNN couldn’t stop him, what are your chances of catching a cunning legal fraudster?
7. Because “everyone else is doing it” (although 95% technically isn’t “everyone”) is a terrible reason for doing it. Remember how you read Fifty Shades of Grey because everyone else was reading that, and how you strongly regretted that decision? Joining law review is similar, if not quite as boring and repetitive. (Although it is arguably a toss-up as to whether making it through the trilogy is more or less of an accomplishment than toughing it out to make Editor-in-Chief in 3L.)
6. Because “Barack Obama was the first black Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Law Review” is also a terrible reason. President Obama is very inspirational, but Law Review is not. Also, the UTFLR is not the Harvard Law Review. Just saying…
5. You spend a whole weekend per semester doing the most boring stuff imaginable (i.e. the stuff described in item 10). I can’t emphasize enough how boring this stuff is.
4. You spend a single weekend per semester doing the most boring stuff imaginable (i.e. the stuff described in item 10). Firms do not respect this stuff and place zero value on it on a cv. Not only do you develop zero useful skills, you also commit very little of your time to it. (i.e. “I will show recruiters that I’m good at time management” isn’t actually a thing.) To the 95% of students who do Law Review in 1L and NOT in 2L, expect firms to laugh at that pathetic paragraph (about cite-checking!) that you thought might buff up your résumé.
3. In fact, firms care so little about the Law Review that you will never, EVER be asked about it in an interview. Every single lawyer knows exactly what Law Review is, and realizes that there is not a single way to make a conversation about it interesting.
2. Legal scholarship is actually really boring. A lot of people come into law school assuming it isn’t, but unfortunately they are wrong. Believe it or not, having a BCom and a keen interest in business does not make restitution, non est factum, or any other doctrine of contract law remotely interesting. Sadly, it does not make those concepts any easier to understand either.
1. Because you have OPTIONS. Everyone has different priorities when it comes to deciding the extracurriculars by which to over-extend themselves. Some people want to gain relevant experience while some just want to have fun. At the end of the day, if all you’re concerned about is having something to talk about during interviews (which is the primary concern of many 2Ls at this time), the latter approach is by far the best. Any interviewer can sense what you’re truly passionate about (although passion is a pretty strong word when it comes to law school extracurriculars). So do what you like!
