<p>How important is Law Review? What proportion of students are on a Law Review and how are they selected? How much time is normally involved in this activity?</p>
<p>How you get onto law review, how many students are on law review and how much time law review takes differ from school to school. At my law school, you got onto law review by taking part in a competition that began immediately following the last final exam following second semester, first year. The writing competition consisted of two parts -- the first required students to edit a ten- or fifteen-page selection using the Bluebook (and, of course, the selection was set up so that there were over 800 errors to be found), and the second required students to write a brief paper (I believe it was between five and seven pages) using a packet of provided research materials. Students were scored on the two parts of the writing competition, those scores were combined with some statistic using a student's grades, and the best among the students who applied made law review. At my law school, you could not simply "write on" law review without grades counting to some extent, and you could not "grade on" without participating in the writing competition. Many law schools have different methods, and in some law schools, the rules may change from year to year.</p>
<p>At my law school, probably 10% of students were on law review, though that 10% was not a good proxy for the top 10% of the class. Law review takes a significant amount of time. Students probably spent at least a couple of hours a day in the law review office 5-6 days a week. Sometimes students spend a lot more time than that in the law review office. What are they doing? Well, each article and student comment (also sometimes known as a note) is fact-checked, cite-checked and Bluebook edited at least three times before publication. You have to track down every single source, every single cite and not infrequently speak with the author. All of this can be painstaking work, particularly on the first review of a piece. Many students spent a lot of long nights and weekends in the law review office. Don't forget, too, that a law student's first semester of second year may not only be their first grueling semester on law review, but it is also the semester where on campus recruiting takes place for the all-important summer internship for the summer between second and third year. Between classes, interviews, call-back interviews and law review, I think that it can be the most difficult and challenging semester that a law student will ever face in school.</p>
<p>Aside from the usual factors as to how they are selected, amazingly enough in some schools the color of one's skin is now a factor</p>
<p>see :<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513672%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513672</a></p>
<p>Undergrad, law school, law review, employment, basically 4 level of affirmative action are in place - all color-coded to some degree,
however the bar exam in all jurisdictions (so far) - is still untainted</p>
<p>Thank you once again, sallyawp. I'm so glad to have your expert input! </p>
<p>Thanks to you also, citation. AA controversy seems to be everywhere, so I guess Law Review is no different. (Don't get me started!)</p>
<p>In addition to Law Review, law schools have specialized journals. Membership is usually determined by a writing competition. If your son is interested in IP law, a few schools, like American, have IP law journals. </p>
<p>At some schools, there are enough journal opporunities to go around, so if you don't make Law Review, you have other options.</p>
<p>That's good to know ariesathena. Son is really an excellent writer and actually scores better on verbal exams than math and science. Go figure! Right now he is busy working on getting the best grades he can in engineering and German. So far he has a 4.0, but he works a lot to get that. He has done some technical writing for engineering and writes for his German classes, but I wonder if maybe he should be spending more time writing in English...you know, practice a little more? Maybe technical writing and German writing won't cut it for law school.</p>
<p>Actually, technical writing is much closer to legal writing than normal English writing. Legal writing is very concise and structured. Technical writing teaches you how to do that, while normal English essay writing does not.</p>
<p>Most legal writing is designed to persuade -- briefs and motions, certainly, and law review articles, most definitely. Even most memoranda of law have a persuasive cast to them (e.g. no, there is no case law directly on point, or yes, the overwhelming evidence points to a finding that our client will be found guilty). </p>
<p>I think that a lot of persuasive writing, whether it is in essay format or otherwise, is much more akin to legal writing, where one typically makes a point and then provides facts and other information in an effort to persuade the reader that the writer's initial legal point is the correct one (or at least the one best supported by the facts). Writing that is designed to inform or to describe a circumstance or phenomena, like some English (expository) writing and much technical writing, is probably less like legal writing when it comes to mastering the art of subtle (and not-so-subtle) persuasion.</p>
<p>Technical writing can be persuasive writing. Don't idealize it too much. ;) In my old engineering firm, a lot of the revenue came from receiving Department of Defense contracts. When we wrote proposals, we were certainly trying to persuade them to give us money. When we wrote final reports, we wrote them with an eye towards getting future funding to continue our work. Certainly not just a dry recitation of the facts!</p>