Law Students

Journal Orientation

By Casebook Sherpa

This weekend is our quad-journal orientation. Each of our school’s four law journals has orientation where staffers learn the finer points of Westlaw, LexisNexis, and the law library while the editors lay out responsibilities for staff members and get our first (of 5) editing lectures on things like sentence structure, subject-verb agreement, editing for style, etc.

Last year, I sat through this as a staff member. It’s strange this year to be the one expected to provide answers and direction.

Yet, this is what’s cool about student law reviews. Students lead and manage a process that produces a body of scholarly work by editing and working with experts in the field. To my knowledge, that’s unprecedented in academia.

I certainly don’t think it’s necessary to do law review in order to have a successful law school experience. For many evening students it may not even be workable, for instance. But it sure is fun to be involved in that process.

Incidentally, for those who don’t work on a law review there are ample opportunities in law school to write a publishable piece as a good friend of mine is demonstrating. Working with a professor on a directed research project is sure to produce a paper you’re proud of, that is in your area of interest, and could be published in any number of places.

Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on August 09, 2009 (boomark / email).