Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Too many law reviews? With thoughts on the interdisciplinary demographic trend

From the Law Blog:

The institution of law reviews has always been a great source of puzzlement to the Law Blog. As a 2L, the sunny afternoons we labored away blue-booking articles were — we’re pretty certain — among the most ill-spent hours of our law-school career. And yet we can’t deny the symbolic importance of law-review membership. Just look at the on-campus interview guide of any non-tier-one law school. Many employers are clear: No law review? No thanks.

So opening up our February issue of The National Jurist we were relieved to discover that these questions plague others, too. The article, entitled “100 Best Law Reviews,” focuses mostly on two methods of ranking reviews. Robert Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University Law Center, does his ranking based on prominence of the authors. John Doyle, a librarian at Washington & Lee University School of Law, uses number of citations in other articles and judicial opinions as the main metric of importance. Not surprisingly, both methods get you to the same result: the law reviews at Columbia, Harvard and Yale rule the law review roost.

But here’s the commentary that caught our eye: Jarvis said that most law reviews are so desperate that he could publish his grocery list. “The writing in law reviews is atrocious. The question is: Why does this institution continue even if it’s a product no one wants and no one needs?”

Well, why does it continue? Jarvis explains: “Many schools won’t have just one. They have five or six. That’s because they’re relatively cheap to operate and some people believe working on any law review will enhance a student’s job prospects. These days, you look with great suspicion on a student without a journal on their resume.”

Law Blog loyals, two questions for you. First, does law review experience actually make better law students and lawyers, or does membership merely mean that you got good grades as a 1L? Second, do you agree with Professor Jarvis that the importance of law review in the job search process is leading to shoddy scholarship and academic waste?

UCLA has an appalling impressive total of 12 student-edited journals. Indeed, I’m told there are so many law journals that some are having trouble filling their ranks, especially the 7 “identity” journals.

Scott Dodson opines:

I think journal experience is beneficial.  Journal members learn at least two skills: how to Bluebook and how to edit.  Granted, journal Bluebooking is different than brief Bluebooking, and scholarly editing is different than brief editing, but there are also similarities, and I think those similarities end up enhancing lawyerly skills.  Obviously, the level of benefit depends upon the journal, but I think it is a benefit in any case.  I was on two journals at Duke (yes, I was not very bright back then)—Duke Law Journal and Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum.  I got more out of my experience on Duke Law Journal, but I benefitted from my experience on DELPF, too.  A third skill that many journal members develop is writing, if they have the opportunity to publish a student note or comment.  Not every journal member does that, but those that do usually gain valuable writing experience.  And I have seen some excellent student notes, even from relatively lower-ranked journals.

I do think that the abundance of journals can lead to shoddy scholarship and academic waste in some cases.  But my guess is that most cases of shoddy scholarship and academic waste would have been done anyway and still have found its way into some publication medium even without such an abundance of journals.  And, I think there is real value in most journal writing, even those that have little name recognition.  Practitioners are often relegated to more obscure journals, and although sometimes those articles are less scholarly and more doctrinal (or even patently advocacy pieces), they can still add positive value to the overall discussion.  And, finally, I think that there are some real niches that secondary journals fill even if the supply of articles is low.  The University of Arkansas has three journals, for example.  The Law Review, the Journal of Food Law & Policy, and the Journal of Islamic Law & Culture.  The latter two may struggle to fill volumes, but they are also fairly valuable products in niche markets.

As somebody who served on two law reviews during his law school days, it ill-behooves me to disagree. In my case, writing student notes was valuable training for my later academic career. law review membership also provided a useful credential in the teaching market.

Yet, I wonder whether the plethora of law reviews can survive certain trends in legal education. I’m more or less resigned to the trend towards interdisciplinary scholarship. As long as law schools pay significantly higher than most humanities disciplines, there will be plenty of economists, philosophers, and other social scientists who are attracted to law teaching for pecuniary reasons. Because law faculties tend to replicate themselves, the growing numbers of JD/PhD faculty members will help tilt the hiring process even further towards hiring their ilk (usually from their old boy/girl network). There’s both demand and supply forces trying to turn law schools into quasi-graduate schools. If this trend continues, as I begrudgingly believe it will, there will be growing pressure for faculty to publish academic press monographs and articles for faculty-edited journals.

If I’m right about the demographic trends, the supply of high quality articles targeted to student-edited law review will shrink as the work that would have gone into them goes into books and peer-reviewed articles. If so, the trend towards “shoddy scholarship and academic waste” is likely to accelerate. In particular, the niche journals are likely to be hit hardest.