Journal Tryouts are the Biggest Scam in the Law School

Journal Tryouts are this weekend and without a doubt a lot of the 1L class will use that as an excuse to miss this weekend’s parties. We are going to tell you not only why you shouldn’t use journal tryouts as an excuse, but why you should opt out of journal tryouts completely just like we did. So put down your journal if you picked one up, and don’t worry, you can return it completely unfinished to the law review office with no repercussions (Ted returned his the same day last year), and listen while we drop some knowledge on you.

The first thing about Journal Tryouts that should turn anyone off are that they are a Pyramid Scheme of misery. First you spend a god awful miserable weekend doing the tryout in which you don’t go out, spend hours staring at the bluebook, and generally hate life. Finally you think you’ve put together a good package and will be judged based on the legal reasoning and logic of the written part. WRONG. Being on a Journal is not about original legal thought. Its about proofreading. They only care how well you can decide whether a period goes inside a parenthesis or whether your pin cite was in the proper format.

Once you get on the journal you just get more mindless crap work. The only people who do any “substantive” work are the people on the managing board. The work you will be doing this spring (o yeah, you get at least once cite check this spring, in the weeks leading up to exams, you will realize the importance of this later when we explain how grades are the only determinant of what jobs you get) and next year is called cite checking. This is basically blue booking an article on some boring obscure legal topic and then checking to make sure that what the author cited actually pertains to what they wrote. We have heard stories of lazy authors just citing an entire book for a single fact and the hapless law student cite checker having to read through the entire book just to make sure that yes, James Monroe once made a speech pertaining to the Constitutional validity of the Post Office.

Lets just say that by 3L year you make it on to the Managing and get some fancy title like “Articles Editor”. This then puts you in the absurd position of determining what actually gets published in your journal. Here you are, some 3L whose only experience at all in “Law and Business” is that you took corporations and that time you and your friends got really high and argued whether “like Socialism would work man”, and now YOU are going to decide whether Posner’s article is fit for publication? Even the newest professors at the lowest ranked law schools know an incredibly substantial amount more about the law than you do, and here you are tossing out the next potentially brilliant article on how legal systems can fix the economy just because you have never heard of the article and can’t understand it. Pretty arrogant system to have students sit in judgment of professors on something students know nothing about There is a reason every other major field such as medicine, has peer reviewed journals. Its because you need to be an actual peer of the person writing the article in order to review it.

Alright, so maybe you don’t believe us and aren’t willing to recognize that the entire system of legal scholarship is a sham. You aren’t doing this for academic reasons, you just want a job, and a journal will help you there right? Wrong Again. Out of the 2L/3L classes there are currently about 475 people on journals/law review out of 730 total. The graduating class of 2006 had 366/370 people employed in legal jobs at graduation. Some how that 1/3 of the class not on journals are still getting jobs. They aren’t getting good ones though are they? Here is some slight anecdotal evidence. We looked at the first 10 2Ls we could think of when it comes to going out. 2 of them are on Journals. 4 of them are working at firms ranked in the top 10 by Vault. Which 4 you ask? 4 who are not only not on Journals, but who also didn’t do Moot Court. All 10 of them have jobs at top 50 law firms as ranked by Vault. We go to UVA Law. EVERYONE THAT HAS A PULSE AND WANTS A JOB WILL GET ONE. You know what else? The person at the “worst” firm out of the entire class will probably be paid just about the same as the editor in chief of law review.

But I have nothing else on my resume, won’t employers be concerned? We had nothing else on our resume except our 1L summer job. Just talk about that. Have some random stories about things you worked on this summer and that will easily substitute the time when you would otherwise be talking about fixing that pin cite. Interviews for 2L jobs are about 2 things: Grades and not being a social retard. If you can hold a conversation with another human being you will get a job. In most of our interviews we talked about sports, how we had no idea what kind of law we want to practice, and how much the UVA alums interviewing us wished they were back in Charlottesville full time. Remember how the only thing about getting into law school that mattered was your LSAT and your undergrad GPA? Well being on a Journal is the equivalent of being in the Pre-Law society in undergrad. It doesn’t matter at all and just makes you look like a gunner.

Journals can’t be completely worthless can they? No, if you want to clerk for a Federal Appellate Court Judge you need to not just be on a Journal, but on law Review. You also need to be in the top quarter of the class grades wise. So if you think you are going to be in the top 25% of the class after 3 years ( if you aren’t there yet you probably never will be so we are talking about maintaining that status) and you aren’t going to grade onto law review, but think you are one of the top 15 people in the entire class at Bluebooking then go for it, but guess what? You’re still a gunner and everyone else will be out getting drunk tonight.

If your inner gunner can’t be completely bought off through alcohol then you can always do Moot Court in the fall. We didn’t, but it basically acts as an equal substitute in the mind of employers and it also sends a signal if you are interested in litigation. Moot Court, shitty as it is, is a one off level of misery, whereas a Journal is a sustained level of torture for three years.

Now that you have no excuses not to come out tonight, onto the party preview.

Rating:(Predicted) 4.25 We are skeptical of Frat house parties since this year's one had serious problems as did last year's, but the fact that this is hosted by the First Year Council seems to indicate that 1Ls will be out in force despite Journal Tryouts. They also hired what seems to be some crazy cover band called SICK FEED that sounds like a lot of fun. We can only hope that the 1Ls have managed to learn keg location management in their time here so far.

Costumes: Shipwrecked:Anything but clothes. This means duct tape, Saran Wrap, Cardboard, Aluminum Foil, Suits you have constructed out of chubby women that you store in a well in your basement and have put the lotion on their skin, and the like. You can also work in some sort of desert island theme with various vegetation, coconut bras, maybe a fig leaf covering the genitals adam and eve style.

Directions to Sigma Pi Frat House Located at 1533 Virginia Ave.

BILL