A Shout Out to Law Review, and The Real Reason Rankings are Dangerous

[Thane Messinger]

When the Chief Justice gets into trouble, you know we're about to have some fun . . .

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_prof_responds_after_chief_justice_roberts_disses_legal_scholarship/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_email

Enjoy,

Thane.

PS:  As to the subject line and for bigs especially, while it might take a few levels of inference, the seeds of rankings' true pervasive (and perverse) impact is seen in Roberts' remarks.  (Not as to Roberts, but as to law professors and the ever-more-irrelevant frenzy of the bulk of legal scholarship.)  What's interesting more than a professor's rebuttal are the comments from practitioners that follow the article.  Scroll down for more reading fun.

[bigs5068]

Nice I really liked the response by concurring opinion. It was a rebuttal with actual facts that offered some analysis to it. Politicians and a lot of lawyers could learn from this kind of thing.

In regards to Robert's I don't think law review is really an indicator of legal education. It contains 10 to 15% of law school students. Many of them are writing on something they find interesting and law review is just one of the many things a law professor does. There may be a disconnect between legal education and the practice of law, but addressing problems with law review is not where the problem is.

Even if law review were to be a perfectly run fluid system 85% to 90% of law students would still have problems. The problem to me is that you are not required to ever hold a job of any form before attending law school or becoming a member of the bar. Furthermore, law school doesn't teach you how to be a lawyer and it seems to be a widely acknowledged fact that law school doesn't teach you to be a lawyer. Obviously it teaches you a lot, but in regards to the actual work unless you take specific classes you would not know the who, what, when, where, and why of how to file a complaint. You would not know how to prepare a proof of service, just many of the pure basics are not taught.  Maybe they could at least make you specialize in something because you can put in a decent effort get through law school and pass the bar. Then still have no idea how to do the most basic thing.

[Morten Lund]

During the totality of my legal career, I have read ... let me think ... ZERO law review articles for professional purposes.  I'll occasionally read an article for personal interest and amusement, but professionally?  They are completely irrelevant, at least to my practice.

Actually, there is a caveat:  Occasionally a client of mine will get a hold of a law review article and want to act on what he read in that article, which so far has been impossible or illegal 100% of the time, thereby requiring me to spend time explaining that a discussion of how the law ought to be, or might be, is different from how the law actually is.

So the result for me is that law review articles have had a net negative impact on my professional career.

[nealric]

During the totality of my legal career, I have read ... let me think ... ZERO law review articles for professional purposes.  I'll occasionally read an article for personal interest and amusement, but professionally?  They are completely irrelevant, at least to my practice.

Some practice areas are more into them. As a tax lawyer, I read law review or other journal articles on a daily basis. That said, we tend to focus more on professional journals like Tax Notes as opposed to student edited law reviews.