Recently, Adam Liptak wrote a piece for the New York Times, which questioned the current system of student-written law reviews.  Here are a couple of excerpts for flavor:

“These student editors are mostly bright and work hard, but they are young, part-time amateurs who know little about the law or about editing prose. Yet they are in charge of picking the best articles from among many hundreds of submissions written by professors with authentic expertise in fields the students may never have studied.”

“Law reviews are not really meant to be read. They mostly exist as a way for law schools to evaluate law professors for promotion and tenure, based partly on what they have to say and partly on their success in placing articles in prestigious law reviews.”

There have been a plethora of critiques of Liptak’s article on legal blogs.  However, neither Liptak’s article nor any of the comments I have read mention whether working on a law journal is valuable for helping law students prepare to practice law.

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