Just a note on causation vs. correlation: If everyone who wants a clerkship thinks that you have to do a journal to get a clerkship, then everyone who gets a clerkship will have done a journal (or at least 95-99% of them will). What the judge in your anecdote said is another story, but I wonder how many judges have that policy. Maybe there's a few judges who do that, and cause a panic among risk-averse law students (including myself in that) who don't want to do anything that hurts their chances?

It may be that not doing a journal knocks you off the list of possibilities for a few judges. But if doing a journal really seems so onerous, is it worth doing just to increase your clerkship chances marginally by not getting eliminated at the first step by those judges? I think there might be some room for "If you don't like me the way I am, then I don't want to work for you anyway."

I definitely share your questions about the major and minor writing requirements, though. I think journal work might be good for that.

-- MichaelBerkovits - 14 Apr 2008