A quick note about writing requirements: I know that if you are a moot court coach/editor, you can get major writing credit for doing a bench memo by yourself, and minor writing credit for doing a bench memo with another person.

Also, you can write a note, even if you aren't on a journal. It has less of a chance of being published, but that doesn't matter for getting credit, and you get the trade-off of not having to do endless bluebooking.

-- AmandaHungerford - 15 Apr 2008

-- AdamCarlis - 12 April 2008

Adam, your suggestion makes good sense. But even if I knew "what I know" and "what I don't know," I wouldn't feel ready to inquire "where to find out the stuff I need to learn," UNTIL I also knew what is this "stuff I need to learn." I feel like I skipped
a middle step, i.e. shining what I KNOW upon what I DON'T KNOW, in order to distinguish within the latter, what I should know from what I shouldn't.

As everyone knows, I'm the first to "puff up my chest and push forward, pretending" etc. etc. But until I know what I should know, I won't assume that lawyers are people I should learn it from. We can't have two uncontrolled variables at once, so I propose that we stereotype what persons in each profession know, and ask:
"Which information [i.e. held by lawyers, entrepreneurs, politicians, policemen, prisoners, professors, young parents, etc.] SHOULD WE KNOW?"

Can we have that discussion here -- what vocation and/or specialty SHOULD we be hearing from?

My assumption: we are talking about TAKING RISKS; therefore we'd want to hear from more entrepreneurs than lawyers. Or you can say "Entrepreneurial lawyers" if you'd like to end this discussion by demonstrating the Zen-like futility of asking questions about knowledge, and I will abide.

-- AndrewGradman - 15 Apr 2008

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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

As to the value of journals, it seems some journal is a prerequisite to a clerkship. According to CLS's clerkship manual either 95% or 99%(I can't remember) of students receiving clerkships had a journal on their resume. I also remember hearing a judge speaking about the clerkship application process saying she removes all the applications that don't have journals first. The value of a clerkship is subjective. Eben mentioned in class his District clerkship allowed him to see the law at work. I also know firms offer a bonus in pay and seniority to many who join with clerkships completed. The journal clerkship correlation seems to be the most important thing I've learned about journals so far.

A question of my own: Who knows how easy or hard it is to fulfill your major or minor writing requirements outside of a journal note? Is the journal note the best way to fulfill these requirements or just a common method?

-- JulianBaez - 14 Apr 2008