It's an angsty time of the year for an already-angsty population: law students who are asking themselves, SHOULD I DO LAW REVIEW?

I've faced this decision, chose NOT to do law review, and am (more or less) safely on the other side. So here's some unsolicited advice. THREAD:

To start, I have no personal stake here. My goal is to try and provide balanced advice b/c I've seen on some threads that #lawtwitter is telling stressed, busy, drained law students that law review is critical. I think it's a more complicated analysis than that. Here's how:

THE PROS. First, if you're asking yourself whether to commit hundreds of hours of time over the next couple of years to this thing called law review (not to mention an exhausting write-on exercise for many journals), you already know the positives.

Namely, law review is a resume line that signals ability to bluebook and attention to detail. If you publish a note, this also is a modest signal of writing aptitude. These signals are less important than they used to be, because law review is now often separate from grades.

It used to be that students would largely "grade on" to law review, so that law review membership was itself a direct proxy for good grades. Not so anymore, as many journals move to a more open write-on process. Still, hiring partners and judges lived in the old world, so some...

... may still labor under the misconception that law review = good grades and not-law-review = bad grades. That said, my sense is many (even most?) do not. I clerked for a CA4 judge and at SCOTUS, and have done more big law interviews than I can remember.

How many times, across all these interviews, do you think I was asked about the absence of law review on my resume?? Zero. Zilch. Never. So while I readily acknowledge that law review is a positive signal in many cases, I don't think it's a NECESSARY signal in any real sense.

So if there are modest (and perhaps diminishing) positives from law review, what are the NEGATIVES? Like anything else, law review is a trade off. In a perfect world with unlimited time, everyone should try to do it because why not? But that's not the real world.

So here are some things I personally found more important than law review. (Some may disagree and I'm fine with that! This is just one person's experience). Time with family, friends, and pets. Prepping for class and getting good grades. Reading. Independent writing projects.

With certain choices, it turns out you may be able to prioritize other things that send the same signal to potential employers. If you crush your classes and finish in top 5% or even better, no employer is going to worry you don't have what it takes b/c you didn't do law review.

In fact, I think most ppl would agree that employers would prefer a top 5% applicant w/ no law review over a top 25% or 50% applicant w/ law review. AND if you do a great independent writing project w/ a prof you respect, you can still publish (and cultivate a relationship!)

And more than anything, none of this matters at all if you are not in a good place personally and emotionally, esp. in COVID-19 era. So prioritize loved ones and relationships. That may be hard w/ law review b/ it is a huge time suck.

To be sure, some can do it all and have. Good for them! I wasn't one of them, yet I'm more or less doing just fine (even if I still suck at bluebooking!). Finally, a caveat: some of what I'm saying here is against interest. As a law prof, I depend HEAVILY on law review editors...

... who have made many good substantive suggestions and cleaned up countless messy citations and formatting errors in my work. So I'm enormously grateful to them, and don't want the pipeline of amazing editors to drain. So I'll emphasize that . . .

. . . Law review IS the right choice for some people. But that doesn't make it right for everyone. Figuring out which bucket you fall into is intensely personal and requires honesty with yourself and awareness of tradeoffs. I hope I've shed light on some of the latter.