In the coming weeks, many students at the University of Virginia School of Law will be trying out to join one of the school’s 10 academic journals, and considering which journal may be the right fit.
The publications, which are entirely student-run, offer a unique experience teaching useful lawyering skills, according to third-year law student Alex Briggs, the Virginia Law Review’s membership and inclusion editor. The review runs the unified journal tryouts, and Briggs is one of the tryout administrators.
“Being an editor on a journal is an excellent way to improve your research and editing skills, a lot of which are transferrable outside of legal scholarship,” Briggs said.
Briggs even credits his editorial experience with giving him an “edge” with research work at his summer job.
While each journal may be looking for something different in its prospective members, all applicants must go through the same tryout process: Bluebook editing exercises and an eight-page legal essay. For the editing portion, Briggs said, students are given an excerpt of a legal article with errors added. They must correct as many as possible based on Bluebook rules. For the writing portion, students must make a legal argument using just a “closed universe” of provided resources for a real unresolved legal question.
Prospective members can also submit an optional personal statement by Feb. 22.
“While personal statements must still be anonymous, they offer a way for students to showcase their...
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