1. Finished product with your name on it looks pretty good (although you'll never look at it again for fear of finding an error).

2. Like being around highly motivated people.

3. Like complaining about work.

4. Opportunity to write something publishable (which you probably won't do if you have to motivate yourself).

5. More exposure to academic legal writing. Yes, even at the cite checker stage, where you can learn the nuts and bolts.

1. I'm in agreement with Matto on the being around motivated people thing. I'm most comfortable when I'm the dumbest person in the room, and law review gives me that chance every day.

2. You really can't overstate the advantage it gives come interview time. Really.

3. Free food & coffee. Now, any self-respecting journal at your school is going to have free coffee in the office. But the LR is more likely to have better coffee and better food donated. (Ex: We have donuts every Tuesday, Bagels every Wednesday, and breakfast tacos every Thursday). These things are important to me.

4. You can stop worrying. Though your peers on law review may do bigger and better things than you, everyone else is going to feel, in some way, however unfair that may be, that they've got to do more to catch up to you. And that's a nice place to be.

5. Whatever. Citechecking is fun.

breakfast tacos? what the hell are those?

breakfast tacos? what the hell are those?

Absolutely the best thing to eat when you're drunk and trying to ground the alcohol in your stomach. TC sells them 11pm-noon, because you wouldn't want to eat them during normal food hours.

And in a desperate attempt to make this comment law-relevant, Taco Cabana was in a SCOTUS case in 1992.

The real question is why those of us on specialty journals keep at it, especially since it does *not* have the interview season benefits and most of the time-sucking costs.

Really, though, the new edition of the Bluebook is necessary, if only to correct the FUBAR'd methods currently used to cite internet sources.

I don't know about other law reviews, but the cite-checking duties really aren't that bad -- less time than any part-time job I ever had. It's writing a note that's painful, and I think the process there is valuable and also potentially rewarding.

Never mind the interviewing benefits.

Oh. Fuck. My note. Thanks for reminding me.

Er, the reason that law firms pay for law review graduates is tied, in part, to the fact that being on law review and doing all that cite checking forces you to memorize it and do it right.

Clerking for a federal judge, in part, is much like cite checking -- only legal briefs instead of articles.