Law Review Write On
Ok, it is becoming increasingly clear I am going to have to do the write-on competition in July. The top half of the class gets invited to write on, and I'll definitely land there, just not in the top [miniscule] percent that walks on. Sh*t.
Frequent Citations, LawDawg, and others have described the write on process at their schools -- a closed memo or note and a Bluebooking assignment. They describe a process that takes about a week.
We get a weekend to do the same thing. As in pick up Friday night, drop off Monday morning at something like 7:00 a.m. weekend.
Hmmm... law review as a suicide pact.
Anyway, any others care to share their write-on experience, advice, or share links to blog posts of others who have successfully written on?
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6 little fish:
First, if you have a weekend, so does everyone else. Second, the weekend is ample, especially since it will take place long after exams. We had a week to do ours, but we also had to pick up the packet the day after we all took our last final.
The best way to approach it is to READ the instructions FIRST. A lot of people don't read the instructions and end up writing something other than what the committee is looking for.
Once you've read the instructions, read through the packet once with a wide open mind. Jot down notes as you go along. Then read it again, focusing on those things that seem to cohesively come together to form an idea or a thesis. Keep jotting down notes.
Then you just have to start writing. I wrote pages of material in about a day and a half, then went back and outlined the material I'd written. I discovered my organization was way off, and re-ordered several chunks. Once I'd done that, it actually just came together as a cohesive argument.
Don't be too ambitious. If there's an obvious idea, jump on it--and then write the shit out of it. Usually in these things, there are a few solid ideas that are going to be apparent to every close reader. USE ONE OF THEM. If you pick the idea that you know you can write and that's easily supported in the materials, you can focus on making your writing pristine rather than on trying to make an argument that's barely there.
It'll be a sucky weekend, but you have time to prepare for it. Bone up on your Bluebook, get some rest before it starts, and jump in!
Ugh...I'm in the middle of my write-on right now. My school doesn't allow anyone to grade on so everyone has to do the competition.
We got 2 weeks to do a Bluebooking excercise (correcting 20 citations) and edit a short paragraph for grammer/citation errors and then also write a 20 page Case Comment. The comment portion is closed research meaning that we can only use what they gave us as secondary sources and any case that the case we were assigned happended to cite but nothing else.
Even though I had 2 weeks to do it as usual I have procrastinated until the very end and now I find myself with 24 hours to go and I only have 1 page of my comment written so far. I guess I'll find out in a few weeks if I screwed myself over by not spending anymore time on this, but I would have loved this whole thing to only have been assigned for a weekend seeing as how that's all the time I'm putting into mine anyways.
Good luck with your write on!!!
I have a somewhat-lengthy response here: http://www.macknzie.net/blog/2007/06/#a000721
Basically, it says to do it.
If you don't want to read all of my response, it also says do it.
Oh, I plan to do it. Just seeking guidance.
January 2009: According to Google this post turns up for the search "law review write on"
Advice: buy Volokh's book Academic Legal Writing. Read it. Done. Worked for me.
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