ILR

In law school there are a lot of opportunities for things to take up your time. The most prestigious is probably law review. Basically, every law schools have scholarly journals that basically review laws and in some instances provide proposals for new laws. These journals contain works from professors across the country and student works called “notes.” My law school has three law reviews, with the most important being Indiana Law Review. The top ten percent of the class automatically get in. Those who aren’t in the top ten percent have an opportunity to “write-on” by submitting a writing sample on an assigned topic and doing a sample editing assignment. If you do write on you also have to be in the top forty percent of your class. I was lucky enough to write on and get on the Indiana Law Review.

Your first year you are considered student note candidate. Your main responsibility is to write a note that is 25 pages in length, not including footnotes. You also have editing assignments to make sure that the articles submitted for publication conform to legal citation style. In writing your note you work with a law professor to help you along the way. I chose my criminal law professor, Professor Silva. Her area of research deals mainly with prisoner reentry.

Ever since I took a tour of the York County Prison during a scouting event one evening during mutual I have been fascinated by the extremely high recidivism rates of ex-convicts. When I went on the tour of my local prison at age 16 the rate there was 80 percent. That means that 80 percent of their prisoners return within three years. I thought that was crazy and a huge problem. I used to think that it was because that prisons weren’t harsh enough. That’s an uneducated view of the problem. The problem is once they get out. They aren’t able to find work or places to live so they are forced back into their old ways. My note examined this problem and argued that we should give employers a greater tax incentive to hire ex-offenders.  Mine didn’t end up getting selected for publication, but it was fun to write. If you’re curious or just need something to put you to sleep one night, check it out.

In your second year, there are a variety of positions that individuals have, I was lucky to only be an associate editor which basically means that I just edit articles as they come along. Of course we got a last minute one to edit this week, so that is how I spent my Saturday morning. It seems though, that Law Review is not as prestigious as it once was. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal and I haven’t even had it come up at any of my interviews. It’s been a good experience though.