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Law ReviewA law review is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, published by an organization of students at a law school. It is also the term used to describe the extracurricular activity of assembling this journal engaged in by members of the responsible student organization. Law review and moot court are the two most significant activities of this nature in which law students can engage. Law Review as a Journal Law review articles are typically written by law professors, legal practitioners, and judges although many law reviews also publish shorter articles written by students, called 'notes' or 'comments.' Submissions are typically required to be cite-edited in the bluebook format, which is itself a collaborative product of four law reviews. Almost every American law school publishes at least one law review, and the oldest and most prestigious law schools tend to have several. Generally, one such journal will be unlimited as to the scope of legal issues addressed therein, and the rest will focus on issues in a specific area, such as international law, environmental law, or human rights. The University of Pennsylvania Law Review is by far the oldest such journal, having published continuously since 1852. Also among the oldest and most storied law review publications are the Harvard Law Review, begun in 1887 and the Columbia Law Review, successor to the Columbia Jurist, which had begun in 1885. As law professor Erwin N. Griswold wrote of the Harvard Law Review: "Some people are concerned that a major legal periodical in the United States is edited and managed by students. It is an unusual situation, but it started that way, and it developed mightily from its own strength." Erwin N. Griswold, The Harvard Law Review - Glimpses of Its History as Seen by an Aficionado (1987). Online legal research providers Westlaw and Lexis give users access to the complete text of most law reviews published beginning from the late 1980s. Another such service, Heinonline, provides actual scans of the pages of law reviews going back to the 1850s. In 1995, the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology, or JOLT, became the first law review available exclusively on the internet. http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/index.asp Law review articles serve an important purpose in expressing the ideas of experts in various legal fields with the direction that the law of that field should take. Such writings have proven influential in many court decisions, and have frequently been cited as authority by the United States Supreme Court. Law Review as an Activity Student invitation to membership in the law review is by no means automatic. Students who have completed the first year of law school are usually selected to serve on the law review based on their grades (referred to as a 'grade-on' system), their performance in a scholastic contest known as a write-on competition, or some combination of these elements. A write-on competition usually requires all applicants to write an article of a pre-set length about a specific topic - usually a recent Supreme Court decision. The competition will typically be graded blindly, with submissions identified only by a number which the graders will not be able to connect to a particular applicant. A student who has been selected to the law review is said to have "made the law review." Once selected, students will generally be required to write an article of publishable quality (although it need not actually be published), and to thoroughly edit articles submitted to the law review from outside sources. Students who serve on the law review are typically divided between staff members and editors. All second-year students will be staff members, and some will be chosen to serve as editors during their third year. Because of the intense experience gained in the process of this endeavor, law review participation is frequently a key factor among judges and firms looking to hire law school students upon their graduation. Many federal judges and partners at the largest law firms were, in turn, members of their law school's law review.
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