Hallowed Be Its Name

Although debate has subsided since campus-wide protest last month compelled the prestigious Harvard Law Review to modify its controversial policy of selecting half of its editors solely on the basis of first year grades, the recent episode no less reflects the prominent position the Review occupies in the minds of students and in the legal

Nearly three-quarters of the Law School's first year class threatened to boycott the 97-year-old student-run journal of legal opinion, charging that grades were an arbitrary criterion for selection. Perceived by many as a stepping stone to lucrative jobs and elite academic appointments, the Review looms large before aspiring first year students (ILs).

Through a two-track selection process, the Review elects roughly 40 editors each year from classes that average 540 members. Under the current system, those whose grades miss the mark compete for remaining spots in a writing competition.

Partly in an effort to alleviate the pressure of the IL paper chase, the Review adopted a new system to take effect next year whereby writing performance will also account for 30 percent of the score in the grades track of the competition.

"The Law Review affects ILs in a big way," says Susan E. Keller '83, a coordinator of the IL protest. The weight it attaches to grades compounds the already considerable academic pressures of the first year, she adds.

It's something that's at least in the back of everyone's mind," says Robert L. Jones Jr. outgoing managing editor of the Review. "There are some people who before they every walk in the door, their one thought is to make Law Review," he adds.

Student concern about Review selection is understandable: aside from the satisfaction of contributing to its publication, editors can expect a wealth of other benefits. Editors and professors generally agree that the Review provides a significant advantage in the competition for judicial clerkships, faculty appointments, and, to a lesser degree, high-paying corporate jobs.

"It's a big boost--but I don't know if its's an automatic ticket," says newly elected Review President Robert D. Fram.

Nor is is a necessity; Law School Placement Office figures show that a multitude of positions are open to Law School graduates. From lasty year's graduating class, 124 went on to clerkships and 338 joined private firms.

"I don't think that there are many people who explicitly and cynically manipulate the Review for their own ambitions," says Scott L. Nelson '81, outgoing Review president But, he adds. "The problem of mixed motives is one that does detract from our ability to do what we're supposed to.

The greatest advantages fall on Review executives, Jones says. "There's no doubt that [the presency] in particular and other masthead positions carry a lot of prestige and open a lot of doors."

"Almost every Harvard Law Review president has clerked on the Supreme Court--its's almost automatic. If you're the president, and that's what you want to do, it's extraordinary that you wouldn't get it," he adds.

True to form, Nelson next year will clerk for Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White, and if past years are any indication, he will be among several Review alumni currently clerking at the high court.

The Harvard Law Review is perhaps the most respected law school journal in the country, heading the ranks of similar publications at Yale, Michigan, Stanford, and Chicago. "Harvard has had the reputation of being the number one review," says a Yale Law Journal editor who asked not to be named.

Frequently cited in court opinions and briefs, the Review is an influential fixture in legal circles.

With close to 9,000 subscribers, including universities and law firms around the globe, the Review has the widest circulation of any university review, Foreign air mail subscriptions cost $150 where domestic subscribers pay $32.

The Review publishes eight monthly issues during the academic year, including a special issue on recent Supreme Court decisions. The Review also publishes A Uniform System of Citation, the standard legal form book. More than 75,000 copies of the book are sold annually, bringing in half of the non profit corporation's $600,000 gross revenues.

Three years ago, the Review installed a computer system and remodeled its spacious Gannett House offices at an estimated cost of $75,000. The improvements forced the publication to borrow heavily from it's alumni reserve fund, and after two years of running in the red, it finally expects to break even this year, says outgoing Treasurer David Hoffman.

Producing each edition is a mammoth undertaking that draws on the strained energies of 92 staff members, plus outside authors and faculty consultants. Regular issues include articles written by professors or practitioners, student-written analytical "notes," and book reviews.

The Review strives for a diversity of opinions and subjects, says Fram. "We have everything from Wall St. concerns to broad jurisprudential theory," he adds, rejecting the traditional stereotype of the Review as practice-oriented in contrast to the supposedly more academic Yale Law Journal.

The Review's articles department receives an average of 600 manuscripts annually. Most of them are submitted by professors, but outgoing articles director Mark P. Szpak comments that recent submissions include "surprisingly cogent" technical pieces from a New York construction worker and a Martha's Vineyard housewife.

To avoid being influenced by authors' names or reputations, the editors consider the manuscripts anonymously, weeding out the "dubious" from the "promising" and eventually voting for the 10 to 15 that will be printed.

Being published in the Review is considered an important achievement for scholars who wish to publicize their work and further their careers. "It seems to be a kind of talisman that major law schools use in deciding whether to grant tenure to professors," Nelson says.

"Publishing first class law review articles is the sort of staple of legal scholarship that professors are expected to produce in order to get tenure, and in order to keep up their end of the bargain," says Michael Boudin '61, a lecturer at the Law School. "It is regarded as highly attractive in the legal community to publish a first class law article," he adds.

Szpak and Nelson note that some professors have sought to draw special attention to their manuscripts and on occasion authors have pressured Review members to publish their articles.

Last fall, Professor of Law Richard B. Stewart proposed that the Law School faculty publish a separate journal of its own, complaining that the Review's demand for long, meticulously researched articles limits professors' opportunities to air their ideas.

"You could take his proposal as dissatisfaction with the product or process here, but we take what the professors send us," Jones comments. "We actually spend a lot of time trying to cut their articles down to a manageable size."

Once earmarked for publication, articles undergo a rigorous eight-stage editing process in which Review editors scrutinize everything from footnotes to style. As Review executives map their progress on huge wall charts, the pieces often change dramatically, says Supervising Editor Susan F. Hoffman.

The authors are consulted in all editing decisions, and while some object to alterations, most appreciate the students' efforts to strengthen their writing, editors note. "It seems almost ludicrous in the abstract to think that a 2L should be telling a tenured professor at one of the nation's most prestigious law schools how he should change his piece, but in fact a lot of these pieces need work," says Szpak.

Boudin, who recently wrote a book review published in the journal, comments, "By the time they were through, I was exhausted but very impressed with the improvements they had made."

"It has to help an author to know that an army of editors has gone out and checked every statement in their piece for veracity," Szpak adds.

The process is slow and tedious, and this year the Review has fallen two months behind schedule--it just finished its January issue Nevertheless, it is still several steps ahead of the rival New Haven publication, from courtrooms and law offices around the nation, last years's Yale Law Journal executives are now struggling to complete the final four issues of their 1982 83 volume.

Nelson says that the Review's recent slippage occurred because "a large number of people at a crucial period of time were just not putting out the effort that they should have."

The demands on Review members' time can be overwhelming. Typically, editors spend most of their free time at the Review, sitting behind the keyboards of word-processing terminals or in the Review's legal library.

"The rule of thumb for second year students is that you spend 30 to 40 hours working at the Law Review; there's just no way you can do that and read all your cases and go to all your classes unless you're superhuman," says Jones.

Editors say they're forced to cram for exams and resort to prepared course outlines, but few complain that their grades suffer significantly. Many comment that skills they develop at the Review improve their academic performance.

Some Review editors are married with family lives, but for many, the intense atmosphere of Gannett House becomes a social focus as well. "As a social institution, it's not ideal," says Nelson. "Many people would be happier if they did more of their socializing elsewhere simply because things do get tangled up in people's feelings of intellectual self worth."

"People's egos tend to be at stake and that can place strains on relationships here," he adds.

Tensions also result from the two-track selection system, editors say. The grades route is considered more prestigious, and editors who join the Review later through the writing competition are sometimes accorded less respect, Hoffman says.

"Given the time difference and the weight that people tend to attribute to grades, there are in certain cases feelings of superiority or inferiority that manifest themselves in people's relationships," Nelson says.

Hoffman adds that the new selection process, which requires all candidates to participate in the writing competition, should erase those distinctions.

Additional strains can arise as members jostle for masthead positions. Fight editors vied for the presidency in the Review's recent election, which Nelson says was more divisive than the previous contest.

Fram, who emerged the victor, had the weighty responsibility of naming the rest of the masthead. After deliberating for a week, he filled the top executive spots with his former adversaries.

A self-described "liberal Democrat." Fram dropped out of Princeton University and worked in a sheet metal factory for two years before returning to earn his undergraduate degree. After graduating, he went to work for a dissident faction of the Teamsters union.

Fram now spends most of his waking hours behind the executive desk in the Review president's office, beneath stately portraits of Louis D. Brandies, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Class of 1861. Felix Frankfurter, and other eminent jurists.

Reflecting on the prestige and rewards of the Review, he remarks. "It's definitely a big plus and everyone knows that." But, he adds. "I just can't see it as the be-all and end-all."

"It seems almost ludicrous in the abstract to think that a 2 L should be telling a tenured professor at one of the nation's most prestigious law schools how he should change his piece, but in fact a lot of these pieces need work."

Outgoing Articles Director Mark P. Szpak