Making Law Review Is Career Gold. NYU Students Want Cash Too

For the most ambitious law students, getting into a top-tier school is only the beginning. Making law review is usually the next punch on the ticket to the profession’s most elite circles.

Former President Barack Obama was famously a Harvard Law Review editor, as were three current Supreme Court justices — three others were on the Yale Law Journal. Many top private-practice lawyers also once shared the experience of spending long nights checking citations in scholarly legal articles.

And none of them got paid for it.

A sign on Vanderbilt Hall at the New York University School of Law

Photographer: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

But some students at New York University School of Law want to change that. Members of the NYU Law Review and seven other journals sent a letter and a 300-signature petition to the administration demanding either hourly pay or academic credit. If they get their way, the students say NYU would become the first law school in the country where journal editors are paid.

“There’s an inherent assumption that you don’t need to be compensated for this work because the compensation that you’re receiving is being able to put law review or whatever journal you’re on on your resume,” said Malina Gulino, a second-year NYU law student and member of the law review.

The students say that attitude restricts the career benefits of law review membership to those who can afford to work for free, a group that is less diverse than the student body at large.

“There should be other people who look like me or come from more impoverished backgrounds than me who should be able to be part of this institution,” said Devin McCowan, a Black third-year on NYU’s law review. “That’s really important, especially if we want to create a broader legal system where people go out into a work force that’s more equitable.”

Enhanced Opportunities

The students also argue that the reflected prestige of the law journals benefit the university as well and that the costs are reasonable for the law school, where tuition is $73,216 a year. According to Gulino, paying $15 an hour to law students working on journals would probably cost NYU less than $1 million a year.

NYU’s administrators met with students late last week to discuss the letter and petition, but no decisions were made.

“Student participation on law journals is an important part of the academic and intellectual life of the law school,” Michael Orey, a spokesperson for NYU’s law school, said in a statement. “It offers students valuable additional legal training outside the classroom that can enhance their professional opportunities.”

The career benefits are undeniable. Being on law review at an elite school is practically a prerequisite for prestigious judicial clerkships. Big law firms that already pay first-year associates starting salaries of $215,000 a year also offer big signing bonuses to former clerks — those who’ve worked with Supreme Court justices can command $400,000 or more.

Legal recruiter Jackie Bokser LeFebvre said law firms see a lot of value in law review as a training ground and as a way for budding lawyers to distinguish themselves from their fellow students.

‘Stamp of Prestige’

“Having law review as a stamp of prestige and an excellent training ground really propels people’s careers and helps them stand out,” she said.

Though NYU students hope to be pioneers in pay for law review work, the school does already offer academic credit to third-years for the long hours they spend checking citations. Many law students would be happy to get that.

Cornell Law Review editor-in-chief Gigi Scerbo expressed support for NYU’s efforts but said her members were only pushing for academic credit right now.

“We hope to achieve compensation for journal work in the form of class credit at our own institution, and look forward to having a productive conversation with our faculty about obtaining such compensation,” she said.

But the credit offered doesn’t really make up for the time commitment that journal work demands, said Jacqui Pittman, a third-year and executive editor of the law review at Vanderbilt Law School. She estimates that she spends about 50 hours a week editing articles and engaging in managerial work at the journal. She doesn’t regret it though.

“The work that you’re doing and the quality of the work that you’re doing is so important to legal scholarship,” she said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Hadriana Lowenkron in New York at hlowenkron@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Anthony Lin at alin364@bloomberg.net

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