So! The BYU Law Review has selected a new Board. Other than some basic training for my successors, I am done with Law Review. It was an educational and often entertaining experience; I didn't accomplish everything I'd hoped, but I think I came pretty close. And the new Board should do quite well.

I want to disclaim up front that what I'm about to say should not be taken as anyone's opinion but my own. I would hope this obvious, seeing as how it's my blog, but there's always someone... anyhow, the specifics of board selection are traditionally confidential, so I don't plan on discussing particular candidates by name. But I would like to talk about how I personally approached the task, and what I came away with.

Selection of a new Editorial Board is an interesting process. The current board--sixteen of us--interviewed the 2L applicants for Editor-in-Chief. We selected two of them as candidates, then every member of the Law Review voted between those.

I admit I harbored a secret desire to throw my vote behind a stellar candidate with less-than-stellar grades. Well, maybe it wasn't even that secret a desire. d^_^b But, contrary to my personal complaints, applicant GPA really did correspond in most cases to how well each candidate performed in their interview. There were a few notable exceptions, with both high GPAs performing poorly and low GPAs doing very well, but the applicant sample was small. In the end, the candidate I found best suited to the position was in fact someone with a great GPA. Too bad. d^_^b

After the body of the Law Review selected an EIC--they selected the candidate I thought best-suited, which was gratifying--we interviewed the rest of the applicants for the remaining 15 board positions. They gave us resumes, position preferences, the whole shebang. Here, with a larger sample, I was pleased to see that GPA corresponded a little less tightly to interview performance or other indicators of qualified candidacy. In fact one of the best interviews was with one of the lowest GPAs. But it was also interesting to see how the impression made in the interview sometimes overrode other factors--like relevant skill sets--in persuading my peers to vote this way or that. In at least one case, I think an ideal choice was overlooked based entirely on a poor interview.

Still, in the end I'm generally pleased with the final roster and expect good things to come from the new Editorial Board. My favorite question to ask was, "Who are some of your favorite legal theorists, or in the alternative what do you do to keep up on the state of modern legal theory?" This of course is a variation on my question for Chief Justice Roberts, and while some applicants were stymied, a lot of them had very good answers. A lot of them were also law-and-econ junkies, but hey, one battle at a time, right?

Looking back, it makes me wonder even more about the process of pinning down legal employment. For example, raw GPA actually painted an informative picture about many of the candidates--but, importantly, not all of them. Class rank, on the other hand, I found less than useless. If I was in the 2L class with my present GPA, it looks like I would already be in the top 20%, maybe even closing in on top 10%. The raw 2L GPAs start a lot higher than the GPAs in my class--in other words, the "number one" 2L has a higher raw score than the "number one" 3L--but the 2Ls are more spaced out as you descend through the ranks.

This is interesting because class rank ostensibly "evens out" competition across schools--for instance, BYU's enforced median is 3.3, while another school's may be 2.8, so comparing raw scores between applicants may not be very helpful, while "Top 10%" always means the same thing. But if "Top 10%" at BYU requires a minimum GPA of 3.8 one year, then a 3.6 the next, your ranking says a lot less about you than it does about the people around you. Which, now that I've said it, seems quite obvious where you have an enforced median, but I'd bet most recruiters don't think about it too deeply.

And while I could tell that everyone on the existing Board worked at professional restraint, just about everyone said or did something to suggest that they were pulling for their friends. I actually didn't have to do much pulling, as my favorite 2L did just fine without my interference, thank you very much. But "it's not what you know, it's who you know" clearly plays some role in legal interviewing--almost as much as making a good impression in the interview. Cronyism is certainly mitigated by the fact that the selection is made by the entire Editorial Board, but the human factor cannot be removed.

Anyhow, I suspect that this is a terribly boring post for all but a few of you, so here's the short version: I'm done with law review! And the new board will do fabulously.