Dear First-Year Students,
Congratulations on nearing the end of your first year! After finishing exams, I hope that you take a moment to relax and recover—and then devote a full week to the write-on competition. When you rank the journals by preference, I invite you to rank The Georgetown Law Journal first.
The Journal, founded in 1912 and celebrating its 101st anniversary next year, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law reviews in the country. Our generalist approach—welcoming high-quality scholarship about any aspect of the law—offers members a unique opportunity to deepen their understanding of diverse legal subjects. Each year, The Journal selects for publication approximately twenty articles from more than two thousand submissions. This process offers an unparalleled opportunity to interact with—and critique—the work of the world’s most prominent legal scholars.
In addition to selecting and editing articles, Journal members write a scholarly note on any legal topic of their choice. All second-year members also contribute to our secondary publication—Annual Review of Criminal Procedure—that serves as the “practitioner’s bible” for the federal criminal bar.
Students may earn membership on The Journal in any of three ways:
(1) 50% of our new members are accepted solely on the basis of their write-on scores.
(2) 40 to 50% of our new members are accepted on the basis of a formula that equally weighs write-on scores and grades.
(3) Up to 10% of our new members are selected solely on the basis of their personal statement, provided that they have reached a certain threshold score on their write-on submission. Every student is encouraged to submit an optional personal statement describing how his or her diverse background will contribute to the membership of The Journal.
I invite you to discuss your interest with me or any other member of The Journal, and I hope you will preference The Georgetown Law Journal first—not only for the doors it will open throughout your legal career, but also for the skills you will develop, the first-class scholarship you will publish, and the friends and colleagues with whom you will work over the next two years. I look forward to welcoming many of you into our community as staff members on Volume 101 of The Georgetown Law Journal!
Sincerely,
Lala R. Qadir
Editor-in-Chief
lrq@law.georgetown.edu