Having been a law review editor through most of my law degree, I was interested to see this post on The Girl’s Guide to Law School.

The author, Jonathan Burns, urges a focus on first impressions, organization, and research. He closes the article with final comments: forget Bluebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. These apply to journals in the US, of course, but his point is that the law review editors and selection committee will not pay much attention to this.

The last part surprises me, because in my work as a law review editor, we do pay attention to this. We do not care much which style book is used, but we do want to see consistency and use of style guides. It is true, however, that we will do some of that editing ourselves or ask the author to do so, after we have selected the article for publication.

This is a good, brief article, with some sound advice. Read the full post here.