HLS in Focus

I was walking into the library to do some studying last Saturday when I noticed something was awry. On Saturdays Langdell is usually pretty well populated with students getting a jump on their weekend homework, but today it was unusually packed. What’s more, the people were all organized into groups of about 5-10 sprawled out at any given table. Each table had a couple bags of snacks strewn about and a book cart at the end that students were frantically going back and forth from. I was scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck was happening when it dawned on me: with journal recruitment in full swing, I was witnessing the first batch of massive fall sub-citing.

For those that don’t know what sub-citing is (I didn’t until a week ago) it’s the sometimes tedious process of double-checking every footnote in a given journal article to verify it’s accuracy. It is also a rite of passage for any first year student hoping to crack their way into the journal market. The journals usually hold mass sub-cites early in the fall and spring semesters to expose 1Ls to their work.

I was a little concerned watching all of this take place because I knew that the sub-cite for a journal I was joining, the Journal on Legislation, was taking place the next day. Thus far I had had what I guess is the typical 1L journal picking experience. I had gone to the journal fair, signed up for a bunch that I thought sounded interesting, attended a slew of info sessions, free lunches, and happy hours, then eventually narrowed it to the one that interested me most. I had felt pretty good about my choice, but watching my fellow first year students pore over their texts made me a little nervous about what I had gotten myself in to.

The next day I went to my sub-cite expecting mind-numbing work. I was shocked when the first thing that we did was actually go over the substance of our article and talk about ways that we thought it could be changed. The editors were interested in any feedback that they could relay to the article’s authors. Next came the sub-citing itself. Granted, the activity wasn’t horribly entertaining (you can only flip through so many political science books verifying that facts are correct before you start to go just a little bit crazy). However, it was good to be hanging out with a group of people interested in similar legal issues as me, and to work on a piece of scholarship in its very early stages. Also, I got some decent tips about law school and the legal profession in general from the 2Ls and 3Ls in the group. 

I think one of the benefits of going to a school the size of HLS is the sheer volume of extra-curricular opportunities available. With the massive number of journals, all jockeying for new recruits, I had the flexibility to shop around and find the one that made the most sense for me. This helped turn what could have been a pretty boring endeavor, into a rewarding extracurricular activity.

- Anit