One of the most important criteria for getting an academic job is the candidate’s publication record. There are some practical steps you can take as a student to publish scholarly work.

1. Develop Research Ideas: Take classes in which you will have the chance to write scholarly papers and get to know professors. As you take classes, start a file of ideas that might become articles. It is advantageous, although not essential, that there be some intellectual relationship among your different articles, so as to form a coherent research agenda. This doesn’t require that they all deal with the same subject matter (e.g., environmental law). They could instead share a common set of concerns (e.g., distributional fairness; the (dis)incentive effect of legal rules on individual behavior; the litigation process) or a common set of methodological tools (e.g., historical, qualitative empirical investigation, experimental, econometric, philosophical) that you are applying in different substantive areas. But the most important thing is to get writing done, and on subjects you care about, even if the various papers don’t obviously cohere.
2. Write an article: If possible, you should try to produce at least one paper while at law school that you can turn into a publishable article (or student note).
3. Write a book review: Many law reviews like to publish book review essays regularly, and often have fewer such submissions from established faculty than they would like. If you pick out a book on a hot topic or by a prominent professor and submit a review to a flock of law reviews, there is a good chance of having it published, even while you are a student.
   • Unlike other disciplines, in law the book review essay is often article-length and gives the author space to develop independent ideas. At the same time, book reviews are easier to write than conventional articles because they typically don’t require extensive independent research or a freestanding thesis. They count less than articles, but are much better than no publication.

Law Review Participation

Many students think that law review membership or editorship is a prerequisite to academic careers. This used to be true, but no longer is. Traditionally, employers (including law school hiring committees) valued membership on law review primarily because it correlated with very high grades, or provided the only opportunity for law students to familiarize themselves with the scholarly side of the enterprise. At many law schools, including Stanford, law review membership is no longer connected to grades, a fact well known to most hiring committees. Moreover, if hiring committees care about grades, they can just look at them directly. And there are now a wealth of other opportunities for law students to engage with the scholarly enterprise.

As a result, many law schools recruiting new faculty place no weight on membership or officership on law reviews. Once again, this is more likely to be true the more prestigious the law school. On the other hand, some law schools still value it, it will give you some exposure to current legal scholarship, and it is unlikely to hurt you anywhere. But these possible benefits of law review should be weighed against the costs. If you do law review, chances are you will be spending a lot of time doing routine work editing other people’s articles. If you would use that same time instead to do more of your own writing, or even work as a research assistant for a professor, those alternative uses of your time will in many cases be more advantageous.

The above advice, however, goes only to the direct value of the bare credential of law review membership or officership on the academic market. There are two collateral benefits that may flow from membership that may have some independent value on the academic market. The first is the opportunity to publish a student note. Most student-run law reviews will publish student work only if the student is a member of their own editorial board. You should not overvalue that opportunity, however. In most cases, having a good idea and turning it into a good article is the hard part. Finding a place to publish it is relatively easy. Specialty journals and faculty-run (peer-reviewed) journals willpublish student work. In addition, you can write while a student, but wait until you graduate to send it out to conventional law reviews for publication as an article.

The second possible benefit is that, because many judges still value law review membership, being on law review is (all other things being equal) likely to boost your chances for a prestigious clerkship, which will be a mild plus with most law school. Again, however, one would want to weigh those advantages against the opportunity costs of time spent on law review.

Third, serving on an articles or notes committee may furnish an opportunity for engaging with contemporary legal scholarship and evaluating what works and what does not. This can furnish helpful insights for your own scholarship. Again, however, one would want to weigh these advantages against the opportunity  costs of time spent on law review.

Should you pursue a joint degree?

There is no simple answer to this question. It depends upon a number of factors, including your areas of scholarly interest, the methodological approach you expect to take, your academic background and relevant skills coming into law school, and whether you are willing and able to devote the extra time to a second degree.

Although PhDs are increasingly valued on the market (the higher the law school’s rank, generally the more value placed on them), they are by no means necessary, and their instrumental value varies widely depending upon your areas of scholarly interest. If you are in doubt about what makes sense for you, we encourage you to talk the matter over with relevant faculty members (the teaching placement committee, scholars in your areas of interest) either before you start law school or once you are here.

If you decide to pursue a joint degree, there is simply no better place in the country to do it than Stanford. Stanford’s joint degree programs are very generous, judged both in tuition forgiveness and minimizing time to complete both degrees.

We currently have 27 formal programs established with other Stanford schools or departments and will work with students to design a tailor-made program if none of the already existing ones fits the bill.

How much do law school grades matter?

Of all the traditional criteria for hiring, grades probably continue to have the most significance at the entry level. But—at least for Stanford graduates—they matter much less than they used to, and much less than most prospective applicants think they do. In general, law schools will be nervous about people who didn’t graduate in the top third of the class. But even that will not be fatal if other things in your record (writing, references, job talk, interviews) give them confidence that you are smart and will be able to command the respect of your students in conventional law courses. For graduates with a Ph.D. in an allied field, law school grades seem to have even less significance than for other applicants.

Once you land your first teaching job, your academic record as a law student will become largely irrelevant. What matters in moving laterally is the quality of your writing, teaching, etc.

We strongly encourage you to seek out opportunities to give academic presentations of works-in-progress while you are in law school or subsequently. There are a number of conferences, such as Law and Society, Law, Culture, and the Humanities, American Society for Legal History, and the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, that accept student presenters. You can also ask faculty mentors to keep you apprised of smaller conferences and workshops in specialty areas.

Law school classes can furnish more local opportunities for presentation. The Legal Studies Workshop is designed around the distribution, presentation, and discussion of student works in progress; students can currently enroll for an open number of quarters as long as they agree to share a piece at some point during their time in the Workshop. A number of other seminars or informal student/faculty gatherings allow students to present their work as well.

Other workshops at Stanford outside SLS may permit graduate student presentations and are worth attending to learn about related areas of scholarship. These include the Political Theory Workshop, Ethics and Politics, Ancient and Modern Workshop, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law Seminar, and various workshops at the Stanford Humanities Center.

Presenting your ideas in all of these settings will give you valuable experience before you go on the job market. In addition, speaking at academic conferences will allow you to meet other academics and to get your name circulated before you are officially a job candidate. Presenting in your law school classes will give your professors an opportunity to vouch for your teaching skills first-hand. Finally, presenting your work to others is an important part of an academic’s life, and being able to list such presentations on your CV signals to committees that you understand this, and are eager to participate in that part of the job.