Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Law Review Write-On Competitions, from a Law Review Editor:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_10_21-2007_10_27.shtml#1193072805
I'm not sure how representative these views are, and I can see a
downside to following this advice. But my correspondent has fresher
experience with grading papers than I have, so I thought the advice
would be worth passing along:
You mention in the book already [my correspondent is talking about
my Academic Legal Writing book] that if you think of more than one
possible thesis, you should choose the more creative one. I think
this is much more important than you make it seem. This year, our
competition was about [a topic that implicated a circuit split]....
Out of my alloted stack of 22 papers, about 18 of them took one
side or the other (or some more complicated position) on the
circuit split.
The other 4 papers had very different sorts of theses.... All of
these topics [that the 4 papers focused on] were mentioned in the
cases and supplementary materials, and there were enough sources to
make a 7-page comment out of it, but the topics were not clearly
indicated by the packet materials.
These papers were at a significant advantage. First, they got all
the creativity points instantaneously, though for us this was only
2 points out of 45 total. More importantly, they put the grader in
a good mood after the monotony of reading the same thesis
elaborated over and over. And even more importantly, I hadn't been
primed with the counterarguments already, so the papers probably
got more points for thoroughness and convincingness of arguments
than they would have if I'd seen 20 papers making various
counterarguments.
I should note also that I followed this "ignore the circuit split"
strategy when I took the competition last year, and it worked.
(Though I was really nervous about making that choice at the time.)
Second, structure is critically important. Not only is it allocated
more possible points than any category except analysis, it also
helps the grader understand the analysis better and can therefore
lead to more points in that category, too. If two papers raise
exactly the same arguments and counterarguments, the one that is
structured more clearly will almost certainly get more analysis
points than the other, in addition to the extra structure points.
Additionally, having clear structure when writing the paper can
show you, as the author, which arguments don't quite work and help
you make them better.
Nearly all of the papers I graded had exactly the following
headings:
I. Facts
II. Analysis
III. Conclusion
This is basically no help at all. It doesn't tell me anything about
what the argument is and where it's going. I understand that it
might be tempting to forgo subheadings because of the major space
constraints, but they are totally worth it.
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