Here's what it's all about: Moritz has 5 Journals - Ohio State Law Journal (OSLJ), Ohio State Journal On Criminal Law (OSJCL), Journal of Dispute Resolution (JDR), Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal (EBLJ), and Journal of Information Society (I/S). Journals publish works written by law students, professors, judges, etc, on issues concerning the law and they are completely student run which is great. The journal editors decide which articles they want to publish and the rest of us go through them with a fine tooth comb to make sure all citations are on point, no typography problems, etc. All except one of the journals require staff members to write a "note" which is about a 60 page paper on whatever you want to write about. If it's really good, then it may get published. We get 1 credit per semester for working on journal & about 2 credits for writing a note.
Back to the competition: OSJL & JDR have a joint competition. They provide you with a STACK of research material & provide two separate topics from which you choose one and write a paper 10 pages or less. 85% of points. There's also a 7 page editing assignment where you go through making edits on everything from typos, to punctuation, but mainly contains errors in the footnotes where you have to apply Bluebook rules to be able to make the necessary corrections. 15% of points. We must submit 11 copies of the writing sample & 2 copies of the editing assignment. I want to get on either one of these two.
Then EBLJ, OSJCL, & I/S have their joint competition. This one is easier because the 10 page writing sample can be from any past written work we've done. I used my legal writing paper since I got a good grade on it but I could've used the writing sample I submitted for the OSJL/JDR competition (didn't want to place all my eggs in one basket). The editing assignment is the same for all journals so you just send copies of what you submitted for the JDR/OSJL competition. However, these 3 journals require personalized letters of interest and a resume. We must submit 4 copies of the writing sample, 2 copies of the editing assingment, 4 copies of the letter of interest, & 4 copies of the resume per journal. I spent a whopping $25.60 at Kinkos this morning. Out of these 3, I would like to get on OSJCL.
I've applied to all 5 & since one could potentially get into all of them, the journal editors give you about a week to decide which one you want to be in since you can only work in one. The kicker of all this: if you accept membership to any one of the journals, you must be back in school by Aug 5 for orientation & journal work which is a whole 2 weeks before everyone else (why again am I applying?!). Should know sometime late July whether my writing & editing was good enough to get into one of them. Did I mention that I haven't slept in the last 30 hours trying to get this monstrosity done? Now that's dedication!
All the summer associates went to the Memorial Tournament today. We got there about 12 noon, had lunch at the Bogey Inn & then some of us ventured out to the course. We decided to sit at the 18th hole & watch the golfers go by which turned out great because we sat right on the edge of the green. Didn't get to see Tiger Woods tee off (because it was too hot to follow him around hole by hole) but saw him putt at the 18th. He was the only golfer in his group of 3 not to birdie the hole so we punctuated his miss with a loud Ooooohhhhh! It's a hard life but someone's gotta do it!
