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A law review is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, published by an organization of students at a law school. Law review articles are typically written by law professors, legal practitioners, and judges although many law reviews also publish shorter articles written by students, called 'notes' or 'comments.' Submissions are typically required to be cite-edited in the bluebook format, which is itself a collaborative product of four law reviews.

Almost every American law school has at least one law review, and the oldest and most prestigious law schools tend to have several. Generally, one such journal will be unlimited as to the scope of legal issues addressed therein, and the rest will focus on issues in a specific area, such as international law, environmental law, or human rights.

Among the oldest and most storied law review publications are the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review. As law professor Erwin N. Griswold wrote of the Harvard Law Review: "Some people are concerned that a major legal periodical in the United States is edited and managed by students. It is an unusual situation, but it started that way, and it developed mightily from its own strength."

Erwin N. Griswold, The Harvard Law Review - Glimpses of Its History as Seen by an Aficionado (1987), available at http://www.harvardlawreview.org/Centennial.shtml.

Student invitation to membership in the law review is by no means automatic. Students who have completed the first year of law school are usually selected to serve on the law review based on their grades (referred to as a 'grade-on' system), their performance in a scholastic contest known as a write-on competition, or some combination of these elements. A write-on competition usually requires all applicants to write an article of a pre-set length about a specific topic - usually a recent Supreme Court decision. The competition will typically be graded blindly, with submissions identified only by a number which the graders will not be able to connect to a particular applicant.

Once selected to the law review, students will generally be required to write an article of publishable quality (although it need not actually be published), and to thoroughly edit articles submitted to the law review from outside sources. Because of the intense experience gained in the process of this endeavor, law review participation is frequently a key factor among judges and firms looking to hire law school students upon their graduation.