Not only is it election season (see posts from earlier this week), it's also recruitment season for the three big upperclass activities here: Legal Aid Bureau, Board of Student Advisors, and the big one, the Harvard Law Review. Each has its own application process, its own informational meetings / wine & cheese receptions / ice cream socials / sponsored lectures, and, most important, each has its own way of filling up 20-40 hours a week that you could otherwise enjoy.

The Legal Aid Bureau, according to the five-minute presentation they made in one of my classes, requires 20 hours a week of service from each of its members, and basically helps people who can't afford legal services. This sounds like a great thing for people who really want some hands-on experience practicing law. I have no interest in this.

The Board of Student Advisors helps to run the First Year Lawyering program I've talked in glowing terms about (sarcasm). But, seriously, I think it might be cool to get some experience teaching legal writing, and be a great way to spend 20 hours a week. Plus, they pay some money. The application process includes an edit of a deliberately-awful legal brief, some essays, a recommendation, and an interview.

The Harvard Law Review sucks approximately 40 hours a week out of the lives of its members, and has a rigorous application process involvingchecking some footnotes and writing an article about a Supreme Court case, all in a week's time after exams in the spring. They then use a complicated algorithm involving the scores on these two things, your grades, and some factor added if you're a woman or minority, to determine who gets to write "Harvard Law Review" on their resumes. The resume-builder in me wants to apply, just to see if I would get in. The sane person in me wants not to. We'll see who wins the battle. I have a few more months to decide.