Advice to Law Journals, Part 23

23  subsidize the journal (with academic credit).

One of my colleagues uses the wise phrase "if you subsidize something you'll get more of it."  I think applies well to lots of situations, including law reviews.  Want students to spend more time running the journal and producing an excellent work product?  Give them more academic credit for it.  This has received some attention of late over at Leiter Reports.  A few years ago at Alabama we increased the credit hours that the editor-in-chief and managing editors received for running the law review here, to a total of six hours.  My strong preference is for even more credit; I think the time they spend working on the journal justifies that.  It also gives a great incentive to students to take the review seriously.  My sense at the time that it was in line with the credit that the leaders of a lot of other flagship journals received.

ALB
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