Recent years have seen increasing calls for law schools to remunerate students participating in their esteemed law reviews and journals. This a noteworthy development in the legal education space, which traditionally saw students vying for the opportunity to engage in largely administrative tasks for these publications, with only resume enhancement as their reward. A handful of institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University, grant academic credits for such work, but any monetary compensation has been noticeably absent.
This growing demand for change commenced at NYU Law, where students created a petition for more equitable remuneration from the university. Notably, the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates also concurs, suggesting that law schools should indeed compensate law review editors, either monetarily or with school credit.
Currently, journal editors nationwide are uniting to demand compensation and to strengthen solidarity among different publication cohorts. Journals that have officially joined this appeal include those from Georgetown, NYU, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale, among others.
One potent argument for this proposed shift centers on the exclusionary nature of these uncompensated positions. Since these roles are time-intensive and unpaid, they effectively bar those students who must work to support themselves financially whilst studying. This affects diversity within legal academia and constrains the breadth of perspectives shaping global legal scholarship. The end result is that only those who can afford to dedicate time without pay enjoy the prestige these roles confer. This prestige, in turn, often opens doors to clerkships, firm associations, and other sought-after legal positions, creating an unequal playing field. The additional financial burden faced by those who do join these journals can deter them from future public interest work, effectively undermining the diversity and inclusivity commitments most universities tout.
This growing movement advocating for the end of unpaid labor in law schools may usher in significant changes in legal academia in the years to come.