Law reviews vs. peer review: Belle Lettre offers insights

On the Law and Letters Blog, Bell Lettre weighs in on the recurring debate on the relative merit of student edited law reviews (as opposed to peer reviewed journals). You can check out the full post (and comments) here, but I provide an excerpt below the fold. (hat tip to Moneylaw)

But yes, there are many problems with student-edited law journals. The best journals from the best schools will always turn out good articles (because of the self-selection/insularity/heavy-hitter/name-recognition effect). Less certain in quality are the articles published by journals in the lower tiers of law schools. But there’s a wide swath in the middle in which top work will be published but slip under the radar, or mediocre work will be published to readers’ bemusement. Take the good with the bad. Read with a grain of salt, figure out who’s doing interesting and important work in whatever field you’re intersted in, and read them regardless of the placement of their publication. I often rely on Larry Solum’s recommendations on Legal Theory Blog (his Downloads of the Week, his comments on articles that have been posted on SSRN) to get direction in areas in which I am not very knowledgeable.