I had been waiting to see if I'd get any sort of official word, but since I haven't, I'm taking the fact that my name is not on this page to mean that my submitted comment was not of "publishable quality" as defined under the 2L write-on process here.

I'm not terribly surprised by this turn. My paper was hastily thrown together, and in the month since submitting it, it's become clear to me that there are some significant changes in direction I'd probably choose to make. That's what happens, I think, when one tries to craft a 30-page academic paper in a little under 3 weeks. On the one hand, I could have praised myself if I could turn out a quality item in that length of time. On the other, I would have questioned the standards of "publishable quality" held by the law review if something I could turn out in that time met those standards.

Even if it had been accepted, I knew that there were sufficient missteps in some parts -- including some areas I simply ran out of time to flesh out -- that I wouldn't post it here without getting some time to clean it up. What I will probably do instead is start pulling out the pieces that I believe provide some useful analysis of the failings of the Real ID Act and start putting them up on the site. In addition, I've got some ways of better turning it toward being publishable by significantly narrowing the scope and making it a touch more technical that I plan to start pushing toward.

In my meeting with Professor Brown this summer, I mentioned that I had been working on this paper and that it was finally done. He asked if I really wanted to do law review, and I told him, as I've generally told people, that not really. But it seemed like a useful credential (which I've recently discussed here.) He expressed that he didn't consider it an important credential in interviews while he was in practice, but he also confirmed that he only spoke to pre-screened applicants, so it may well have been a screening item. Certainly, I see many postings that list it as "preferred."

The easy lessons to learn here are: 1) do the 1L writing competiton, which is far easier (I bailed on it after initially deciding I wasn't that terribly interested in law review; and 2) if you're going to do the 2L process, don't try to do it in 3 weeks while working full-time and taking a summer class 2 nights a week.

And in conclusion, I'm a little disappointed that I did 3 weeks of intensive work for no reason; pleased that I think I can use that work going forward, so it was far from wasted; a little disappointed I won't have the resume-stuffing credential; but a little pleased that I won't have to take on an activity that I didn't really think sounded all that interesting to begin with. Oh, right. And now I'll have to pursue the upper-division writing requirement in some other way. I guess that's the other big loss.