Dear First-Year Students,

Congratulations on nearing the end of your first year. After finishing exams, I hope that you take a moment to relax—and then devote a full week to the write-on competition. When you rank the journals by preference, I invite you to rank first The Georgetown Law Journal.

The Journal, founded in 1912, is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the nation. Its generalist approach—welcoming high-quality scholarship about any aspect of the law—offers members a unique opportunity to deepen their understanding of diverse legal subjects. Each year the Journal selects for publication approximately twenty articles from more than two thousand submissions. This process offers an unparalleled opportunity to interact with—and critique—the work of the most prominent legal scholars. In collaboration with other top law reviews, we recently launched a joint website, Legal Workshop, that features edited versions of selected articles and notes.

In addition to selecting and editing articles, Journal members write a scholarly note on any legal topic of their choice. All second-year members also contribute to the Annual Review of Criminal Procedure, the “practitioner’s bible” for the federal criminal bar.

Students may earn membership on the Journal in any of three ways:

(1) 50% of our new members are accepted solely on the basis of their write-on scores.

(2) Up to 10% of our members are selected on the basis of their personal statements and having achieved a certain threshold score on their write-on submissions. All students are encouraged to submit an optional personal statement describing how their diverse racial, socioeconomic, or ethnic backgrounds will contribute to the membership of the Journal.

(3) The remaining 40 to 50% of our members are selected on the basis of a formula that equally weighs write-on scores and grades.

I invite you to discuss your interest with me or any other member of the Journal. I hope you will preference The Georgetown Law Journal not only for the doors it will open throughout your legal career but also for the skills you will develop, the first-class scholarship you will publish, and the friends and colleagues with whom you will work over the next two years.

Sincerely,

Kate Mitchell-Tombras

Editor-in-Chief