Journals are supposedly a bedrock educational component of a law school education. Hundreds of students apply each year to work without compensation editing and publishing legal research. At GW Law, those students expect four academic credits by the time they graduate. But, according to who you ask, that might not be the case anymore.
In August 2024, the American Bar Association (ABA) issued guidance on how institutions should award academic credit for, among other things, journal work. On the Sunday before classes started, the Editors-in-Chief of GW Law’s journals were notified by email that members would need to track hours for production assignments — not any of the work related to student Notes. No explanation or guidance was given at that time.
It was not until Sept. 13, nearly a month later, that the Journal Advisory Committee (JAC) met for the first time. Many hopeful to get answers left with more questions than when they arrived.
How do journals currently operate?
There are about a dozen academic journals at GW Law each with vastly different subject areas and structures. But each has members, an editorial board with student editors, an editor-in-chief, and a faculty advisor.
Members compete for membership on a journal in the annual journal competition each spring semester. The competition is written and administered jointly by the Senior Notes Editor of The George Washington Law Review and the Executive Guide Editor of the George Washington International Law Review. Each journal elects members to assist in the grading of the competition. Members are then selected based on their competition score and other journal-specific application materials.
Once on a journal, members receive four academic credits for their work on a journal. In 2L, one credit is earned per semester for work towards writing a scholarly Note (a legal research paper). In 3L, one credit is earned per semester for editorial tasks or production work, such as collecting sources and checking citations.
Outside of the journals, the JAC advises the GW Law Faculty Senate regarding actions to be taken concerning the academic journals. The JAC is chaired by Associate Professor Joan E. Schaffner and includes as members the faculty advisors and the student Editors-in-Chief of each journal.
What happened at the JAC meeting?
The Sept. 13 meeting was the first time the JAC was informed that the rationale for time tracking was to ensure journals were complying with the new ABA guidance. The guidance was presented, and immediately concerns (and some potential solutions) were raised by students and faculty alike. For example, the guidance enumerates specific “educational” activities that count towards academic credit which “may include” tasks like “[e]diting articles or essays” and “[c]ite checking.”
Both students and faculty identified specific issues and attempted to workshop potential solutions. Leaders among the JAC were not prepared to answer questions, for example, about what educational activities would qualify for academic credit beyond those examples enumerated in the guidance. In general, questions regarding matters not explicitly within the ABA’s language were dismissed for discussion at a later date. The committee as a whole was resistive to take a definitive stand on permissible applications and interpretations of the ambiguous guidance. There is not currently a plan by the JAC, but they may reach out to the ABA for specific guidance.
By postponing these questions, Editors-in-Chief and faculty advisors left the JAC meeting without any sense of what the next steps would, should, or could be. The next JAC meeting was scheduled for sometime in mid-October.
What are the main concerns?
The two primary concerns by the student Editors-in-Chief are (a) whether journal work not during the semester in which a credit is awarded will qualify for that credit and (b) whether certain types of work will qualify for credit.
The guidance presented at the JAC meeting interprets ABA Standard 305, which allows law schools to award credit for non-traditional academic study including “moot court, law review, and directed research” that is “commensurate with the time and effort required.”
(a) A law school may grant credit toward the J.D. degree for courses that involve student participation in studies or activities in a format that does not involve attendance at regularly scheduled class sessions, including, but not limited to, moot court, law review, and directed research.
ABA Standard 305
(b) Credit granted for such a course shall be commensurate with the time and effort required and the anticipated quality of the educational experience of the student.
(c) Each student’s educational achievement in such a course shall be evaluated by a faculty member.
For context, ABA Standard 310(b) governs how law schools determine how many credit hours can be awarded for certain work. In general, it requires 42.5 hours of work per credit hour. ABA Interpretation 310-2 clarifies that that work may “extend[] over any period of time if the coursework entails no less than” that many hours.
(b) A “credit hour” is an amount of work that reasonably approximates:
(1) not less than one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and two hours of out-of-class student work per week for fifteen weeks, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time; or
(2) at least an equivalent amount of work as required in subparagraph (1) of this definition for other academic activities as established by the institution, including simulation, field placement, clinical, co-curricular, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.
ABA Standard 310(b)
Further guidance for interpreting Standard 310 asserts that work need only “reasonably approximate” the amount of work required for a credit hour rather than “exactly duplicat[ing]” that amount.
Does 2L production assignments and summer work count towards credit?
The most pressing question Editors-in-Chief and journal members have is when the journal work needs to happen to qualify towards an academic credit. Some faculty spoke out in support of summer work qualifying for credit. But, the JAC was unwilling to declare whether student work during the summer would qualify.
Many journals have publication schedules that require completion of production assignments over the summer or winter breaks. Moreover, tasks like grading of the journal competition must occur over the summer. Additionally, all journals give production assignments to 2L members who are also writing their Notes. Do those production assignments count towards the credit awarded in each member’s 3L year? If not, why are they doing them?
With the new requirement to track time doing journal work, some are also asking why members of journal editorial boards are not being awarded credit commensurate with their significant workload. For example, many editors have already performed hundreds of hours of work since last semester.
Some are suggesting that the 42.5 hour requirement must be met in each semester that a credit is awarded. But some students have pointed out that there is no reason to adjust the current way credits are awarded because it can be interpreted consistent with the ABA Standards. So long as the journal assigns 42.5 hours of qualifying work to its members over the span of an entire year (21.25 per semester), each member will have completed the minimum number of work necessary to qualify for the credit. In some instances, based on demand for work, some journals may have to start only awarding one academic credit in the 3L year instead of two.
If work must be done in the semester to qualify towards an academic credit, then journals will need to drastically change the way they operate. For example, work is typically spread out among 2L and 3L members. If 2L production work would not count towards a credit awarded in 3L, journals may consider not giving production to 2L members which could have drastic consequences. This would harm the editorial board selection process, decrease the quality of publication review, and incentivize journals to accept more members.
This issue appears to presently rest in the hands of the University-wide administration, not GW Law. Under the University’s current Assignment of Credit Hour Policy, “37.5 hours of work per semester is required for one credit hour.” But, in the same paragraph, a footnote quotes the U.S. Department of Education regulations that allows for credit to be awarded for student work over “15 weeks for one semester, or . . . the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time.” A U.S. Department of Education guidance memorandum explicates that “[t]o the extent an institution believes that complying with the Federal definition of a credit hour would not be appropriate for academic and other institutional needs, it may adopt a separate measure for those purposes.”
What substantive types of work qualify for credit?
Another question of concern is whether certain types of work will qualify for credit. The ABA guidance enumerates eight examples of types of work that sufficiently “has an academic component,” including “[m]anagement of the law review by the editorial board” and “[e]diting articles or essays.” The JAC waffled with respect to nearly all questions about the qualification of activities similar but different to the enumerated examples.
For example, it is presently unclear whether management tasks delegated from an editor to a non-editor would count towards the non-editor’s required hours. It is further unclear whether those who grade the journal competition may count those hours towards their requirements as a management task despite not being on an editorial board. If not, students would be disincentivized from helping grade the journal competition — an already difficult task.
Some Editors-in-Chief worried about meeting the minimum hours requirements suggested that certain mentorship programs for Note-writing could be implemented, among other programs, to qualify for hours. However, these suggestions received the same treatment as other suggestions.
Where do we go from here?
Various administrators have indicated that a dialogue has been opened with the University Office of the Registrar to determine whether the policy can be changed.
Reportedly, Dean Belk has emphasized that the new procedures and ABA guidance will not impact the graduation prospects of 3L students. He indicates that the new time tracking procedures are to ensure that there is data to back up the claims in the event of an audit by the ABA. There is a rumor currently being spread that the ABA may be auditing GW Law next year. The veracity of this rumor has not been able to be substantiated by Nota Bene.
This is not a unique issue to GW Law. Other institutions, such as the law schools at New York University and the University of Southern California award credit for their journal programs in compliance with ABA Standards. These institutions may be able to shed light on the direction GW Law should take.
