Working on a law review is kind of like eating vegetables or being Vice President of the United States. What exactly does that mean? Keep reading to find an explanation and more, including the answers to your two most provocative questions: "What the hell is law review, anyway?" and "Why do I care?"

What the hell is law review, anyway?
Let's start with the basics. Law reviews are academic legal journals that publish articles by law professors, judges, lawyers and even law students. If you think that sounds boring, you are so right. Check out this sampling of recently published articles: "Textualism and the Equity of the Statute" (Columbia Law Review), "The Legal and Institutional Preconditions for Strong Securities Markets" (UCLA Law Review) and "Preventing Insider Misappropriation of Not-for-Profit Health Care Provider Assets: A Federal Tax Law Prescription" (Washington Law Review).

Just imagine the soporific torment of those poor souls who actually had to read those articles. Grab a cup of coffee to wake up and we'll continue.

The unique thing about law reviews is that students run every aspect of them. Students select and edit articles, publish the reviews, and sometimes write their own articles.

Two flavors of law review
Law reviews come in two flavors. First there are the premium legal journals at most law schools, such as the California Law Review, Yale Law Journal or Harvard Law Review. These top-shelf journals are generally what legal types mean when they refer to "law review." Students compete for spots on these journals, which are "usually more prestigious, have been around longer, and publish more often" than other journals, said Bree Morgan, co-editor-in-chief of the Berkeley Women's Law Journal and member of the California Law Review.

Students become members of these premium journals through a writing competition, their first-year grades or some combination of the two. This is known as "making law review."

Beyond the premium journals, many law schools have other journals devoted to a specific area of the law, such as race, gender or environmental law. Membership on these journals is generally open to any student who wants to participate (and perhaps pay the membership fee), though some participate in a more competitive selection process.

Professor Norman Spaulding, of the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, said working on a subject-specific journal "is a great way to develop expertise in a particular field." Professor Spaulding, who worked on the Stanford Environmental Law Journal and Stanford Law Review as a student, said subject-specific journals offer students more responsibility in a less competitive environment. "Nobody there [at the Environmental Law Journal] was doing it for status," Professor Spaulding said.

So what do law review members actually do? First, we should dispel this myth: Working on a law review is not as much fun as being a rock star. The big difference is that rock stars earn wads of cash for playing music to throngs of adoring fans, while law review members earn nothing and spend their time poring over manuscripts in some dark corner of the library. Other than that, the two jobs are pretty much the same.

Seriously, though, law review members spend their first year on the journal editing. Law review articles contain a silly number of footnotes - often hundreds of them. Members edit these footnotes to make sure they are perfectly accurate and formatted. Why? Because those in the legal world "take as a principle that a judge could cite part of an article as true," said Professor Spaulding.

Morgan offered a different perspective on the obsession with footnotes. "The accuracy and format of footnotes contributes significantly to a journal's academic reputation," she said. "And, well, we like to obsess."

After their first year on the journal, members can move into the big leagues by becoming editors, who get to choose articles for publication.

Why do I care?
Law review is important because working on one will help you land that job where they throw buckets of cash at you every week. "You gain skills through law review (and through every journal) that employers like for you to have," said Morgan. "You learn editing skills, how to support a legal argument, actual legal research and writing skills. It also shows a commitment to something rigorous that demands a lot of your time. Employers are impressed by that."

In other words, employers assume that if you were willing to spend hundreds of hours hunched over piles of footnotes, you will be even more willing to spend thousands of hours hunched over piles of documents when someone is actually paying you for it.

But there are more noble benefits to working on a law review. Professor Kenney Hegland, of the University of Arizona, writes in his book, Introduction to The Study and Practice of Law: "Student editors can make a major impact; law reviews have focused national attention on otherwise neglected areas of the law, such as the law of the poor, the law of mental health, and the law of the elderly."

Like eating vegetables or being Vice President
So how is working on a law review kind of like eating vegetables or being Vice President of the United States? It's like eating vegetables in that most law students feel like they should do it, even if they don't really want to. "I generally don't think students should do law review just for the sake of doing law review," advises Professor Spaulding.

And law review work is like being vice president because it requires a tremendous amount of thankless labor. But it does look good on a resume.

So while law review can be tedious and boring, it impresses employers and gives law students a chance to change the law in a way that makes a difference in the lives of real people. Perhaps Professor Spaulding said it best: "I didn't think I would like it, but it turned out I did."