Faculty supervision of a student Note has its benefits: a seasoned legal mind guides a relatively inexperienced one through forming a thesis, consulting sources, structuring an argument, and addressing counterarguments. All the while, a special relationship develops between supervisor and student; indeed, Professor Arthur Jacobson said this relationship is “the greatest [] students can have with their professors.” On top of all this, the student satisfies the upper level writing requirement needed for graduation.
So it is unfortunate that each year some students who want a faulty supervisor for their Note are left without one.
The reason behind this problem is unclear. There is no shortage of professors who are willing to be faculty supervisors. Further, adjunct professors, of which there are many, are also able to serve as supervisors.
Then why does this happen? The unique stresses placed on students at the very start of their 2L year may provide some explanation. Ali Beswick, 3L and staffer on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) says she was unable to secure a supervisor at the beginning of last year because “there was just so much going at the time – new 2L classes, OCI, other journal responsibilities – and I was overwhelmed.”
The search to secure a supervisor can be exhausting. According to school policy, professors may only supervise a maximum of 5 Notes, so professors who have expertise in popular Note subjects, like Intellectual Property (IP), become unavailable quickly. Professor Susan Crawford, who teaches various IP courses at Cardozo, acknowledges “getting a lot of requests” for supervision but “only tak[ing] on four or five [students] a term.” (Recognizing students’ difficulty in obtaining a supervisor, Professor Crawford has made her two classes this semester, Communications Law and Law of Surveillance, classes for which students can receive upper level writing credit.)
Since professors become unavailable so quickly, the search to secure a supervisor has turned into, as put by Scott Farbish, Editor-in-Chief of the Cardozo Journal of Law and Gender (CJLG), a type of “game.” Farbish was determined to give his staffers an advantage in this game – which is why he pushed them to secure a supervisor “before work week [was] done.” Nathan Davis, Senior Notes Editor for AELJ, also acknowledged that staffers compete to “land[] a coveted spot with a professor for a big project like writing a [N]ote, and there is no doubt that timeliness is an issue.”
To an extent, this “game” or “race” dimension to the search for a supervisor is tempered by the presence of professors who select students to supervise, not on who asks them first, but different criteria. For instance, Professor Stewart Sterk doesn’t “allow students to ‘reserve’ me as a supervisor until they . . . present[] a workable topic and outline.” Similarly, Professor Justin Hughes considers all the students’ Note proposals he receives and selects students on the basis of who he believes he can “best help.”
After a month or so of searching, some students decide they will be unable to secure a faculty supervisor and write their Note unsupervised, which means they will have to fulfill the upper level writing requirement through, for example, writing a 30-page research paper for a seminar class. Perhaps this means that the way in which students obtain faculty supervisors so as to get writing credit for Notes should be reexamined. However, it becomes quickly apparent that the alternatives are unworkable.
Previously, Cardozo designated certain professors to serve as faculty supervisors for specific journals. The designee system was later abandoned. Vice Dean Edward Stein said the system was “artificial”; often, students wanted to work with professors who were not designated to their journal and did so.
Returning now to a designee system would be problematic. For one, the system is unpopular among faculty members. The system decreases professors’ discretion in selecting which students to supervise. Professor Alex Reinart, reflecting this sentiment, said that he is “generally opposed to assigning professors to particular journals . . . it would be too restrictive.” Additionally, finding designee professors for certain journals would present a challenge. Professor Sterk explained, “some of the journals have specialties that don’t match the strengths of the faculty (Law and Gender, International and Comparative Law) . . . [although the system] works fine for AELJ and Journal of Conflict Resolution, where journal specialties match faculty expertise and interest.” Still, if such a system were implemented, it could reduce instances where students who wish to have supervisors are left without them. For this reason, Professor Sterk said, “Whether, on balance, assigning faculty makes the situation better or worse is an open question.” Regardless, implementation of the designee system appears unrealistic.
A more radical proposal, aimed at awarding all staffers writing credit for their Notes, is to give journal executive board members the ability to supervise Notes. Executive board members already have some authority in that they determine whether staffers receive a pass or fail grade for journal participation. However, this proposal is contrary to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools. Specifically, Standard 302 states that a law school must require a student to receive “substantial instruction” in a “rigorous writing experience” after their first year. Standard 302 contemplates that a “writing instructor” must supervise the student’s “rigorous writing experience” to comply with the standard. Accordingly, the school’s policy, as found in page 36 of the 2011-2012 Student Handbook, is that “[a]ll J.D. students are required to complete at least one significant writing project under faculty supervision in connection with a credit-bearing enterprise.” So, while such a proposal would make it easier for staffers to get upper level writing credit, it would be contrary to ABA rules and deincentivize students from seeking the valuable experience of working with a professor on an intensive writing project.
Considering all this, the current system will not be changing in the near future. The Jurist performed its own research and determined that last year there were roughly 10 journal staffers who searched for a faculty supervisor, were turned away by several professors and thus ended their search because they felt they would be unable to secure a supervisor. Further, many students were dissuaded from searching at all because they believed it would be too difficult to find a supervisor.
Staffers are encouraged to persevere. There are many sources to turn to – journal executive board members, administrators, and professors who, if they are unavailable for supervising, will recommend their peers – when experiencing trouble securing a supervisor. And while searching for a supervisor can be stressful, time-consuming and, in some cases, demoralizing, it appears that if a staffer remains determined, he or she ultimately will find a supervisor. As an illustration of this point, last year all Law Review staffers secured a faculty supervisor – motivating the staffers to see their searches to the end was a requirement by Law Review’s internal rules to secure a faculty supervisor for their Note.