Harvard Law Review Membership Selection Policies

Membership in the Harvard Law Review is limited to second- and third-year law students who are selected on the basis of their performance on an annual writing competition. Harvard Law School students who are interested in joining the Review must write the competition at the end of their 1L year, even if they plan to take time off during law school or are pursuing a joint degree and plan to spend a year at another Harvard graduate school. Students who spend their 1L year at other law schools and are applying to transfer to HLS must write the competition in the spring before they enter HLS as 2Ls. (More specific information for prospective transfer students can be found here.)

In recent years, the number of students completing the competition has ranged from 200 to 255. Between 41 and 43 students are invited to join the Review each year.

Fourteen editors (two from each 1L section) are selected based on a combination of their first-year grades and their competition scores. Twenty editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. The remaining editors are selected on a discretionary basis. Some of these discretionary slots may be used to implement the Review's affirmative action policy.