Lat, are you a clerkship consultant? Is there such a thing?

A related question: What will this mean for firms (and I've heard there are quite a few) that were host to a surprisingly high number of litigation-oriented summers this year?

It would seem that firms count on a number of 3L's, offer in hand, to defer for a year while they go off to clerk...yet now upwards of 60% of that group will need to start at the firm next fall.

The people who oppose the cost-containment actions adopted by the Judicial Conference on September 18 speculate that fewer law firm associates will take clerkships because salary matching was discontinued. The law students who are nervous about not getting clerkships speculate that it is because so many of the openings are being filled by law firm associates. I doubt that both groups are right.

3L - officially hired today!!! I'll be clerking in Magistrate's Court though b/c all of the DJ's went to career clerks.

I'm happy for something though!

I am splitting my clerkship between Judge Judy and Judge brown. Can't wait!

I wonder if this is an indication of a shift to graduate clerks or, as Lat notes, an indictment a further indictment of the f*cked up hiring schedule that only further distorts the process and puts judges and candidates in unfair positions.

Just wanted to point out a misspelling: it should read "roomer" instead of "rumor". That is all.

Will vouch for the theory that it's been tougher than expected. Top 15% at a top 30 school, law review, applied to 150ish district and circuit judges, got one interview ...

Oh well, financially, I'm betting off going to NYC to make 160K anyways.

Just finished clerking (Fed. App. Cir.), and my judge filled all three slots he had with grads. No particular reason this year, except some great applications came in. A couple of them were coming off district court clerkships. It just happened. In any case, I do think there'll be a shift away from law firm associates clerking after a year or so, thanks to self selection away given the pay changes.

Why on earth would a judge ever hire a wet-behind-the-ears newbie with no experience over an experienced associate?. I'd take the experience every time, especially since I've seen people with five and six years of experience take clerkships. Since law school does such a remarkably poor job of preparing people for practice, almost any experience would improve the value of the clerk to the judge.

I am a 3L at Penn State Dickinson School of Law (approx. 90 rank) and I am first in our class (law review, moot court, big law - Dechert). I applied to every single circuit judge and approx 50 DJ (in PA and NYC). I got one interview. I am very disappointed. I do think it is because of grad applications. I know a lot of the judges my profs knew were already done hiring because they hired grads.

My judge has historically hired directly out of law school. However, last year s/he went with one clerk who is already graduated and one fresh from law school clerk. This coming year, s/he planned to do the same thing. The judge hired the one from law school already, and will be calling the grad. clerk tomorrow to let the person know s/he is hired.

The reasoning is exactly what 4:23 mentioned. Experience will trump a fresh from law school applicant any day of the week.

4:32- practical tip- don't post identity revealing information on a board that employers read.

Is it possible that the then proposed, now adopted (I think), changes to career clerk hiring, and the associated grandfather clause for career clerks hired before a point this year, might have encouraged more judges to get grad clerks hired now if they ever wanted them?

At least two more DC District Ct judges have transitioned from hiring 3Ls to grads just this past summer. Partially b/c of the experience factor, but mainly to avoid the post-Labor Day Madness.

i applied to 100ish district court judges. no bites. not surprised though. career services was quite frank about my chances. too bad i turned down my summer offer. anyone want to hire me?

4:47 -- which DC District Ct. judges?

The judicial conference recommendation to end salary matching for incoming clerks, if adopted, will be effective 10/1/2007. If it is adopted, I will be interested to see the effect on the number of law school graduates who apply for a clerkship (after a year of practice). Leaving the big law rat race won't seem quite as attractive or financially feasible if the salary matching ends. (I say this as someone who did just that.)

4:50, why did you turn down your summer offer?

it would be nice if the judges could at least extend me the courtesy of a rejection letter. i spent $250+ in postage to mail all my applications. they could at least cough up $0.39.

4:50, why did you turn down your summer offer (I take it you mean the one received at the end of the summer)?

Don't listen to COA Clerk's 4:53 p.m. comment. He or she is wrong in two ways. First, it is not a recommendation that is yet to be adopted; it was adopted. Second, the effective date is September 18, not October 1. "Effective September 18, 2007, [the Judicial Conference of the United States] approved replacing law clerk salary matching with pay parity based on law clerk experience. Incoming law clerks who have prior federal experience may be eligible to match their highest rate of federal pay. Commitments made to specific individuals prior to September 18, 2007, that explicitly state in writing a commitment to an advanced step salary, will be honored."

4:55 - Some judges probably get 1,000 apps. You expect them to send everyone a response to their unsolicited letters?

And if you used 39 cent stamps, I think I know why you're still waiting for responses.

4:50/6 i didn't like the office (1 partner from hell who made me fell like crap--yes even as a summer) and the firm wasn't open to moving to another office (i really liked the partners at another office that i did some work for over the summer). the office didn't want to be seen as a "launch pad" for their other offices. i don't know if it was a bad decision yet. que sera!

I know that the judge for whom I clerked (COA 3d Circuit) is tending more and more to hire grads, because he doesn't care for the chaos and uncertainty associated with the hiring plan.

I'm an '07 grad, now clerking at the district level, and this is the exact same thing that people were saying a year ago. My perception is that quite a lot of judges simply perceive applicants with a bit of post-JD experience to be better equipped for the job. I'm not sure I disagree, particularly when assessing a 3L who went straight through and has never held a real job.

As a few others have said, to the extent a judge can line up capable clerks without dealing with the headache of the hiring plan, all the better. Dealing with 3Ls under the plan is impressively inefficient.

4:50, your suggestion of rejection letters makes no sense. First, there are numerous methods of finding out who has hired. Second, federal courts have plenty to do without writing 250 letters to tell people what they have already deduced. Unlike BigLaw, there is not a recruiting coordinator and staff to pump out rejection letters.
Also, stop complaining about the money. You spent $250 because you know that the value of a clerkship far outweighs the $250 you will have to spend. I

Why didn't you just accept and figure out the rest after your clerkship or after a year of practicing? Being a 3L with no job isn't a great position to be in.

5:05, fair enough. i shall keep my thoughts positive for a mailbox (or inbox) full of rejection letters.

4:50, your suggestion of rejection letters makes no sense. First, there are numerous methods of finding out who has hired. Second, federal courts have plenty to do without writing 250 letters to tell people what they have already deduced. Unlike BigLaw, there is not a recruiting coordinator and staff to pump out rejection letters.
Also, stop complaining about the money. You spent $250 because you know that the value of a clerkship far outweighs the $250 you will have to spend. I

5:10, perhaps i was being a bit hasty when i rejected. i am going to call some of the people i have worked for (prior to my summer associateship) and see if they still want me.

is it bad form to call the places i turned down during 2L recruiting to see if they will consider me again?

4:53 - The difference for me next year will be about $7-8K (a good chunk for sure), but I doubt it will stop many who were already considering a 50% pay cut. An extra $7-8K is nice, but I'd guess that most practicing attorneys applying will still apply.

This is bogus. 60% fewer jobs? Sounds like paranoia to me.

60% sounds like a stretch, but I can anecdotally corroborate this being a terrible year for HLS.

if this is a hard year for HLS L2L has no shot!

Give me a break with the "extra experience," people. Most grad-clerks come from biglaw firm jobs after 1-2 years. You can't tell me those judges are really chomping at the bit to make sure they get some experienced doc-reviewers in chambers. No 1st or 2nd year associate gets any skills that relate at all to a judicial clerkship.

The judges hire grads to get away from the god-awful "Hiring Plan." Which, by the way, won't be around next year, mark my words.

YLS did worse than most years due to the grad preference. Hiring plan is broken.

This rumor is false.

giveusabreakpeople -- You're an idiot.

I just finished up my first clerkship and will work at a firm for a year before starting my second clerkship in 2009. In just the last year, I've improved my skills by leaps and bounds. In the month that I've been at the firm, I've improved my skills even more. I've learned about discovery and civil procedure. I've learned about the way the law actually works.

Associates with experience, even marginal experience, know more, have seen more, understand more, and have a greater maturity than those who go straight through. I've heard horror stories at my court about fresh out clerks who started crying to their judges in light of demanding work loads (?????). People with experience don't act like this. They would've been fired.

And please . . . no judge actually follows the plan. It may be "god-awful," which is why most judges do their recruiting on the sly ahead of time.

Sorry if you weren't so lucky!!

I actually agree with giveusabreakpeople, and I worked for a firm for a year before I finished my clerkship.

Many law students (and most that are able to obtain the top clerkships) are just as capable of doing the work as someone coming from a year of work at a firm. The most brilliant and best clerk in my chambers came straight through and had not worked a day in em's life. Just because some law students have had severe emotional breakdowns does not prove anything about law students generally. I personally don't think I gained anything from working for a year before I clerked. More than anything, it was disruptive of my progress at my firm (albeit a great disruption that I truly enjoyed). I just didn't get one straight out of law school, so I did it the only way I could.

And I'm speaking from the vantage point of an appellate clerkship; so any intimate knowledge of discovery (i.e. doc review) and civil procedure (i.e. what I learned 1L year) meant nothing to me in my clerkship.

To COA Clerk at 4:53: Am curious, you left BigLaw to clerk at the Fed. COA? Thought it was pretty unusual for experienced hires (other than former district court clerks) to apply to the COA.

(And as a district court clerk who left BigLaw to clerk, agree that the lack of salary matching will make things a bit more tight, financially. I'd still do it, though.)

Dear Top 100 School (post at 4:23 pm): You received just one interview because your application was unremarkable and your law school is of middling reputation. Ranking near the top of your class (and I question your assertion of a #1 ranking, unless the #2 student in your class has an identical resume) does not entitle you to a clerkship. In my humble opinion, the biggest mistake you made was to "blast" your application to hundreds of judges. By doing so, your application lacked the personal touch that is so essential to standing out among the hundreds of applications received each hiring season. No doubt some judges did choose to hire graduates rather than 3Ls because of the hiring plan. But that doesn't mean the system is universally to blame.

5:18, I think it is totally fine to call firms whose offers you turned down during 2L OCI. I have several friends who got jobs this way.

I applied going into my third year and got 4 interviews and no offers. But then, I applied again after graduation (with slightly improved grades) and ended up with over 10 interviews and a few offers - and from much more competitive district courts. I think that it is just easier to get noticed when there aren't thousands of apps coming all at once. So, for those of you who really want to clerk and it didn't work out this time, don't be too discouraged.

I'm a current federal court of appeals clerk; before this clerkship, I had a federal district court clerkship. As best I can tell, the move to hiring graduates is real.

My court of appeals judge has always had a small preference for grads, but in the past couple of years has started hiring only graduates in May or June. My district court judge always used to hire under the plan in September--and hired me as a 3L in September--but this year started hiring earlier and hired one graduate before September. (The other slot went to a 3L, timed consistently with the hiring plan.)

Heck, even a few years ago, when I interviewed as a 3L, one district judge who did not make me an offer told me point-blank at the conclusion of my interview that I'd probably have gotten the spot if I had a year of experience.

There seems to be a lot of people posting with no experience one way or the other.

In my experience, grads are becoming much more popular. This has nothing to do with judges suddenly changing gears (it has always been that the more experience a clerk has, the better) and everything to do with grads going into the pool much more frequently.

I only applied to a handful of judges in North Carolina. While I didn't get any interviews I did get a number of polite and quite sincere sounding rejection letters. Maybe the folks in the South are more genteel.

I'm a career district clerk and every judge in my district has at least one career clerk. There is some scattered hiring going on, though lots of times connections come into play on those. Not necessarily the old boy network, but lots of times the judge has someone he knows who is also highly qualified. It's tough applying as a law student these days- if you didn't get an offer, don't feel too bad.

Who gives a shit about clerkships.

this lightly substantiated roomer makes me feel better about the magistrate clerkship i got as a 3L from a 2d tier school. thanks, atl.

David,

From my research, the overwhelming majority of clerks hired still come straight from law school. A substantial minority come with work experience.

The rumor that "a raft judges have made a decision to only hire graduates for clerkships" is certainly not true. At best, this year a handful of judges have hired two or more clerks with work experience. (2d Cabranes; 5th Benavides, Stewart; 7th Ripple; 9th McKeown; 11th Tjoflat are those about whom I've received confirmed reports.) Fewer still have hired all three or four with work experience (Judge Manion, for instance, only accepts clerks with work experience.)

Instead, I think a few factors are shifting the balance (which, I think, is slowly taking place).

First, a significant number of judges are looking to get off-plan, and some are using work experience clerks to do it. That said, a fair number are simply jumping ship on the plan altogether (increasingly more judges do so each year), or a fair number just start calling after the mailing date and are content to do so. While it may result in a net gain of work experience clerks, I don't know that it's by much.

Second, applications for clerkships on the Plan Date decreased significantly in all chambers this year. I believe it may be related to the substantial increase of pay in many offices ($15,000 to $25,000), and an increase in a clerkship bonus (which firms are slow to move toward) isn't enough to keep people away. If you think turning down $135K or $145K was tough, try $160K. Frankly, I think the pool of applicants decreased because fewer qualified applicants applied, which means that judges are looking to alternative sources for hiring (i.e., candidates with work experience).

In fact, if the rumor is true that "The end result is that a number of schools are having their worst clerkship hiring year in memory (at least for their 3L's)," I think it's fair to say it's because fewer 3Ls are applying in the first place. More and more, 3Ls are attracted by the big salaries and paying down debt. If they get sick of the firm, a clerkship could create an excuse to leave. But otherwise, people just think, "Eh, clerkships are for gunners anyway, I'll take the $160K now and think about it another day."

"

A related question: What will this mean for firms (and I've heard there are quite a few) that were host to a surprisingly high number of litigation-oriented summers this year?

It would seem that firms count on a number of 3L's, offer in hand, to defer for a year while they go off to clerk...yet now upwards of 60% of that group will need to start at the firm next fall."

If this is true, then the numbers will tend to even out, on average at least: if a firm hasmore entering associates because of a shortage of clerkships for them, it will on average have a corresponding number of second or third year associates leaving because of an increase in the number of grads hired for clerkships

I really doubt it matter much. For most top law firms (which is where most would-be clerks come from), they're not going to be hurting with a litigation class of 40 or 50. Those numbers are so fungible at the top firms--there's plenty of work to go around, and there's plenty of attrition to be had.

i interviewed with a DJ who said he received over 600 applications. Is that comparable to previous years?

10:07: that would be pretty standard based on the experience in our chambers (DJ in a major metropolitan area).

More anecdotal evidence that cuts the other way: I'm a 3L at a T2. My school is having a good year in terms of scoring clerkships and I got a COA gig and a very good amount of interviews.

It's just such a subjective process that it is hard to predict results without having all of the stats. I know people w/ great resumes that got few or no interviews, and others like myself that I wouldn't place on par w/ applicants from Harvard Law Review, but nonetheless obtained great clerkships.

It may be the case that many judges are moving to grads, but it is hard to tell without having all of the statistics. Some people on here are mentioning that YLS and HLS had bad years, but I know that Chicago had a great year. It's simply a crapshoot. There isn't always a ton of rhyme or reason to the process, so I wouldn't place too much stock in assertions that there is a 60% decrease in 3L hires without evidence to back that claim up.

Anecdotally, I would have to agree that judges I encountered during the process had selected more grads this year than in previous years. For several of my interviews, judges only had one slot for a 3L when in years past they had 3 slots. That said, it's always somewhat of a crapshoot, and in the end I got a clerkship with a judge with whom I had the best "fit", even if he wasn't the biggest "feeder" on my list.

Based on my experiences as a 3L participating in this hiring cycle, I can't say that any move towards hiring grads hurt me (12 interview invites, 6 interviews done, 3 offers). But I can definitely echo some of the earlier comments regarding judges who had already locked up one or more spots with graduates by the time I interviewed, which was "on-guideline". Many judges stated flat out at the interview's outset that they had filled a spot or two over the summer and were only hiring for the last position, etc. Since I haven't been through the process in the past, however, I can't say whether this represents a "change" from past years.

There's a big difference between "hiring one clerk early" and "only hire graduates for clerkships." A 60% drop in positions for 3Ls is just absurd. At best, it could be 20% in some circuits, but probably closer to 10% in reality. Sorry this rumor kid had lousy luck.

Lat: you are wrong about feeders. A decent number these days interview, and hire, grads.

Chicago's "great year" is based solely on an XOXO poster; I dont think it had any greater a year than usual. I think this phenomenon is also much greater at the District Ct level, which the same Chicago poster said people at Chicago don't apply for. Further, Chicago hires are overwhelmingly disproportionately concentrated in the 7th. Hiring practices/trends tend to be very circuit-based.

I just took a look at the list serve and it seems like there are quite a few Chicago people in the DC and 9th Circuits, so I don't know where your info coming from...

Lawclerkaddict is understating the statistics on clerks with work experience if you include clerks with district court experience, rather than just clerks with firm experience. On the Second Circuit alone, my understanding is that Parker, Raggi, Katzmann, Straub, Jacobs, and Cabranes all have a preference for clerks with district court experience or firm experience. Many of them were done hiring before September. I think that on the Second Circuit, it was legitimately harder for a 3L to get a job this year than in years past. I think that many judges might prefer to hire a mix of 3Ls and experienced clerks, but the reality is that the hiring plan is so miserable for judges (and applicants) that there are strong incentives to not have to go through the plan.

An anecdote I heard recently about an NU Law Review kid who graduated this spring: He applied broadly as a 3L and got 1 interview but no offer. One year later (this cycle) he applied as a graduate and got 15 interviews. I am a firm believer in this trend, which is why I'm going to apply exclusively to Kozinski, Posner, Easterbrook, and the DC Circuit next year :)

Also, in regards to the "3L clerkships are down because 3L applications are down because firm salaries are pulling would-be-clerks away": Northwestern had over 70 kids apply for clerkships this year, which I'm told is on the high end (although not a record). I was also told that regardless of how many apply from year to year, approximately 40% end up getting clerkships. Finally, I don't know any law review people (the most eligible candidates) who did NOT apply for clerkships. The ones who are on the fence and susceptible to being swayed into private practice right away by the high salaries are going to be the borderline candidates - the kids who aren't on law review and don't have the highest GPA's. So I don't buy this theory.

Quick question -- I am a grad who went right into DOJ Honors out of law school. I'm now considering taking a year leave to clerk (hopefully for a COA, but probably for a district) and am looking for a timing recommendation. Clearly, I know to wait until after the fall hiring has calmed been completed; but does anyone have an insight into what the best time to mail applications might be?

1:39- Your post on where I got my info is incorrect. Last year's Law Clerk Addict Blog reported only 12 Chicago COA clerks. Plenty of results aren't in yet this year and already Law Clerk Addict reports 24 Chicago COA clerks. Thus, I think it is reasonable to say that Chi had a good year.