Harvard Has Early Lead Among Federal Clerk Placements
Coming into this week, Harvard Law School had placed 58 federal clerks, leading all law schools. That is not altogether surprising, given the Cretaceous size of HLS classes. Yale is only clocking in with 14 (9th place) clerks. But it’s early yet. It’s just important that Eli-the-bulldog doesn’t drop his bone in the river trying to grab another one.
The real news from the Federal Appellate Judicial Clerks 2009 blog is that the University of Michigan Law School is currently tied for second (with Stanford).
Way to go, wolverines. We told you that stealing cell phones and sandwiches wasn’t going to adversely affect the school’s reputation when it came to anything important.
But look at how difficult it is to get a clerkship coming from a school outside of the top 14:
* T14: 71.3%* Others: 28.7%
Those numbers are worst than last year for those outside the top 14.
At least if you are still in the top tier you have a fighting chance to get a clerkship. The path to clerking is all but blocked for those outside tier 1:
* T1: 94.2%* T2: 3.6%
* T3: 1.4%
* T4: 0.8%
The lesson, as always, get into the best school you can and don’t look back.
Federal Appellate Judicial Clerks 2009




Comments
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Suck it, Mystal.
First
Now you're just messing with us. Standford?
Yikes, you need to make serious efforts into proofreading.
STANDFORD?
if you're in tier 2 you can still get a clerkship... you just have to find an alumni...they're few, but they exist (check for undergrad schools too!)
I think he's doing it on purpose at this point. But why?
i don't like elie very much...
Those numbers are worst than last year for those outside the top 14.
What's going on at Yale? It's hard to believe they can't place as many students in clerkships as Texas, Penn State, Michigan, etc.
Where does T1 end? Top 30?
I could never remember what the "S" in HYS stood for, but I was pretty sure it was Standford.
HEY ELIE - THE LINK ONLY HAS APPELLATE CLERK INFO.
Not all clerks are appellate clerks. There are these other clerks that work in what are called District Courts. The U.S. District Courts handle trials on the federal level.
There are more "federal clerks" that those noted on the link you gave. Idiot.
Is Joe Biden too crazy to be Vice President?
Getting a federal clerkship =/= gettin a CoA clerkship.
Elie is retarded.
Go Blue.
"those numbers are worst than last year"
Are you kidding me? Elie to proofreader!
Go Longhorns!!!
Go Blue!
Cretaceous.
what writing.
Gallion
This breakdown is interesting:
http://lawclerkaddict2009.blogspot.com/2008/05/clerks-by-school.html
In what way is the size of HLS classes chalky?
If the stats are just for appellate clerkships, that makes it all the more impressive that Texas and Penn state schools are beating out Yale.
"worst than last year" Seriously? You must be doing this on purpose to boost your comment tally.
ELIE SERIOUSLY YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THE NOMENCLATURE FROM "FEDERAL CLERKS" TO "FEDERAL APPELLATE CLERKS"
Roll Wave!
"worst than last year"??
you mean "worst" or "worse than last year"?
Hail the Victors!
Cooley has 12 placements (8th place)
Are you people really dense enough to say that Yale is losing this battle? Out of 14 placements, 12 are on the 2nd, 9th, or DC Circuits. While they are trailing in quantity, they are making a killing in quality!
That number is way low for Yale. I can think offhand of more clerks than that. Just for COA, the ones that come to mind are:
3 to Griffith
2 to Kavanaugh
1 to Garland
1 to Williams
1 to Tatel
1 to Boudin
1 to Cabranes
1 to Leval
1 to Parker
1 to Sotomayor
1 to Smith
1 to Sykes
1 to O'Scannlain
2 to Clifton
1 to Reinhardt
1 to Colloton
1 to Calabresi
That's 21 I can think of offhand and doesn't count the DCT clerkships. So... take the numbers with a grain of salt.
Yale 3L
Mystal should take time away from D&Ping Hope with Lat and devote more time the basic grammar we learned in grade school and which our forefathers died defending.
shame on your seed Mystal .... shame.
30 -- 1 to Torruella (Yale)
Yale tied with GULC in 9th place. Poor poor Yale. (btw, poor poor GW... how the F do you guys have 1/3 of the GULCers?)
I agree with 30. The blog's numbers are not accurate for many schools. They say a lot more about how quickly some schools report to blogs than how many clerkships schools actually have.
Yale also had a McConnell.
This website is just a list of who emailed them with thier clerkships. It has nothing to do with who got clerkships and everything to do with who wants to tell everyone about them.
Don't bring the bulldog into this. B/t/w, his name is Handsome Dan XVI.
Sam Mcguffie owns all clerkships.
Wrong facts.
Terrible writing again.
I can't believe it took >35 posts to say it, but it needs to be said:
EPIC FAIL.
Per capita, of course, Stan[d]ford is still beating the crap out of U Mich, Yale's doing just fine (although well behind its usual numbers at this juncture), and Chicago's beating the crap out of NYU and Columbia.
Per capita, the rankings (as of now) are:
1. Stanford (15%)
2. Harvard (10%)
3. Chicago (9%)
4. Yale (7.2%)
5. Michigan (7.1%)
6. Penn (6.9%)
7. UVA (6.4%)
8. Northwestern (5.1%)
9. Vanderbilt (4.5%)
10. NYU (4.2%)
11. Texas (3.7%)
12. Duke (3.6%)
13. Columbia (3%)
Way to go Arizona! 0 clerks placed...We get a refurbished building and a Career Services Office that continues to FAIL spectacularly.
22, try reading a little closer. It's Penn main campus that's ahead of Yale, not Penn-State College.
40: As a Mich student, I'll take it. And give it, to NYU, up the ass.
clerkship adviser at Michigan = awesome
how many clerks from University of Alabama
T14 is self-explanatory, but what are the tiers? T1-T2???
40 - W&L is somewhere between 3.3% and 4.2%. 5 clerks and 3L class somewhere between 120 and 150.
This is going to piss people off, but are Michigan students really that great? In my experience, they're on par with Penn and Boalt, not HYS.
My sister was accepted at Standford, but she decided to attend Hardvard instead.
40, well, congrats to Yale on barely beating out the three state schools just beneath it. I'll take my in-state tuition at Michigan or Penn and the very same clerkship opportunities that Yale offers, thank you very much.
46
T1 = Top 50
T2 = 51-100
From the US News rankings, basically.
Realistically, there's an enormous drop off after T14 for everything, and then another enormous dropoff after T25 w/ties (schools that do legitimate, large OCI's, basically, probably 35 or so total). Very little point in going to the 44th ranked school over the 52nd ranked school, all other things being equal or with $ in favor of the 52nd ranked school.
For that matter, there's almost no point in going to a USC over, say, an Indiana or a Wisconsin, especially if you are in-state for one of those two. USC's higher ranking translates into ~ 3% more of the class getting NJ250 jobs out of law school.
50 -- well played, good sir.
47 -- I didn't realize W&L was so small. Here's the proper list, then (and remember, of course, that this is not a comprehensive lists, as Yale appears to have severely underreported; however, if Elie's going to put up a shitty, and premature post, I'm going to at least try to enhance his crappy job of reporting).
Per capita, the rankings (as of now) are:
1. Stanford (15%)
2. Harvard (10%)
3. Chicago (9%)
4. Yale (7.2%)
5. Michigan (7.1%)
6. Penn (6.9%)
7. UVA (6.4%)
8. Northwestern (5.1%)
9. Vanderbilt (4.5%)
10. NYU (4.2%)
11. Texas (3.7%)
12. Duke (3.6%)
13. W & L (3.5%)
14. Columbia (3%)
BTW, ELIE FOR GOD'S SAKE PUT IN THE QUALIFIER "APPELLATE"!!!
46, basically if you can't get into a T25 school you should attend a law school in the market you want to work in. Regional schools in big markets are favored over higher ranked school (not in T25) outside of that market. You need to have top grades though.
And I, like Elie, will apparently fail to proofread my copy before submitting. On the other hand, I'm not being paid. -52
T-bag -14.
ftw
T14 = schools whose hiring for BigLaw hasn't been obliterated in this sort of economic climate.
go W&L
Don't get too excited, 50--the tuition at Michigan for out-of-state students is higher than at Harvard.
What is a "GULC"? Is it not unlike a BigGulc?
If you want your blog post to have any validity, you need to show the listings per capita. Who cares if Harvard has the most clerkships if they are 3 times bigger than Stanford or Yale??
60 -- see 52. Elie, of course, sucks. But that is news to no one.
Elie MysTTTal
60 -- exactly. Maybe that's why Penn and some other huge state schools are so high on the list. Who cares.
#52 - you forgot ND too. 6 students out of a class of 175-180.
lol at all the people that think Penn is a state school. maybe when they see what kind of jobs we get they will realize that we're an ivy league school. to even compare Michigan with Penn is disgraceful.
Doesn't law clerk addict do this percentage breakdown, too? She did last year and the year before. When will this year's happen?
64 - subtle Chicago troll. Chi > Mich >>> Penn
Michigan is only doing so well in this league table because the students are taking purloined sandwiches to their interviews to woo the starving clerks interviewing them.
#48
Yeah, UM kids are about the same intellectual quality as the other top 10, but they usually are also just good people. Fewer ego issues, more collegial. Also, they zealously protect their judges like they protect their subway sandwiches.
Where's Boalt??? I thought that they were the 6th best school in the country, no?
i dont think anyone tracks districTTT placements. its coa or fail.
65 -- (s)he'll do it sometime next Spring, once things are more final. As (s)he noted on the site, there are only 370 or clerkships reported as yet, and (s)he usually gets a good hundred more reports...
65 here. I saw somewhere it's a she. But I guess it could be a he. I think s/he updated the blog, because not it says s/he'll update it later. But yeah, thanks.
Uh, 64? It's Penn "State," no?
I can't believe that people like 30 actually exist.
73 - It's all the same. Pretty much everyone on campus interchanges them.
As a Penn student, I'm much more concerned with JoePa's health and the upcoming Big 10 season than these crazy federal clerk placements.
75: It looks like JoPa's cleared to coach. Go Penn!!!
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/football/ncaa/09/23/joepa.pennstate.ap/index.html
76 - PHEW! Thanks for the news! Nittany Lions!!! Penn is the best state school in the T14 and the Big 10!
Penn is not a state school. It's a private Ivy league institution...but not as good as W&L.
77 - and both among the best and among the worst in the USNWR rankings.
74 - I agree, and it's a bit nauseating. 30 should be an ATL writer. S/he would fit right in.
How many University of Idaho grads clerk? Become VPs?
UVA coming in with a strong 25. Nice. Bet they can play some softball, too.
PENN STATE LULLLLZZZZZ. OMG LOL OMG LOL
UPENN STATE-= JOE PA!
UMICHIGAN STATE = TOM IZZO
the upenn state joke is the best one left over from the xoxo collapse. LONG LIVE AUTOADMIT
(Also-- happy 22nd birthday to me!!!!!!!!)
These rankings confirm that NU is best school behind MVP.
Why is the 9th Circuit taking clerks from Chicago and Michigan - what do they know about Western water rights?
does the Court of Federal Claims count?
Elie MysTTTal's writing is worst than David Lat's.
"T14" is an arbitrary category invented by some student at a non-top 5 school. Is there really a huge drop-off between 14 and 15 in terms of clerkship placements?
Very unsurprisingly, UMich's numbers are also low on that site. It's a self-reporting site after all. UMich has placed 60 clerks at this point.
UMich 3L
To 69, these numbers are pretty far off as far as Boalt goes. I'm not sure if the info is from the judges or if its self-reporting. But off hand I know about a dozen people who have accepted appellate gigs so far, and I tend to avoid the gunnerish crowd.
If you believe the numbers from that site are even close to resembling the total clerkship placements thus far, then you probably didn't do too well on the LSAT.
GULC No. 1! GULC No. 1! GULC is in the clear lead in this year's competition for number of sweaty rods taken balls deep in the ass.
89, I think you mean 30 - we're only discussing appellate here.
93, yeah... thanks for the clarification. Either way, still doing better than the site claims.
- 89
Mystal should leave the blogging about clerkships to Lat-- someone who actually has clerked and has a real interest in the job/application process. Although I can't believe I'm calling for more writing from a person who is moronic enough to be an avid Palin supporter.
22, 42, 50 and 73 are idiots. Penn = University of Pennsylvania (an ivy league school).
Hmm guess we know who doesn't go to a T1 school...
Srsly, that web site is only appellate clerks. You make this web site look like it doesn't know what it's talking about.