The departure of Luttig a few years ago has really shaken up the feeder judge ranks.

I heard Souter was doing a 2011 deferral ala BigLaw.

Why do the justices even hire 9th Circuit clerks when the Court so routinely reverses 9th Circuit decisions, most likely because of substandard work by those same clerks? Coincidentally, I'm in Champaign Illinois for a deposition, and opposing counsel's bio says he clerked for the 9th Circuit. I usually hate depositions, but I'm eager for this one because former 9th Circuit clerks just can't hang.
--Chomping at the Bit in Champaign

Is there a historical breakdown somewhere on the web regarding feeder schools? This is such a small sample size it's almost pointless.

Because the 9th Circuit judges they hire from - okay, not Reinhardt, but certainly O'Scannlain and Kozinski - are conservatives?

AK and DFO are the judges who are keeping the loonies like SR and BFF in check. That's why the justices like to hire clerks from them.

why does NYU suck so bad at SCOTUS placement?

You can construct a breakdown from the raw data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_clerks_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

Nice work UVA!

What's up with U. Chicago? Usually they do better.

I have no connection to the school... (okay, I was SEC undergrad), but I find it remarkable that UGA has placed SCOTUS clerks two years in a row.

UVA = fetus

C'mon, Souter must have hired by now. Can someone please just email Lat with the details?

Didn't Elie or Lat clerk for one of these feeder judges?

how prestigious is it to clerk for a municipal court judge?

Interesting that a full 20% of the October '09 Term clerks summered and/or worked as associates at Gibson Dunn.

13 - Elie? You must be joking.

Elie went to HLS and Debevoise - why would it be surprising for him to have clerked?

Didn't Wilkinson get shut out for this current Term (OT 2008)? If so, it makes sense that he has so many clerks in OT 2009.

Maybe because UGA is a good school......smart kids who won't have $150k in loans after they get out!

Elie was a fetus once too.

17/13 -
a) Do you read this site?
b) There's a world of difference between landing a top job at OCS (particularly in years past ago) and getting a feeder judge clerkship.

Clerks have to be detail-oriented, anal retentive, and meticulous about typos and Bluebooking.

I'm not an Elie hater - he is a smart and funny writer - but clerking probably wouldn't have been a good fit for him.

7,
I would assume that it is bc NYU is "new" to the top of the rankings. accordingly, anyone who didn't graduate within the last 10 years still does not view NYU as an ultra-elite school. thus, I would expect that NYU grads get a disproportionately low number of top end feeder clerkships (I haven't looked up the data on this) and consequently, in conjunction with SCOTUS justices having the same viewpoint as the top end feeder judges with regards to NYU not being an ultra-elite school, NYU grads fail to get SCOTUS clerkships.

@21 - I don't get it.

Discuss

The first UGA placement was Chief Roberts taking a chance on that student, and he said he was very satisfied with that choice.

Glad to see ND back on the list. They'd been out of it for a few years.

maybe try section 90?

18 - 3 of the 4 Wilkinson clerks going to SCOTUS for OT 2009 are working for him right now. So I don't think prior years have much to do with it.

Also, he placed 4 at the Court in OT 2007, 2 in 2006, and 3 in 2005, so 2008 looks like an anomaly.

I think Notre Dame has been getting SCOTUS interviews over the last few years, but just no bites from the justices. Wonder what gives.

Good year for Michigan, when they usually get just 1 every other year. Bad year for Chicago and Stanford, ouch.

When did Kennedy hire for OT 2010? Did ATL miss reporting something?

23 - There are ample schools that placed clerks from non-traditionally elite schools. The Real Reason: NYU & CLS are only "elite" because Wall Street likes them.

And yet another nail in Chicago's coffin.

Fuck you, Levmore. And you too, Hutchinson.

Wahoowa!

Good work, UVA!

So few women as clerks -- looks like less than 1/4, although I am not sure about the gender of some of the names.

29 - That was reported in an old ATL post. Go through the archives to find it.

hahaha.....UGAy is not a good school. i dont care if they had 20 clerks last term.

Lat clerked for O'Scannlain (the #2 feeder judge):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lat

Amit Agrawal is also a former Alito clerk (in addition to clerking for Kavanaugh).

NYU does badly because it's students are disproportionately liberal--they graduate very few strong conservatives who would be attractive to the right side of the Court.

Well done Amy from Minnesota!

It appears both Georgetown clerks are conservatives, which seems right since every SCOTUS clerk from Georgetown in the last 15 years has been conservative. This is a little counter-intuitive given how liberal Georgetown law is.

Why is this? Is it just because conservatives are smarter or do better looks and charisma also factor in?

The only reason that UVA gets 4 clerks is because Wilkinson hires 4 UVA clerks.

42 - and if they weren't qualified, Wilkinson wouldn't really be a feeder judge, would he?

Actually UGA has had a SCOTUS clerk 4 out of the last 5 years http://www.law.uga.edu/news/archives/080714mcalister_clerk.html

Interesting - although hardly surprising - that Posner's not a big feeder...I'd think clerking for him looks as good if not better on a resume as any circuit judge but...if you clerk for him then you probably think independent thoughts, so useless for SCOTUS.

45, you mean independent thoughts like: "one year in which he places *only* one clerk on the Court isn't a big enough sample size to draw the conclusion that 'Posner's not a big feeder.'"? He regularly feeds at least one, frequently more, onto the Court. A couple years ago, I recall, all 3 of his clerks graduated to the Elect.

No Dukies? I figured with the recent upheaval in the legal profession, we had a chance.

*sigh*

--Devil in Disguise

42 - Nice insight. Of course, if you had looked at the clerk list you might notice that only one of the four UVa clerks was a Wilkinson clerk.

Columbia's placement may fall when RBG leaves. She takes a CLS grad every year, and that's often the only CLS'er clerking on the S. Ct.

Leiter's law school rankings by Supreme Court clerkships:
http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2000_08_scotus_clerks.shtml

Is Stanford Law TTT?

Shouldn't your ranking of "feeder" law schools be adjusted according to the size of the student body. Given that Harvard is about 3 times bigger than Yale, it suddenly looks a lot more impressive that Yale has 8 compared to Harvard's 8.

Thanks 50. I have a new slogan for Levy: We're no worse that UIUC!!!

--Devil in Disguise

Hopefully Chicago's new dean has a clue that these kinds of things matter.

However...there will be some UChicago grads next year. I'm sure of it. This year's graduating class has a slew of crazy fedsoc people clerking next year. Hello Scalia...

42 - Not really. Wilkinson usually only hires 1, and never more than 2, UVA grads per term. And 2 of UVA's SCOTUS clerks were from Sutton this year anyway.

Why isn't Berzon (9th Cir.) more of a feeder?

@ 15: Gibson Dunn has a lot of clerks every year. The current group of clerks has at least three people just from GDC-DC.

39 is more correct than 23. NYU has been a top-1o school since at least the 1970's. While NYU has been one of the few schools to advance in the US News and World Report Rankings, they were still a top-10 school when the first rankings came out in 1987. To claim that NYU students do not do well in Scotus Clerkships because of reputation lag at this point is disingenuous. Most of the justices are aware of NYU's top five ranking.

NYU does not do well in terms of Scotus clerkships b/c of the following (amongst other) reasons:

1. The professors and career services people in charge of helping students land Scotus clerkships are not very good. At a normal school, given their track record, they would be replaced.

2. NYU is known to be a an intolerant place where conservative/libertarian thought is scorned by students and faculty alike. The most infamous incident was when a student asked Scalia if he sodomized his wife and the law school took little to no action. Given that 5 of the current justices are right-of-center that is problematic. The problem is further acerbaited by the fact that Breyer and Stevens hire at least 3/4 of their clerks from HYS. Ginsburg is not much better on that front. She normally hires one CLS grad in addition to a roster stocked with HYS grads. So with O'Connor retired, basically NYU places with Souter and that is it.

3. NYU Law Review claims to value "diversity" in its membership but I don't know a single member of the law review who is a conservative or libertarian including some who have very high grades. If you don't have any conservatives on law review, the chances of placing many students on Scotus with a conservative court are slim.

59 - that and NYU students are weird. Their hipster values don't mesh well with S. Ct. judges.

Not many women on the list. What's up with that?

61, I'm sorry the justices didn't get together to make sure they met their gender and diversity quotas before making offers.

61 - That is not a new problem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/washington/30scotus.html?ex=1157515200&en=e1f8e4ca9102bdbe&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Among the T10 law schools, it may be more of a reflection of the school curriculum strengths than prestige. Yale, with its strong push towards academia, and UVa and Harvard, with strong connections with the government, are going to attract the sort of students and faculty that seek out / have connections with feeder judges and S Ct judges. NYU, by contrast, is no less prestigious, but it is more likely to attract students and faculty with strong Wall Street connections. Frankly, a prestigious clerkship is useless to a law grad with aspirations for the financial markets.

That also may be why Gibson Dunn appears to do so well- not because of any inherent prestige on its part, but rather, it has strong ties to the DOJ, and therefore, is likely to attract people with those connections and abilities.

That said, these summaries are still useful: if you're a top law applicant with aspirations for a prestigious clerkship, note which schools seem to have the best placement.

Many, if not most, NYU students start out with public interest aspirations. This notion that most NYU students want to work on Wall Street or practicing corporate law is false. NYU does not do well in obtaining Scotus clerkships. It has nothing to do with lack of interest.

@23 - heh. NYU and ultra-elite in the same sentence.