Best chance for a clerkship among CNMPDG Forum

[St.Remy]

Hey everyone,
So obviously HYS have the edge when going after a clerkship, but those elusive buggers have yet to get back to me (probable waitlists/rejections anyway). The school with the next best opportunity for a clerkship seems to be Chicago, but I'm ruling that one out for personal reasons. Among the rest of my T14 acceptances, namely Columbia, NYU, Penn, Michigan, Duke, and Georgetown, is there any noticeable distinction between clerkship opportunities? One would think Columbia and NYU would have the advantage, but I don't remember seeing numbers that bore out that conclusion (possible biglaw self-selection bias?). Anyway, just wondering what people's thoughts were on this topic.

[vamedic03]

Hey everyone,
So obviously HYS have the edge when going after a clerkship, but those elusive buggers have yet to get back to me (probable waitlists/rejections anyway). The school with the next best opportunity for a clerkship seems to be Chicago, but I'm ruling that one out for personal reasons. Among the rest of my T14 acceptances, namely Columbia, NYU, Penn, Michigan, Duke, and Georgetown, is there any noticeable distinction between clerkship opportunities? One would think Columbia and NYU would have the advantage, but I don't remember seeing numbers that bore out that conclusion (possible biglaw self-selection bias?). Anyway, just wondering what people's thoughts were on this topic.

Columbia.

[jtemp320]

Hey everyone,
So obviously HYS have the edge when going after a clerkship, but those elusive buggers have yet to get back to me (probable waitlists/rejections anyway). The school with the next best opportunity for a clerkship seems to be Chicago, but I'm ruling that one out for personal reasons. Among the rest of my T14 acceptances, namely Columbia, NYU, Penn, Michigan, Duke, and Georgetown, is there any noticeable distinction between clerkship opportunities? One would think Columbia and NYU would have the advantage, but I don't remember seeing numbers that bore out that conclusion (possible biglaw self-selection bias?). Anyway, just wondering what people's thoughts were on this topic.

Columbia.

Im in the same position and have been doing a lot of research on basically the same list of schools and their clerkship prospects.

Columbia is probably the correct answer here but from what I've heard that advantage is pretty marginal against the others on this list (Chi would be better... HYS especially Y and S would definitely be better)

Also from speaking to a lot of CLS alumni recently (including some who have clerkships) all of them have advised:

You almost HAVE to be on law review even at CLS to have a good shot at a clerkship and will also need great professor recs and a little luck...so you definitely should think about where you are going to be happy and feel like you've made a good investment if all the stars dont line up for you to clerk

Good luck!

[FlightoftheEarls]

EDIT: Now included the 2010-11 LST data in the average.

USNWR has only reported Article III clerkships for the graduating classes of 2007, 2008, and 2009, and the remainder of the data (2010 and 2011) is from the NALP forms reported on Law School Transparency. This data is beginning to reflect pre-ITE and ITE hiring, although one more year of data -- Class of 2012, when students were fully aware of the severity of ITE during both OCI and clerkship seasons for the first time -- will be beneficial for a fuller picture.


USNews Article III Clerkship Data:
School | % in 2007; 2008; 2009; 2010; 2011 | Average %
Yale 36.8; 31.4; 27.0; 30.0; 33.2 | 31.68
Harvard 18.1; 15.5; 18.1; 16.3; 16.3 | 16.86
Stanford 23.0; 22.0; 24.0; 29.3; 23.4 | 24.34
Columbia 08.6; 11.0; 08.0; 09.8; 08.1 | 9.1
Chicago 10.0; 13.0; 09.0; 12.3; 09.4 | 10.74
NYU 07.3; 08.5; 08.0; 10.3; 10.9 | 9.0
Berkeley 08.1; 07.0; 09.0; 06.8; 09.7 | 8.12
Penn 10.9; 12.8; 10.4; 10.1; 09.1 | 10.66
Michigan 13.9; 09.0; 11.0; 07.5; 10.6 | 10.4
Virginia 12.4; 11.8; 11.0; 09.9; 10.6 | 11.14
Duke 11.7; 13.0; 12.0; 12.7; 11.1 | 12.1
NU 06.8; 09.4; 08.1; 08.1; 08.0 | 8.08
Cornell 10.9; 08.0; 06.0; 04.7; 08.0 | 7.52
Gtown 05.6; 07.4; 05.3; 04.5; 03.9 | 5.34

Rankings Based on 5 Year Article III Average
1. Yale 31.68
2. Stanford 24.34
3. Harvard 16.86
4. Duke 12.1
5. Virginia 11.14
6. Chicago 10.74
7. Penn 10.66
8. Michigan 10.40
9. Columbia 9.10
10. NYU 9.00
11. Berkeley 8.12
12. NU 8.08
13. Cornell 7.52
14. Gtown 5.34

Disclaimers: All the usual arguments, such as self-selection*, may apply. This data is pre-ITE, and schools are reportedly placing higher/lower numbers depending on who is arguing what for their schools, but that is beyond the purpose of these stats - this is all we have for reported data at this point. We'll have more accurate ITE data in a year when the c/o 2010 information comes out. This isn't meant to spark debate, merely to put together the reported data we have.

*I continue to question the strength of self-selection as an argument when it comes to clerkship placement, however. It's the one type of employment that is universally beneficial regardless of interest in public interest/private practice, and is likely only to be relevant only to the extent a school (1) produces graduates that are more interested in transactional legal work than litigation relative to their peers or (2) should benefit from selection by having a reputation for being a place for clerking and thereby attracting students more likely to pursue federal clerkships (e.g., Chicago).

Takeaways: Many of these differences aren't enormous and can fluctuate year to year. I didn't study statistics, so this is some bullshit layman's view of what differences are significant, but I might consider anything more than 2-3ish points to maybe mean something (but only maybe) and anything more than 3-4 points to probably mean something.

As a general statement, this data is a large chink in the armor of TLS's commonly accepted belief that CCN is a sub-tier in anything other than NYC biglaw placement. Chicago is the only T6 school that places similarly with Duke, Virginia, Penn and Michigan, with Duke slightly ahead of this sub-tier. Columbia and NYU have averaged very similar placement rates, and Berkeley and NU have both averaged a touch below these two. Harvard is surprisingly not quite as far ahead of other schools as people on here would make it seem. Stanford, and to an even greater extent Yale, are absolute Article III rockstars. Cornell only beats out Georgetown, which has had simply atrocious Article III placement in the two most recent years.

TLS has long regurgitated the notion that "CCN >> MVPBD for federal clerkships" despite little clear evidence to support the proposition (apart from the few extremely elusive SCOTUS placements). It will be very interesting to see if that unyielding "wisdom" continues despite hard evidence indicating a trend of comparable (CC) and significantly (N) worse placement from the CCN tier.

Sources:
2007 Data: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =1&t=75513
2008 Data: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... news-.html
2009 Data:http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandr ... s-rankings
2010/2011 Data: --LinkRemoved--

Note: the USNWR says it's the 2008 data when I click on it, but it's clearly the new data and quite different from the 2008 data. I can't find a direct link to the 2007/08 data on the website anymore, so I found secondary source links.

[FlightoftheEarls]

Bumped and edited to include the most recent USNews data.