Clerkship Placement Stats 2009
Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:17 pm
EDIT: 6/14/09 -- Updated to include all schools. The data reported cover an estimated total of 1,424 federal clerks.
The USNWR online edition profile for law schools this year includes a new field: Percent employed as clerks by Article III federal judges. Morse mentioned this a while back, and apparently he decided to include this data in the survey for the 2009 rankings. Since the profile only shows this number as a percentage, I corrected it against the "percent of graduates employed at 9 months" data, to give actual numbers of clerks and true percentages based on total number of graduates. Check the footnotes for adjustments that I had to make on some of the numbers, to fix what seemed like obvious anomalies.
Rank by Percent of Class
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Rank by Number of Clerks
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Stem and Leaf Plot by Number of Clerks
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(*) For schools with 10 or more estimated clerks, I compared the number of total graduates reported to USNWR with the number of JDs awarded reported to LSAC. Where these numbers differed, I used the latter instead. I did not check or adjust the class size for schools with an estimated number of clerks less than 10. Note that, because the schools reported the percent of graduates employed as federal clerks to USNWR, this adjustment only changes the estimated number of graduates working as clerks, not the proportion of graduates employed as federal clerks. The percentage of graduates employed as federal clerks depends only on the product of "Percent Employed at 9 Months After Graduation" and "Percent Employed as Clerks for Article III Judges," using both figures as reported to USNWR.
(1) Some schools reported a percentage of federal clerks larger than the percentage including all clerks. If the product of these numbers produced a rational result (i.e. 1 or more clerks), then I used that proportion, assuming that the school mistakenly reported the percentage of clerks employed by federal judges rather than the percentage of graduates employed who were working as federal clerks. If the product yielded a total number of clerks less than 1, then I assigned 0.0 for the percentage of federal clerks from that school, because in that case we have no clear way to reconcile the numbers without making an outright guess.
TOTAL / FEDERAL / ASSIGNED
0.092 0.950 0.087 4 Columbia
0.186 0.381 0.071 30 Washington & Lee
0.024 0.070 0.000 94 St. Louis
0.140 0.320 0.045 T4 Duquesne
0.040 0.070 0.000 T4 Regent
(2) Some schools reported a percentage of federal clerks equal to the percentage of total clerks. I assumed that these schools did not understand the question asking for percentage of graduates employed as clerks for Article III judges, and I assigned 0.0 for the percentage of federal clerks for each of these schools.
TOTAL / FEDERAL / ASSIGNED
0.140 0.140 0.000 41 Brigham Young
0.130 0.130 0.000 100 Maine
0.125 0.125 0.000 T4 New England
0.100 0.100 0.000 T4 Suffolk
0.036 0.036 0.000 T4 Texas Southern
0.040 0.040 0.000 T4 Touro
0.037 0.037 0.000 T4 Valparaiso
0.110 0.110 0.000 T4 Western New England
(3) Some schools reported a percentage of federal clerks less than the percentage of total clerks, but still anomalously large. Since the product of the percentages seemed to yield a non-zero and more plausible figure in all of these cases, and since the schools did not apparently just repeat their figure for total clerks, I treated these schools the same as those in note (1).
TOTAL / FEDERAL / ASSIGNED
0.280 0.250 0.070 T3 North Dakota
0.170 0.160 0.027 T3 St. Thomas (MN)
0.190 0.167 0.032 T3 Wyoming
0.110 0.109 0.012 T4 Mississippi College
(4) Southern University apparently could not be bothered to complete the part of the survey requesting data on employment outcomes for their graduates.
The USNWR online edition profile for law schools this year includes a new field: Percent employed as clerks by Article III federal judges. Morse mentioned this a while back, and apparently he decided to include this data in the survey for the 2009 rankings. Since the profile only shows this number as a percentage, I corrected it against the "percent of graduates employed at 9 months" data, to give actual numbers of clerks and true percentages based on total number of graduates. Check the footnotes for adjustments that I had to make on some of the numbers, to fix what seemed like obvious anomalies.
Rank by Percent of Class
--ImageRemoved--
Rank by Number of Clerks
--ImageRemoved--
Stem and Leaf Plot by Number of Clerks
--ImageRemoved--
(*) For schools with 10 or more estimated clerks, I compared the number of total graduates reported to USNWR with the number of JDs awarded reported to LSAC. Where these numbers differed, I used the latter instead. I did not check or adjust the class size for schools with an estimated number of clerks less than 10. Note that, because the schools reported the percent of graduates employed as federal clerks to USNWR, this adjustment only changes the estimated number of graduates working as clerks, not the proportion of graduates employed as federal clerks. The percentage of graduates employed as federal clerks depends only on the product of "Percent Employed at 9 Months After Graduation" and "Percent Employed as Clerks for Article III Judges," using both figures as reported to USNWR.
(1) Some schools reported a percentage of federal clerks larger than the percentage including all clerks. If the product of these numbers produced a rational result (i.e. 1 or more clerks), then I used that proportion, assuming that the school mistakenly reported the percentage of clerks employed by federal judges rather than the percentage of graduates employed who were working as federal clerks. If the product yielded a total number of clerks less than 1, then I assigned 0.0 for the percentage of federal clerks from that school, because in that case we have no clear way to reconcile the numbers without making an outright guess.
TOTAL / FEDERAL / ASSIGNED
0.092 0.950 0.087 4 Columbia
0.186 0.381 0.071 30 Washington & Lee
0.024 0.070 0.000 94 St. Louis
0.140 0.320 0.045 T4 Duquesne
0.040 0.070 0.000 T4 Regent
(2) Some schools reported a percentage of federal clerks equal to the percentage of total clerks. I assumed that these schools did not understand the question asking for percentage of graduates employed as clerks for Article III judges, and I assigned 0.0 for the percentage of federal clerks for each of these schools.
TOTAL / FEDERAL / ASSIGNED
0.140 0.140 0.000 41 Brigham Young
0.130 0.130 0.000 100 Maine
0.125 0.125 0.000 T4 New England
0.100 0.100 0.000 T4 Suffolk
0.036 0.036 0.000 T4 Texas Southern
0.040 0.040 0.000 T4 Touro
0.037 0.037 0.000 T4 Valparaiso
0.110 0.110 0.000 T4 Western New England
(3) Some schools reported a percentage of federal clerks less than the percentage of total clerks, but still anomalously large. Since the product of the percentages seemed to yield a non-zero and more plausible figure in all of these cases, and since the schools did not apparently just repeat their figure for total clerks, I treated these schools the same as those in note (1).
TOTAL / FEDERAL / ASSIGNED
0.280 0.250 0.070 T3 North Dakota
0.170 0.160 0.027 T3 St. Thomas (MN)
0.190 0.167 0.032 T3 Wyoming
0.110 0.109 0.012 T4 Mississippi College
(4) Southern University apparently could not be bothered to complete the part of the survey requesting data on employment outcomes for their graduates.