How does your Career Office help students get Clerkships? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Lol I was not at a T14 and we absolutely had to print and mail all our own paper apps. I was just glad they handled the paper LORs.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

[Anonymous User]

…I think a school like NDLS concentrating its resources on students who are actually competitive for federal clerkships shows sophistication, not incompetence. Yes, if you are below 3.7 at a T30, you have long odds on the clerkship market. Though I hope they help students with more realistic routes like state and non-A3 clerkships.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

This is just NDLS using its leverage to help students it can actually help. That’s more than most schools do. Look at the Penn forum. That’s obviously a way more selective school and they are saying no one even pushes the top applicants there.

Also no one who’s an adult gives a shit about whether their law school is looking out for their “personal interests.” I don’t want or need a guidance counselor. And real career advice is not coming from any school committee. This isn’t 7th grade. I want professors to use their influence to help me get what I decided to pursue.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

Genuinely not trying to invalidate your experience but this doesn't strike me as a particularly fair assessment.

Obviously, since we aren't a T14, the faculty are going to invest more into you if you're a more competitive candidate (magna or better). If you aren't LR or magna, it's very tough to get a clerkship but I think that would be true of any other non "top" school. That said, though, I know quite a few people below magna that have been able to get district court clerkships.

I think it's certainly true that it's easier to get a clerkship if you're FedSoc but that's true for any law school, so I don't think that's unique to NDLS. The advantages may be particularly pronounced at NDLS because the professors are so well-connected in Fedsoc "world", so I won't deny that. The people who get feeder/quasi-feeder clerkships right after 1Ls tend to be law review + Blackstone/FedSoc but again, that's the case for any school of our tier or higher.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

This is just NDLS using its leverage to help students it can actually help. That’s more than most schools do. Look at the Penn forum. That’s obviously a way more selective school and they are saying no one even pushes the top applicants there.

Also no one who’s an adult gives a shit about whether their law school is looking out for their “personal interests.” I don’t want or need a guidance counselor. And real career advice is not coming from any school committee. This isn’t 7th grade. I want professors to use their influence to help me get what I decided to pursue.

Highly disagree with your take on the "personal interests" part because I don't think that's what the OP was saying. Not everybody needs or wants to do a clerkship, so when the career office is telling you that you should do a clerkship, you should consider if it's actually because they believe it'll be a stepping stone in your career worth doing, or if the career office is telling you that solely because the administration is trying to increase its numbers. These things may not be mutually exclusive, but students should both take an open-eyed approach to their career but also be fully aware why the law school and career office might be pushing clerkships so aggressively.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

Genuinely not trying to invalidate your experience but this doesn't strike me as a particularly fair assessment.

Obviously, since we aren't a T14, the faculty are going to invest more into you if you're a more competitive candidate (magna or better). If you aren't LR or magna, it's very tough to get a clerkship but I think that would be true of any other non "top" school. That said, though, I know quite a few people below magna that have been able to get district court clerkships.

I think it's certainly true that it's easier to get a clerkship if you're FedSoc but that's true for any law school, so I don't think that's unique to NDLS. The advantages may be particularly pronounced at NDLS because the professors are so well-connected in Fedsoc "world", so I won't deny that. The people who get feeder/quasi-feeder clerkships right after 1Ls tend to be law review + Blackstone/FedSoc but again, that's the case for any school of our tier or higher.

It makes sense that faculty would want to invest more in competitive candidates, but they wouldn't necessarily need the committee's help, would they, to get a clerkship. My point is more that the types of students who could benefit more from having institutional support are the ones that are passionate and enthusiastic about clerking, even those that may on paper not look as good. I think that if a student goes to this professor or the committee for help, then the committee should proactively help them out because both the school and the student stand to benefit. This doesn't mean having to call a judge for a student you know the a judge won't seriously consider, but also means giving more constructive advice than just "improve your grades" to an already above median student.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

Genuinely not trying to invalidate your experience but this doesn't strike me as a particularly fair assessment.

Obviously, since we aren't a T14, the faculty are going to invest more into you if you're a more competitive candidate (magna or better). If you aren't LR or magna, it's very tough to get a clerkship but I think that would be true of any other non "top" school. That said, though, I know quite a few people below magna that have been able to get district court clerkships.

I think it's certainly true that it's easier to get a clerkship if you're FedSoc but that's true for any law school, so I don't think that's unique to NDLS. The advantages may be particularly pronounced at NDLS because the professors are so well-connected in Fedsoc "world", so I won't deny that. The people who get feeder/quasi-feeder clerkships right after 1Ls tend to be law review + Blackstone/FedSoc but again, that's the case for any school of our tier or higher.

this is why i don't get why applicants see attending nd as their best shot at getting a clerkship. they literally just owe their numbers to fed soc. join the fed soc at any other law school and you'd have just as good of a shot there as you would if you had attended nd.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

Genuinely not trying to invalidate your experience but this doesn't strike me as a particularly fair assessment.

Obviously, since we aren't a T14, the faculty are going to invest more into you if you're a more competitive candidate (magna or better). If you aren't LR or magna, it's very tough to get a clerkship but I think that would be true of any other non "top" school. That said, though, I know quite a few people below magna that have been able to get district court clerkships.

I think it's certainly true that it's easier to get a clerkship if you're FedSoc but that's true for any law school, so I don't think that's unique to NDLS. The advantages may be particularly pronounced at NDLS because the professors are so well-connected in Fedsoc "world", so I won't deny that. The people who get feeder/quasi-feeder clerkships right after 1Ls tend to be law review + Blackstone/FedSoc but again, that's the case for any school of our tier or higher.

Yeah, I don't mean this in an unkind way, but judges aren't interested in hiring genuinely smart and interesting people from a T30 who don't also have great grades (barring exceptional circumstances). NDLS can't do anything about that and it's not unreasonable to prioritize the most competitive candidates, which isn't based on an individual's interest in clerking. Don't hate the player etc. (I say that as someone from a even lower-ranked school than NDLS, so again, no disrespect intended. I had a lot of really great, smart classmates who didn't get clerkships.)

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

I heard that this type of support from the Clerkship Committee is only available if you're Fed Soc/Fed Soc aligned. Don't expect to get a liberal clerkship at Notre Dame, and don't expect the clerkship committee to go to bat for you if your grades are not 3.7+. If your grades are lower and you don't have the model resume that this professor/Associate Dean and the rest of the committee loves (Fed Soc, Law Review, and/or Religious Liberty Clinic) then you really have to hustle on your own. You will not be getting any phone calls to judges, any recommendations on who to apply to, or any substantive feedback on interviews from the committee.

Many of my classmates who were interested in clerking coming in to law school but were not at the top of the class (but were still genuinely smart and interesting people) were disappointed to find the Clerkship Committee not that helpful, especially when other students who had no express interest in clerkships were bombarded with personal emails from the CDO telling them to apply for a clerkship solely based on their GPA (high magna cum laude) or when these same students were heckled incessantly by faculty into applying for clerkships. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with having students consider clerkships as an option, but you have to go into this process knowing that the school does not personally give a damn about your actual interests or whether a clerkship is the right fit for your needs - they just want to boost their clerkship numbers so they can top that Reuters ranking on law school clerkships.

Classmates spurned by the Committee have gotten interviews and secured clerkships through independently compiling a list of judges and applying through OSCAR (and using the CDO's administrative system to apply), but did not get any other institutional support otherwise.

Genuinely not trying to invalidate your experience but this doesn't strike me as a particularly fair assessment.

Obviously, since we aren't a T14, the faculty are going to invest more into you if you're a more competitive candidate (magna or better). If you aren't LR or magna, it's very tough to get a clerkship but I think that would be true of any other non "top" school. That said, though, I know quite a few people below magna that have been able to get district court clerkships.

I think it's certainly true that it's easier to get a clerkship if you're FedSoc but that's true for any law school, so I don't think that's unique to NDLS. The advantages may be particularly pronounced at NDLS because the professors are so well-connected in Fedsoc "world", so I won't deny that. The people who get feeder/quasi-feeder clerkships right after 1Ls tend to be law review + Blackstone/FedSoc but again, that's the case for any school of our tier or higher.

Yeah, I don't mean this in an unkind way, but judges aren't interested in hiring genuinely smart and interesting people from a T30 who don't also have great grades (barring exceptional circumstances). NDLS can't do anything about that and it's not unreasonable to prioritize the most competitive candidates, which isn't based on an individual's interest in clerking. Don't hate the player etc. (I say that as someone from a even lower-ranked school than NDLS, so again, no disrespect intended. I had a lot of really great, smart classmates who didn't get clerkships.)

Judges are interested in hiring "genuinely smart and interesting" people, and I can guarantee there are a lot of judges who can see past a lower GPA if a person's work product/writing sample/practical work experience is good, especially given how inflated some people's grades are with 14 unit semesters of seminars or other soft classes.

[lavarman84]

Lol I was not at a T14 and we absolutely had to print and mail all our own paper apps. I was just glad they handled the paper LORs.

Same. Went to a peer school of NDLS, and our career office did basically nothing. A few professors (including the professor leading the clerkship committee) did help me with the process.