Prestige of judges Forum

[clovis]

0L here, will be starting at H/S in the fall, interested in federal clerkships. I'm wondering how I can learn about different judges and how prestigious/important they are seen as within the legal world. I know the schools have lots of information on judges, so maybe I'm jumping the gun here. But are there publicly available sources of information about this?

Also, I'm curious about the extent to which judges can even be ranked in this way. I know that for "feeder" judges, you could compare the number of people they sent on to SCOTUS. But below that level, is it more murky? I suppose for district judges you could asses by how many people they in turn sent to feeder judges.

Part of what prompted this question is that I have a personal connection to a district judge and am wondering whether this person would be great for a clerkship.

Also just to explain, while I don't think I'm a typical gunner or overachiever, I'm interested in getting clerkships secured as soon as possible, since I know how crazy the timetables are becoming. I am 30 and am afraid of not being able to do a clerkship until several years after graduation.

Feel free to point me to past forums if they are pertinent. Thanks!

[foxes]

The clerkship offices at H and S (and certain profs there) will know way more about this than what you can find online. When you get to school, you'll hear about what to do if you're interested in clerking.

If you're in at H I'd post in the ask H students thread, ppl will tell you which profs are helpful.

[emkay625]

This is not really a question that has an answer.

To begin, you are correct in that feeder judges are generally seen as more prestigious. For district judges, clerkships located in busy divisions/major metropolitan areas are often viewed as more prestigious than clerkships in "flyover" districts. For instance, a clerkship in the SDNY in Manhattan is considered by most to be more prestigious than say, one in the District of Montana. Or a clerkship in Houston/Dallas might be considered to be more prestigious than one in Alpine, Texas.

However, the analysis changes based on what you want to do. Want to practice in Montana? The Montana clerkship is a smarter bet than the Manhattan one. Want to do IP? Then a clerkship in the Eastern District of Texas makes sense. (EDTX is largely rural but home to 25% of all federal patent litigation, bc of some local rules that are really favorable to patent trolls). Want to do criminal work? Then a clerkship somewhere along the border, where 90% of your work will be drug and illegal reentry cases, would make sense.

Of course, if you have your sights set on SCOTUS clerkship/academia, as many H students tend to do, go with the typical feeder analysis.

[abl]

To some extent, you'll learn which judges are prestigious in school by just listening to the general chatter. Judge Wood (7th Cir.), for example, is a prestigious judge--despite not being a feeder. For the most part, though, there's a pretty direct correlation between feeder judges and prestigious judges. After the 10 or so legitimate feeder judges, with only a few exceptions (see, e.g., Judge Wood), it gets pretty murky. Information about feeders is easily available online, and there are few enough non-feeder super-prestigious judges that it shouldn't take too much asking/listening for you to figure out who they are in law school.

If you're not clerking for one of the ~20 "extra-prestigious" judges, but still care about these things, you should be aiming for (1) a federal clerkship (2) on the court of appeals (3) with an active judge (4) in the 2/7/9/DC circuits (5) who is well-regarded (and each step in this list is additionally incremental: the difference in prestige between clerking for a fed judge and a state judge is far greater than the difference in clerking for a 9th Cir. judge and an 8th Cir. judge). (1) through (4) you can figure out yourself using google. (5) is really the only tough step in all of this, and your best bet of figuring out which judges are well regarded is to talk with older students at your school who have completed the clerkship search as well as current and former clerk alumns (they'll mostly be happy to respond to random "can we chat" requests). And make sure to ask not just about their judges, but about other judges they know. As a clerk, you usually get a sense for at least a couple of other judges in your circuit (and you likely know about more from your own search/interview process). It's also worth putting out feelers to your professors, but I'd wait until you've developed a strong enough relationship that it's not weird (e.g., don't ask in the second week of school).

[clovis]

Thanks for the advice, everyone!