Berkeley's clerkship placement Forum

[voice of reason]

Boalt had the lowest placement rate for federal clerkships in the T14 (7%) in 2008, according to US News. Schools putting a larger proportion of their classes into Article III clerkships include Texas, Vanderbilt, UNC, W&L, Emory, WUSTL, and Notre Dame. Ties (within a tenth of a point) include UCLA, South Dakota and Alabama.

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandr ... iii_clerks

What's going on with Boalt's clerkship placement? Can any Boalties share insight as to whether this might be self-selection away from clerking? Or are they all dead set on 9th circuit or nothing?

[Boalt1L]

The ranking system screws everyone over basically, I forget the details on how but I hear that's the problem.

[Danneskjöld]

The issue was the ranking system. See, if your school doesn't rank you get to say so in Oscar, and they actually have to look at your resume/transcript. But if it does, you have to put your rank (which means anything but top 5% or 10% get easily screened out, i.e. their applications are never even viewed, by current clerks doing the initial culling since they can automatically screen by class rank). Most t14 don't rank. The school recently changed its ranking system though, and for the class of 2011 won't be ranking (except top 1, 2, 3 people and top 25%--I think).

See rule 3.07: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/184.htm

[scoobyman]

Actually, the ranking revision is to a three-tier system: top three students each year are "boalt scholars", top 10% is "high distinction" and top 25% is "distinction". This system allows students to state that boalt does not rank and thus increases the chances that a resume will get read.

[bigkahuna2020]

That link says 9%

[IzziesGal]

This is also three year old data from the height of the recession when people were likely more hesitant to give up a good paying job to clerk. I don't know official stats, but I know a lot of the law review peeps have article 3 clerkships. I also know of some non law review people with article 3 and state supreme court positions. I don't know if maybe its a matter of not being interested in clerking bc of the public interest thing? Outside of law review, I dont knpw many people who are interested in it.