Top Law Schools

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whacka wrote:If I know that I am going to be looking for a CoA clerkship, should I be looking for schools that have high federal clerkship percentages? This seems like the intuitive response, but I wanted to get some input before I start seriously thinking about different schools. For instance, NYU's federal clerkship percentage is about half that of Berkeley. Would it be misguided to pick NYU over Berkeley for the sole reason that Berkeley has better clerkship placement? And does higher clerkship placement amount to higher chances of getting a clerkship, or is it self-selecting in some way? In other words, does clerkship placement among top law schools differ because of differences in the ability of students to get clerkships, or does it differ for some other reason (perhaps people from a certain law school don't apply to as many clerkships for some reason, but those that do fare as well as those from any other school).

Cool question! HYS are really the main schools that give a noticeable clerkship bump. From there I'd say the rest of the T14 only varies a little, and there are self-selection problems with the stats (i.e. you can definitely get a clerkship coming out of CLS, but for whatever weird reason they self-select out of it and have terribad clerkship stats). When I say it only varies a little, I mean you're still going to need to be in roughly the top-25% for d.cts and top-10% for CoA at most T14s, with innummerable exceptions that come from impressing profs who have relationships with judges, etc etc.

It's risky to pick a school based on clerkship placement stats simply given that only a small percentage of the class lands those jobs each year, and even hyper-qualified people can strike out in the hiring process because of how crazy competitive (and consequently fortuitous) clerkship hiring can be. You're better off picking a school based on their combined BL+FedClerk stat. And a final note of caution, if you're clerkship or bust, plan to apply everywhere all over the US. When I said that hyper-qualified people can strike out, I mean hyper-qualified people applying nationally. Hyper-qualified people who only apply to a select market likely WILL strike out.

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Worry about that if you are admitted to multiple HYS schools

CLS students that self select out of clerkships do so because it has little value for people going transactional.

Also just wanting to get a temporary one year job is a bad goal, do you have more specific goals about being a litigator in some capacity? If not I would just ignore clerkships for now

Whacka I'm so glad you asked this I was wondering the exact same thing! I have seen that Chicago actually places more than Columbia, but because they have quarters instead of semesters it makes summer employment much more difficult, so I am thinking Columbia is my main target if I don't get lucky at Harvard.

cdotson2 wrote:Whacka I'm so glad you asked this I was wondering the exact same thing! I have seen that Chicago actually places more than Columbia, but because they have quarters instead of semesters it makes summer employment much more difficult, so I am thinking Columbia is my main target if I don't get lucky at Harvard.

Huh? This is false.

TheUnicornHunter wrote:

cdotson2 wrote:Whacka I'm so glad you asked this I was wondering the exact same thing! I have seen that Chicago actually places more than Columbia, but because they have quarters instead of semesters it makes summer employment much more difficult, so I am thinking Columbia is my main target if I don't get lucky at Harvard.

Huh? This is false.

which part?
http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2014/ ... -placement here is where I got my info on clerkship's.

cdotson2 wrote:

TheUnicornHunter wrote:

cdotson2 wrote:Whacka I'm so glad you asked this I was wondering the exact same thing! I have seen that Chicago actually places more than Columbia, but because they have quarters instead of semesters it makes summer employment much more difficult, so I am thinking Columbia is my main target if I don't get lucky at Harvard.

Huh? This is false.

which part?
http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2014/ ... -placement here is where I got my info on clerkship's.

The bolded part.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

cdotson2 wrote:

TheUnicornHunter wrote:

cdotson2 wrote:Whacka I'm so glad you asked this I was wondering the exact same thing! I have seen that Chicago actually places more than Columbia, but because they have quarters instead of semesters it makes summer employment much more difficult, so I am thinking Columbia is my main target if I don't get lucky at Harvard.

Huh? This is false.

which part?
http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2014/ ... -placement here is where I got my info on clerkship's.

The bolded part.

I read it in a TLS thread about someone trying to pick between Harvard or Stanford, although they might have said slightly harder and not much harder. I think the reasoning is that you get out later and get grades back later than you would in a semester system.

cdotson2 wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

cdotson2 wrote:

TheUnicornHunter wrote:

cdotson2 wrote:Whacka I'm so glad you asked this I was wondering the exact same thing! I have seen that Chicago actually places more than Columbia, but because they have quarters instead of semesters it makes summer employment much more difficult, so I am thinking Columbia is my main target if I don't get lucky at Harvard.

Huh? This is false.

which part?
http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2014/ ... -placement here is where I got my info on clerkship's.

The bolded part.

I read it in a TLS thread about someone trying to pick between Harvard or Stanford, although they might have said slightly harder an
d not much harder. I think the reasoning is that you get out later and get grades back later than you would in a semester system.

It makes no difference whatsoever. It shouldn't be a consideration. Nor should the % of people who get a certain temporary job. Clerkship #s don't tell the whole story.

Mack.Hambleton wrote: Also just wanting to get a temporary one year job is a bad goal, do you have more specific goals about being a litigator in some capacity? If not I would just ignore clerkships for now

TheUnicornHunter wrote: It shouldn't be a consideration. Nor should the % of people who get a certain temporary job. Clerkship #s don't tell the whole story.

I am not sure about Whacka, but the reason I am interested in clerkship's is because my end goal from Law school is to be a federal judge, and I figure a clerkship is an invaluable experience and would put my end goal more in focus.

There are soooooooo many steps and contingencies between clerking and being a federal judge, though. I'm not saying don't go for a clerkship (it's a great experience), and if absolutely everything else is equal, sure, look at clerkship numbers if you're still trying to decide. But your performance in school (and relationships with profs/others who have connections to judges) is going to matter much more than the name on your diploma (when you're looking at this level of school, that is).

(It's also by no means a prereq to being a federal judge to clerk for one, given how political getting appointed is, but that's a whole other issue.)

cdotson2 wrote:

Mack.Hambleton wrote: Also just wanting to get a temporary one year job is a bad goal, do you have more specific goals about being a litigator in some capacity? If not I would just ignore clerkships for now

TheUnicornHunter wrote: It shouldn't be a consideration. Nor should the % of people who get a certain temporary job. Clerkship #s don't tell the whole story.

I am not sure about Whacka, but the reason I am interested in clerkship's is because my end goal from Law school is to be a federal judge, and I figure a clerkship is invaluable experience and would put my end goal more in focus.

Please go to Columbia.

cdotson2 wrote:

Mack.Hambleton wrote: Also just wanting to get a temporary one year job is a bad goal, do you have more specific goals about being a litigator in some capacity? If not I would just ignore clerkships for now

TheUnicornHunter wrote: It shouldn't be a consideration. Nor should the % of people who get a certain temporary job. Clerkship #s don't tell the whole story.

I am not sure about Whacka, but the reason I am interested in clerkship's is because my end goal from Law school is to be a federal judge, and I figure a clerkship is an invaluable experience and would put my end goal more in focus.

This makes no sense.

I think bruinfan's answer is best, although there's a bit more of a sliding scale for hyper-competitive judges. I think if literally all you cared about in choosing schools was getting a federal clerkship (which is an asinine approach), some schools like Virginia and Chicago have an earlier clerkship-heavy culture, whereas other schools like CLS and NYU have less of an immediate clerkship culture with many more students clerking for judges that primarily take clerks a year or more out of school (and therefore don't show up in 9mo ABA/LST employment stats).

Really though, I wouldn't read too much into variations between T14 schools' clerkship stats (aside from total outliers Yale/Stanford).

jbagelboy wrote:whereas other schools like CLS and NYU have less of an immediate clerkship culture with more students clerking for judges that primarily take clerks a year or more out of school

Do you have any actual data to support this statement?

Something a lot of people miss is that though biglaw is highly concentrated in two or three major urban areas, clerkships are spread throughout the country somewhat more broadly. This helps to explain why certain schools place so many federal clerks. I think two good examples are University of Virginia and UC Berkeley, which both place ~15% of their students in federal clerkships (same rate as Harvard) despite being lower-ranked than, for example, NYU, which places at half the rate. Too many schools feed into the New York clerkship market.

Tons of top law grads are competing for relatively few clerkships in New York, Boston, and DC, but it's a bit different in other locations. The flyover states mostly get leftovers; some judges favor local schools and others just recruit whatever T3/Y6/T14 grads are willing to make the flight.

In California, Stanford and Berkeley have a bit of a chokehold because they are the only "elite" institutions in the state, at least in the view of many judges.

University of Chicago is another school that maintains a fairly dominant position in the clerkship market for its region.

So in short, it's complicated; much more nuanced than better rank = more clerkship opportunities.

But I don't think you should pick schools based primarily on clerkship opportunities. Even at Harvard or University of Chicago, most of the students aren't going to get a clerkship. You should select the outcome that best balances total cost/debt, overall job opportunities, and your unique interest in clerkships.

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NorCalLaw wrote:Something a lot of people miss is that though biglaw is highly concentrated in two or three major urban areas, clerkships are spread throughout the country somewhat more broadly. This helps to explain why certain schools place so many federal clerks. I think two good examples are University of Virginia and UC Berkeley, which both place ~15% of their students in federal clerkships (same rate as Harvard) despite being lower-ranked than, for example, NYU, which places at half the rate. Too many schools feed into the New York clerkship market.

Tons of top law grads are competing for relatively few clerkships in New York, Boston, and DC, but it's a bit different in other locations. The flyover states mostly get leftovers; some judges favor local schools and others just recruit whatever T3/Y6/T14 grads are willing to make the flight.

In California, Stanford and Berkeley have a bit of a chokehold because they are the only "elite" institutions in the state, at least in the view of many judges.

University of Chicago is another school that maintains a fairly dominant position in the clerkship market for its region.

So in short, it's complicated; much more nuanced than better rank = more clerkship opportunities.

But I don't think you should pick schools based primarily on clerkship opportunities. Even at Harvard or University of Chicago, most of the students aren't going to get a clerkship. You should select the outcome that best balances total cost/debt, overall job opportunities, and your unique interest in clerkships.

This makes an important point--that there is a reasonable likelihood that it is easier to get a clerkship from some t14s than from similarly ranked others--while overstating the importance of geography in the process and the desirability of major market clerkships. For the appellate court, in particular, judge and circuit tend to determine competitiveness more than city. But the OP is right that many judges have specific hiring preferences and a lot of profs have connections, and these things do have an impact of clerkship hiring rates, especially at schools (eg not YS) that have low enough overall placements that 5-6 additional clerks makes a relatively large impact on the clerkship rate. Also, relatedly, I don't buy the self selection argument. Maybe it has a 1-2% absolute impact but there is no way that it accounts for Columbia, say, placing a fraction of the clerks as Chicago. Geography, connections, and application strategy matter a ton for clerkship hiring and it is unlikely that every T14 is equal on these fronts (see, eg, YS vs H).