Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks? Forum

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QwertyKeys

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Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by QwertyKeys » Sun Feb 06, 2022 6:28 pm

Why don't these two NYC schools place more federal clerks? Both are obviously top schools. Is it self-selection, or some other combination of factors?

nixy

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by nixy » Sun Feb 06, 2022 6:40 pm

One reason people point to is that lots of NYC judges want work experience, and a lot of NYU/Columbia grads want to stay in NYC. I’ve seen people say that if you factor in people who clerk after working for a year the difference is less.

There’s also probably some self-selection into corporate (or maybe some kinds of PI) where clerkships aren’t that helpful, but that’s hard to measure.

The Lsat Airbender

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by The Lsat Airbender » Mon Feb 07, 2022 11:08 am

The main thing is that they're both in NYC, which is a bountiful market for most jobs (e.g. biglaw) but extremely competitive for clerkships. They also, partly for that reason, don't have anything like the conservative/FedSoc network that juices clerkship numbers at several peer schools.

Whether these things are "self-selection" or "a structural weakness" is a matter of opinion. I think both perspectives are useful depending on your goals.
nixy wrote:
Sun Feb 06, 2022 6:40 pm
I’ve seen people say that if you factor in people who clerk after working for a year the difference is less.
I've seen this too but it always seems like special pleading. Surely there are also grads from Chicago and Harvard who clerk after working for a year or two; Columbia/NYU boosters never mention those schools' "adjusted" numbers for some reason, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. And adding those people to the C/N stats still isn't enough to close the gap with H/C, so it can't be the entire story.

talons2250

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by talons2250 » Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:58 pm

Coming from Columbia or NYU, you're only competitive for federal clerkships if you're in the top 25% of the class and you're only competitive for SDNY/9th Cir/2nd Cir/D.C. Cir. if you're in the top 10% + on law review. Add on top of this the fact that most graduates (1) don't want to move to the middle of nowhere even for a year, (2) are seduced by the absurdly overpaid biglaw salaries and/or have student loans, and (3) would only take the pay-cut if they clerk for the fanciest courts and for the fanciest judges. There's your answer.

riptide123

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by riptide123 » Thu Mar 17, 2022 3:51 pm

talons2250 wrote:
Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:58 pm
Coming from Columbia or NYU, you're only competitive for federal clerkships if you're in the top 25% of the class and you're only competitive for SDNY/9th Cir/2nd Cir/D.C. Cir. if you're in the top 10% + on law review. Add on top of this the fact that most graduates (1) don't want to move to the middle of nowhere even for a year, (2) are seduced by the absurdly overpaid biglaw salaries and/or have student loans, and (3) would only take the pay-cut if they clerk for the fanciest courts and for the fanciest judges. There's your answer.
this is too strongly worded. 10% is prolly true but law review is not - law review has lost its signaling merit for all but the most stuffy judges now that CLS/NYU don't select purely based on grades/writing sample. At least at CLS, a lot of the top students do secondary journal and get clerkships just fine. Also, it would be better to be top15% with a great relationship with one of our few connected profs than great grades w/o that connection. Future clerking 3L at CLS

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mab9ve

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by mab9ve » Sat Mar 19, 2022 7:20 am

Law review is meaningless at Columbia. Know at least 4 people on it (who got in despite terrible grades) who can’t land a single clerkship interview. I’m clerking at an elite district a year out and only applied to coastal districts. No fly-over states or cities for me. I think a lot of CLS students feel this way. Also, a TON of corporate-minded students (we have amazing corporate law profs) so clerking is useless to them. Judges are not turning away CLS (or NYU) students on purpose, it’s just that UVA students are willing to go back to their hometowns in Alabama.

talons2250

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by talons2250 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:03 am

I can say a bit more about clerkships/law review coming from NYU. Of course, grades will always be the single most important thing for getting clerkships. (Recommendations are important too, but not as important as grades.) But Michelle Cherande at the Judicial Clerkship Office at NYU has confirmed that Law Review people (at all GPA ranges) do better in securing clerkship interviews and clerkship offers than non-law review people. At NYU, there are 15 people who grade on to law review in each class (the top 3 people in each 1L section). Next, there are 15 people who write-on; in theory, these people could have terrible grades. Then, there are ~5 people who get in through a combination of grades and writing (these people probably have very good but not spectacular grades). Finally, ~10 people get in through the Diversity Committee. To get in this way, you have to be in the top half of either grades or writing, and be a URM or have some other unique back story (military service, experienced homelessness, etc.). So in theory, these people could all have terrible grades too, but it's likely that some are also in the top half of grades. That means that approximately half of every law review class got on law review in part because they received high grades.

If you're not on law review, a judge might reasonably inquire why you aren't, and if the choice is between two people with similar grades and similar recommendations from the same school and one of them is on law review and one isn't, well...

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cavalier1138

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by cavalier1138 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 11:22 am

talons2250 wrote:
Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:03 am
I can say a bit more about clerkships/law review coming from NYU. Of course, grades will always be the single most important thing for getting clerkships. (Recommendations are important too, but not as important as grades.) But Michelle Cherande at the Judicial Clerkship Office at NYU has confirmed that Law Review people (at all GPA ranges) do better in securing clerkship interviews and clerkship offers than non-law review people. At NYU, there are 15 people who grade on to law review in each class (the top 3 people in each 1L section). Next, there are 15 people who write-on; in theory, these people could have terrible grades. Then, there are ~5 people who get in through a combination of grades and writing (these people probably have very good but not spectacular grades). Finally, ~10 people get in through the Diversity Committee. To get in this way, you have to be in the top half of either grades or writing, and be a URM or have some other unique back story (military service, experienced homelessness, etc.). So in theory, these people could all have terrible grades too, but it's likely that some are also in the top half of grades. That means that approximately half of every law review class got on law review in part because they received high grades.

If you're not on law review, a judge might reasonably inquire why you aren't, and if the choice is between two people with similar grades and similar recommendations from the same school and one of them is on law review and one isn't, well...
That was the standard until fairly recently. My understanding is that the law review quietly changed the standards to make grades less important and place more emphasis on writing and personal statements (a certain number of slots are still reserved for the diversity committee to make recommendations). I may be wrong, but I think the Bluebooking competition was also eliminated.

So the earlier statement about law review no longer having the same signaling power strikes me as accurate.

talons2250

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Re: Why Don't Columbia/NYU have more clerks?

Post by talons2250 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 12:14 pm

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. If you go to the Spring 2022 NYU Clerkship appendix and look up the NYU students/alums with past, current, or future clerkships with 2nd Circuit, DC Circuit, 9th Circuit, and SDNY judges, you'll see that by far the most well-represented journal is Law Review. During the 2020-2021 term, four NYU law alums clerked on SCOTUS (1 for Kavanaugh, 2 for Sotomayor, 1 for Thomas), and all 4 were on Law Review. Of course, this could be correlation rather than causation.

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