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00TREX00 wrote:I'll repeat what you will find out if you do your due diligence on this: clerkship hiring has changed a TON in the last few years, even from last year to this past cycle. You are in a good spot, but I know several people, including myself, who got shut out applying throughout the country with similar stats. ND-Ill is really competitive.

If you are really "shooting" for a clerkship, you absolutely need to buddy up with at least one professor. By this, I mean you need to make him or her actually like you. I witnessed just how much that matters - if they make legit calls for you and say: "This is one of the best students in the class," you are gonna get many interviews. As long as you got an A in his/her class, he/she is a decent person, and you can make friends with him/her, they should be willing to say that. But you need to put in serious work. This is how it works.

Anonymous User wrote:I'm a 2L shooting for a District clerkship after graduation. I'm somewhat limited geographically, and Chicago would be ideal. I currently have a 3.7 at a T-14 (3.69 was the cutoff for Magna last year, so probably around T-10%). Secondary journal and SA in BigLaw this summer at a lower V-100 firm. Am I competitive for a District gig assuming consistent performance? Northern District of Illinois must be ridiculously competitive. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I'm a 2L shooting for a District clerkship after graduation. I'm somewhat limited geographically, and Chicago would be ideal. I currently have a 3.7 at a T-14 (3.69 was the cutoff for Magna last year, so probably around T-10%). Secondary journal and SA in BigLaw this summer at a lower V-100 firm. Am I competitive for a District gig assuming consistent performance? Northern District of Illinois must be ridiculously competitive. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

All of the judges that sent me rejection letters from the ND of IL told me that they had over 1,500 applications per clerkship opening (I applied to all of them, but didn't get responses from a lot of them)... So, yeah, it's pretty fucking competitive.

Definetely broaden your scope if you really want to clerk. With your grades and everything else you need to be happy with a district court judge somewhere like Utah (i.e. if you want to clerk, you should be ready and hoping that a district court judge extends an offer that's in a location like Utah). I'm not saying you won't be able to find anything better, but it's not something you can expect with how competitve clerkship hiring is nowadays. Even district court judges in places like Utah or Montana sent me rejection letters telling me they had 300-400 applications for their one clerkship opening.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I'm a 2L shooting for a District clerkship after graduation. I'm somewhat limited geographically, and Chicago would be ideal. I currently have a 3.7 at a T-14 (3.69 was the cutoff for Magna last year, so probably around T-10%). Secondary journal and SA in BigLaw this summer at a lower V-100 firm. Am I competitive for a District gig assuming consistent performance? Northern District of Illinois must be ridiculously competitive. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

All of the judges that sent me rejection letters from the ND of IL told me that they had over 1,500 applications per clerkship opening (I applied to all of them, but didn't get responses from a lot of them)... So, yeah, it's pretty fucking competitive.

Definetely broaden your scope if you really want to clerk. With your grades and everything else you need to be happy with a district court judge somewhere like Utah (i.e. if you want to clerk, you should be ready and hoping that a district court judge extends an offer that's in a location like Utah). I'm not saying you won't be able to find anything better, but it's not something you can expect with how competitve clerkship hiring is nowadays. Even district court judges in places like Utah or Montana sent me rejection letters telling me they had 300-400 applications for their one clerkship opening.

Is it really that bad? I mean, s/he's not going to get SDNY or D.C., but shouldn't top 10% at a T-10 get you a shot a some districts other than the middle of nowhere?

Anonymous User wrote:I wouldn’t cross my fingers on getting any clerkship nowadays. I recall another poster, ToTransferorNot, saying that there are people on the executive board of law review at UChi that completely struck out and couldn’t get any fed clerkship.

iagolives wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I wouldn’t cross my fingers on getting any clerkship nowadays. I recall another poster, ToTransferorNot, saying that there are people on the executive board of law review at UChi that completely struck out and couldn’t get any fed clerkship.

Yikes. Thanks, economy.

Anonymous User wrote:

iagolives wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I wouldn’t cross my fingers on getting any clerkship nowadays. I recall another poster, ToTransferorNot, saying that there are people on the executive board of law review at UChi that completely struck out and couldn’t get any fed clerkship.

Yikes. Thanks, economy.

To be fair, Chicago students get totally screwed by Chicago's completely absurd limitation on the number of judges you're allowed to apply to (somewhere around 50 - they'll let you push to something like 75). The people on LR editorial board who struck out probably overextended and focused solely on CoA positions - probably in the most difficult to get circuits. Pretty sure TToN mentioned that.

I imagine Chicago will be raising or eliminating the ~50-judge limitation based on the fact that the C/O 2011 got absolutely oblitterated in the clerkship search.

Anonymous User wrote:

iagolives wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I wouldn’t cross my fingers on getting any clerkship nowadays. I recall another poster, ToTransferorNot, saying that there are people on the executive board of law review at UChi that completely struck out and couldn’t get any fed clerkship.

Yikes. Thanks, economy.

To be fair, Chicago students get totally screwed by Chicago's completely absurd limitation on the number of judges you're allowed to apply to (somewhere around 50 - they'll let you push to something like 75). The people on LR editorial board who struck out probably overextended and focused solely on CoA positions - probably in the most difficult to get circuits. Pretty sure TToN mentioned that.
I imagine Chicago will be raising or eliminating the ~50-judge limitation based on the fact that the C/O 2011 got absolutely oblitterated in the clerkship search.

A'nold wrote:What about Bankruptcy? What if you are on LR and write a comment on a bk topic and you have top grades at a mid t1 AND you get a bk professor that clerked for a bk judge before write you a rec. letter? STILL no chance?

Anonymous User wrote:I'm a 2L shooting for a District clerkship after graduation. I'm somewhat limited geographically, and Chicago would be ideal. I currently have a 3.7 at a T-14 (3.69 was the cutoff for Magna last year, so probably around T-10%). Secondary journal and SA in BigLaw this summer at a lower V-100 firm. Am I competitive for a District gig assuming consistent performance? Northern District of Illinois must be ridiculously competitive. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

G. T. L. Rev. wrote:

Anonymous User wrote: you basically have 2 days of interviewing and that covers something like 80 or 90 percent of all fed clerkship hiring for the year (according to our CSO here)).

Your CSO is way, way off.

Anonymous User wrote:

A'nold wrote:What about Bankruptcy? What if you are on LR and write a comment on a bk topic and you have top grades at a mid t1 AND you get a bk professor that clerked for a bk judge before write you a rec. letter? STILL no chance?

Do you have a biglaw gig lined up in a bankruptcy practice?

Are you talking relevant BK judges (i.e., DA, SDNY, and one or two in the 7th cir)? Because if so, those are still very difficult to get. If you're talking any BK judge in any circuit, and aren't trying to focus on judges that deal primarily with Ch. 11 cases, you'll have a good shot.

But a bankruptcy clerkship -even a "prestigous" one - is nowhere near the resume line that a district court is. At the firm I'm going to (V10, debtor-side BK,) we are basically told "CoA or bust" - not worth the time to do a bankruptcy clerkship. This seems counter-intuitive, in that unless you're clerking for Ambro, you're not going to do much of anything with bankruptcy at the CoA level - it is going to be entirely inapplicable to practice. It's purely a prestige thing.

A'nold wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

A'nold wrote:What about Bankruptcy? What if you are on LR and write a comment on a bk topic and you have top grades at a mid t1 AND you get a bk professor that clerked for a bk judge before write you a rec. letter? STILL no chance?

Do you have a biglaw gig lined up in a bankruptcy practice?

Are you talking relevant BK judges (i.e., DA, SDNY, and one or two in the 7th cir)? Because if so, those are still very difficult to get. If you're talking any BK judge in any circuit, and aren't trying to focus on judges that deal primarily with Ch. 11 cases, you'll have a good shot.

But a bankruptcy clerkship -even a "prestigous" one - is nowhere near the resume line that a district court is. At the firm I'm going to (V10, debtor-side BK,) we are basically told "CoA or bust" - not worth the time to do a bankruptcy clerkship. This seems counter-intuitive, in that unless you're clerking for Ambro, you're not going to do much of anything with bankruptcy at the CoA level - it is going to be entirely inapplicable to practice. It's purely a prestige thing.

I really don't know. I've always wanted to clerk and I'm interested in and good at bk. Throw in all the other stuff and it seems like a good fit. Will a "less prestigious" bk judge still get me, with all of the above, a decent bk position in a firm post-clerk?

G. T. L. Rev. wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

G. T. L. Rev. wrote:

Anonymous User wrote: you basically have 2 days of interviewing and that covers something like 80 or 90 percent of all fed clerkship hiring for the year (according to our CSO here)).

Your CSO is way, way off.

hmm... maybe they were just trying scare us? (this was something they said a few days before calls for interviews could be made!). what percentage of on-plan OSCAR judges do you think are hired in those 2 days? (sorry, I forgot to clarify that I meant on-plan OSCAR judges in my last post) ... i would think it would be very high since so many judges seem to interview during those 2 days.

The bolded part really changes the focus quite a bit, as "all fed clerkship hiring" is nowhere near the same as "all on-plan OSCAR hiring." Think of it as the difference between "all Major League Baseball hiring" and "all hiring done on draft day." In both cases, the latter is a subset of a much larger former.

I don't know how many Article III judges there are, or how many such clerkships exist. But let's assume the total number of clerkships is N. The difference between N and O, the number of on-plan, OSCAR clerkships, is huge. N is first reduced by C, the number of career clerkships (which come open only once in a blue moon, and are often staffed by the judge’s former term clerks when they do). It is then reduced by T/2, the number of two-year clerkships divided by two, since only half of those open up every year. Next, N is reduced by S, the number of clerkships where a special circumstance leads to a former term clerk staying on for an extra year (e.g., a female clerk I know is staying on for another year b/c her first term year was interrupted by a pregnancy). Last, N is reduced by A and E, the number of clerkships filled off of the OSCAR calendar by alumni (who are not bound by the hiring plan), and by law students hired early, in contravention of the hiring plan. Lately, the number of clerks falling within subcategories A and E has grown substantially.

So O, the number you are talking about, is really equal to N – (C + T/2 + S + A + E). Hopefully this explains why I thought your CSO was so far off the mark.

Anonymous User wrote:

A'nold wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

A'nold wrote:What about Bankruptcy? What if you are on LR and write a comment on a bk topic and you have top grades at a mid t1 AND you get a bk professor that clerked for a bk judge before write you a rec. letter? STILL no chance?

Do you have a biglaw gig lined up in a bankruptcy practice?

Are you talking relevant BK judges (i.e., DA, SDNY, and one or two in the 7th cir)? Because if so, those are still very difficult to get. If you're talking any BK judge in any circuit, and aren't trying to focus on judges that deal primarily with Ch. 11 cases, you'll have a good shot.

But a bankruptcy clerkship -even a "prestigous" one - is nowhere near the resume line that a district court is. At the firm I'm going to (V10, debtor-side BK,) we are basically told "CoA or bust" - not worth the time to do a bankruptcy clerkship. This seems counter-intuitive, in that unless you're clerking for Ambro, you're not going to do much of anything with bankruptcy at the CoA level - it is going to be entirely inapplicable to practice. It's purely a prestige thing.

I really don't know. I've always wanted to clerk and I'm interested in and good at bk. Throw in all the other stuff and it seems like a good fit. Will a "less prestigious" bk judge still get me, with all of the above, a decent bk position in a firm post-clerk?

If you didn't have the numbers to get a biglaw gig int he first place - no, probably not. In fact, when I was interviewing for my debtor-side gig, after I accepted over lunch, our discussion turned to clerkships. The hiring partners interviewing me basically made fun of a guy who sent in an applicantion to them that had an Arizona bankruptcy clerkship on it - "The guy may look at one single-asset chapter 11 case, it's meaningless experience to us." The only bankruptcy clerkships that are relevant to the things big firms do are the good ones in SDNY, DA, and (arguably) the chief BK guy in NDIL.

Younger Abstention wrote:Well, then it sounds like you should go for that, A'nold.

Anonymous User wrote:

A'nold wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

A'nold wrote:If you didn't have the numbers to get a biglaw gig int he first place - no, probably not. In fact, when I was interviewing for my debtor-side gig, after I accepted over lunch, our discussion turned to clerkships. The hiring partners interviewing me basically made fun of a guy who sent in an applicantion to them that had an Arizona bankruptcy clerkship on it - "The guy may look at one single-asset chapter 11 case, it's meaningless experience to us." The only bankruptcy clerkships that are relevant to the things big firms do are the good ones in SDNY, DA, and (arguably) the chief BK guy in NDIL.