District Court clerkships/Boston Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi guys --

Does anybody know how competitive the Boston district courts tend to be from year to year?

HLS, top 1/3rd-ish (probably closer to 40% than 30%). Working at a v15 this summer, not that it necessarily matters.

Would really like to stay in Boston because my SO has to stay here for at least a year after I graduate, and don't want to clerk somewhere too far.

Thanks!

[PriyaRai]

lol @ V15

[Anonymous User]

lol @ V15

Hey, gotta make it sound as prestigious as I can!

[Anonymous User]

Likewise, how important is a geographical connection for Boston district court judges? CCN & LR with no geographic connection here.

[Anonymous User]

I got an interview with one of the district court judges in Boston with (I think) similar grades, though hard to know under the grading system. I think your background is probably good enough. The problem in Boston is just that there tend to be pretty few openings each year and lots of HLS students looking to stick around.

[Anonymous User]

Likewise, how important is a geographical connection for Boston district court judges? CCN & LR with no geographic connection here.

If you're CCN & LR, why aren't you looking at 1st circuit if you want to be in New England? Also, though ties are helpful, it seems that for many judges you have the stats already to get pulled from the pile. I'm CCN no LR with some connections, so to get anything in the region, I need to play up my minimal ties.

[Anonymous User]

Likewise, how important is a geographical connection for Boston district court judges? CCN & LR with no geographic connection here.

If you're CCN & LR, why aren't you looking at 1st circuit if you want to be in New England? Also, though ties are helpful, it seems that for many judges you have the stats already to get pulled from the pile. I'm CCN no LR with some connections, so to get anything in the region, I need to play up my minimal ties.

CCN + LR =/= sufficient for 1st Cir., and not by a mile. I mean, one could get 1st Cir. with those credentials, but it wouldn't be anywhere close to automatic. You do realize (1) how few 1st Cir. judges there are and (2) how competitive clerkship hiring has become, right?

Edit to add: There are nine 1st Cir. judges, if you include the senior judges. See http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/?content=judges.htm. I don't know if the senior judges have a full caseload/complement of clerks or not. But let's assume they do just for the sake of argument. Then, since OP wants to stay in New England, let's rule out Judge Torruella, who sits in Puerto Rico. This leaves us with eight judges who, at most, have 4 clerks each (aside from the chief judge, who may have five) = a maximum of 33 1st Cir. clerkships available each year. Note that this total includes Judge Boudin's clerks, who, due to his uber-feeder status, are drawn from the very best of the best nationwide.

There are more than 32 people on NYU LR than that, in each class. A lot more, in fact. If you add up all of the rising 3L LR members from CCN, you get 49+45+29 = 123. Assuming 1/3 of those people opt out of the clerkship search altogether and that nobody not on LR is a serious contender for COA clerkships (a dubious assumption, I think), you're still at 83 people, or roughly 2.5 CCN LR applicants for every 1st Cir. clerkship. And we haven't even begun considering YLS, HLS, other schools, or the substantial number of alumni/district court clerk applicants. I hope this helps explain why your assumption is problematic.

OP here -- I don't want CoA. As a future trial lawyer, I want district court. I know it's still competitive, but do you have any knowledge of just how competitive it tends to be here in Boston (or even expanding to Concord, NH and Providence, RI), perhaps relative to other district courts?

Thanks so much.

[Anonymous User]

How competitive do they tend to be in the parts your familiar with?

It's much harder to find discussions or information about that than for CoA, so having some idea about some part of the country is better than no idea.

[Anonymous User]

I got an interview with one of the district court judges in Boston with (I think) similar grades, though hard to know under the grading system. I think your background is probably good enough. The problem in Boston is just that there tend to be pretty few openings each year and lots of HLS students looking to stick around.

I'll add a little bit more to this to explain further. Your grades are probably on par, at least as far as I can guess from my own experience. The problem is that as far as I understand, there are only 3 district court judges in Boston who hired clerks in the last cycle-- some of the judges have hired several years out already. So you have a chance, but the relatively low number of Boston judges hiring each year makes it very unpredictable. You should definitely think about Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, etc.