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First of all, thank you! Second, if you could give us some idea as to your class rank? What kind of school you went to? Factors you think figured into you attaining your clerkship?

Thanks for doing this! Could you also answer how you went about submitting your applications? Did you target specific judges you wanted to work with? Blanket all of the markets you wanted to work in? Blanket all of the markets?

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Are all judges on plan, and how many hire 3Ls? I've heard federal circuit judges typically favor clerks who have some sort of work experience, be it at a firm or with a company.

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Do you think you could give a rough breakdown of what the average amount of time you spend on various subjects is? My greatest area of interest is Copyright, which it seems isn't something that anyone actually does, unless you work for the Federal Circuit, or work your way in-house in the entertainment industry.

Cupidity wrote:Do you think you could give a rough breakdown of what the average amount of time you spend on various subjects is? My greatest area of interest is Copyright, which it seems isn't something that anyone actually does, unless you work for the Federal Circuit, or work your way in-house in the entertainment industry.

Not a CAFC clerk, but I'd imagine you would see very little copyright law stuff at the CAFC. Copyright appeals generally go straight up to the ordinary federal territorial appeals courts rather than the CAFC. Therefore, as I understand, you probably wouldn't really encounter copyright issues there very often. If you did, it would probably mostly only be from appeals connected with a copyright claim against the federal government at the Court of Federal Claims or a Section 337 copyright claim at the International Trade Commission. My understanding is that you mostly encounter patent law at the CAFC, followed by a smattering of trade issues (from the CIT or ITC for example), Court of Federal claims appeals, Veterans Claims appeals etc. This is one aspect of copyright law that seems to be fairly messy compared to patent law (e.g. Circuit splits regarding the copyright infringement inquiry between the 9th and 2d Circuits to name one example whereas the CAFC issues the final say on patent law infringement across all U.S. district courts).