Clerkship application Q: judges with no GPA preference Forum

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone have a sense of how accurate a "no preference" OSCAR GPA/law review cutoff actually is, particularly in the COA realm? It seems hard to believe that too many COA judges would hire someone with sub-median grades and no LR. Is the "no preference" just a placeholder, or do some COA judges legitimately put significantly less weight on GPA and LR? If the latter, it would be good to know who those judges are.

[MarkRenton]

Does anyone have a sense of how accurate a "no preference" OSCAR GPA/law review cutoff actually is, particularly in the COA realm? It seems hard to believe that too many COA judges would hire someone with sub-median grades and no LR. Is the "no preference" just a placeholder, or do some COA judges legitimately put significantly less weight on GPA and LR? If the latter, it would be good to know who those judges are.

I think it's less that they don't have a preference, but that they're more uncomfortable saying top 20% when there's a big difference between Stanford and Wake Forest. I think they just assess it more qualitatively and would rather not indicate an artificial cut off

[Detrox]

From what I've seen, some judges put "no preference" when they are extremely competitive judges and are generally taking people only in the top 5% if not top people in the class. Other judges put "no preference" and their colleagues in the same district/circuit put anything between 10% and 33% and it seems like that it just means they will select something similar.

This is mostly speculation but I feel like it's a reasonable interpretation.

[Anonymous User]

Do the ones that put top 33% or 30% actually consider that far down?

[MarkRenton]

Do the ones that put top 33% or 30% actually consider that far down?

I always assumed yes, but they're referring to Columbia or Chicago--not WUSTL

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone have a sense of how accurate a "no preference" OSCAR GPA/law review cutoff actually is, particularly in the COA realm? It seems hard to believe that too many COA judges would hire someone with sub-median grades and no LR. Is the "no preference" just a placeholder, or do some COA judges legitimately put significantly less weight on GPA and LR? If the latter, it would be good to know who those judges are.

From what I understand anecdotally at the District Court level, no GPA cut-offs means there will likely not be a clerk pre-sort - same for law review. The stack will go to the judge and they will thumb through them. A judge I interned for who does this says each resume gets a minute. If something jumps out (a lot of times it's one of your interests), they will look at the writing sample then recs and grades. Can't write - can't clerk.