X school because you want to Clerk! Forum

[20141023]

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[A. Nony Mouse]

I agree with ph14, it's rare that someone suggests a transactional type should clerk. If someone posts about doing transactional work but says they think they're interested in clerking, there are plenty of people to point out it's not helpful.

[Anonymous User]

Pretty much nobody who doesn't clerk gets academia UNLESS you also have a PhD. There are maybe enough special circumstances to account for 10-15% of the total hires in a given year, but 85-90% of the hires did either a clerkship or a PhD. So, yea, clerkships are pretty much a requirement for anyone hoping to go into academia who doesn't also want to get a PhD.

I've clerked and seen the post-clerkship job market and I think there are good reasons to want to clerk, and to prioritize clerking in choosing between schools (especially YS which really are in their own category when it comes to securing a clerkship). Clerking allows you an unusual amount of flexibility in choosing/changing law firm jobs (which is normally far more difficult a year out of law school), it does open a number of doors that would not otherwise have been opened, and is just a darn cool experience. As someone who believes strongly in the value of experiences for experience's sake, I think it's arguably one of the best things you can do as a lawyer. But for others -- especially for those who just want to be a lawyer and make money, endstop, the possibility of clerking may not always be worth sacrificing tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship money for. But I did, and I don't regret it for one second.

On a final note, the poster who said that the folks who clerk generally already have excellent research and writing skills is probably correct. In my experience, my co-clerks have been far better at researching and writing than the litigators who come in front of the court (even the biglaw litigators). But it's false to assume that there isn't, therefore, any reason to clerk. I have grown more as a researcher and as a writer in my year(s) of clerking than in all of law school combined. Even having started clerking pretty solid in those departments, I nevertheless have had TONS of room to grow (as, I am sure, I still do).

It sounds like you had a great time with your clerkship, but it is an oversimplification / false dichotomy to assume that someone either wants become a good lawyer and therefore guns for a clerkship, or they only care about money and don't shoot for a clerkship. Yes, doing a clerkship will likely reduce the amount of money one could have made if they had gone straight into a firm, but other than that, if one is looking to do transactional biglaw work, I don't understand how spending a year (or more) doing a clerkship (or several of them) could possibly provide them with more pertinent experience than doing actual transactional work for that time. This is kind of the point that I was trying to make on the last page, and which IAFG has also pointed out: it seems like a lot of the advice on here is to do a clerkship no matter what your career goals are and to thereby base your choice of a law school around your chances of landing a clerkship, which just seems wrong.

Federal clerkships might generally be the hardest category on the ABA Employment Summary Report to land with enough data points to be meaningful, and they are a very good indicator of a school's overall placement power into any kind of employment, but I don't think that everyone should do one even if they have the chance just "for experience's sake."

I was the original "experience for experience's sake" poster.

I apologize for being misleading, because my point wasn't that the only experiential value of a clerkship was in how it could be directly helpful to one's career (although what you learn in a clerkship certainly will be extremely helpful for litigators [and, I would argue, for transactional attorneys, albeit to a lesser extent]). My belief is that experiences can be worthwhile even when those experiences only tangentially build essential career skills--or don't at all. So, for example, I would also be encouraging to a prospective lawyer considering doing a research Fulbright in Bhutan on cross-ethnic folk instruments. What an amazing and unique opportunity to have! The skills built during such a project will be far less directly related to what makes for being a good lawyer, but that doesn't mean the experience isn't one worth having (for its own sake, if nothing else). Nor are the skills you'll build doing such a fellowship worthless. For what it's worth, I was a teacher for several years prior to law school, and I am a far, far better lawyer now because of that experience. But my main point is that the experience of clerking is sufficiently amazing that it's worth serious consideration irrespective of its career impact (which, as both myself and others on this thread have pointed out, tends to be pretty substantial).

[09042014]

bizump