Is it harder to land BIGFED or an AIII clerkship? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Biglaw associate here who will be leaving after 2.5 years to clerk for 1.5 years for a fed d. ct. judge. It took me a little over a year to land a fed d. ct. clerkship with my grades (around top 25% at one of the MVPB schools). If I apply to literally every BIGFED position even remotely relevant to my experience, what are my chances of landing a BIGFED gig after my clerkship? Will it take over a year of applying (most likely)? Are things better now that the hiring freeze is gone? Assume decent pre-trial experience (but not actual trial experience), some depo experience, motion drafting and whatever I'll do as a clerk. I'm at a biglaw firm known for being tops in litigation, if that makes a difference. I just want to be a trial attorney for the DOJ, AUSA, anything that gives me decent substantive experience and doesn't involve keeping track of my time by the .1 of an hour.

[Nelson]

Will anyone with juice at your firm go to bat for you? Is your judge connected? Those two factors probably will make a big difference for your chances.

[DELG]

aren't there a lot more clerk gigs than bigfed openings

[Anonymous User]

aren't there a lot more clerk gigs than bigfed openings

Probably. But aren't there more people applying for clerkships than people applying for BIGFED?

[DELG]

aren't there a lot more clerk gigs than bigfed openings

Probably. But aren't there more people applying for clerkships than people applying for BIGFED?

i'd think the opposite since people know clerkships are super competitive

[A. Nony Mouse]

aren't there a lot more clerk gigs than bigfed openings

Probably. But aren't there more people applying for clerkships than people applying for BIGFED?

Not sure this is true if you consider that clerking is usually 3Ls and people a year or two out, and BIGFED is going to be open to (and probably interested in) laterals with a decent amount of experience, so a larger pool overall.

Though I think things are definitely better right now, because after the hiring freeze tons of offices have been hiring lots of people, I don't think you can say definitively which of the two is easier/harder to get. They both depend on too many different factors.

[newbienew]

Is it fair to say that if salary is removed as a factor, most people would prefer bigfed to biglaw?

ETA: people interested in litigation*

[A. Nony Mouse]

This is just speculation, but: I think in terms of lifestyle, most people would prefer bigfed (no biglaw-style billable hours, your schedule tends to be a lot more predictable). However, some people may just like the kind of work that firms do better. An acquaintance is a litigator who really likes her bigfed job, but actually liked firm work better. She left because she has little kids, and government work turned out to work way better for her family (basically, no checking her blackberry after leaving work for the day and no work on weekends, except maybe under unusual circumstances - you can actually plan to have free time). Some people may like having/working with/recruiting clients, for instance, which you don't do in the same way for the government. Some people would also probably find the bureaucracy (sometimes inefficiency) of the feds stifling. And if you're someone who really values feeling like you're working on complex, sophisticated, high-stakes cases, you may prefer a fancy firm with fancy clients to litigating for the feds (obviously there's a lot of sophisticated, important litigation that the government takes part in, but there can be a lot of fairly routine stuff, too - i.e. responding to pro se prisoner suits, or defending federal tort claims act suits).

So I'm not sure you can generalize.

[newbienew]

This answer was very helpful; thanks!