Is appellate lit off the table without a clerkship? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Will summer at an NYC v5 doing lit (yes, I know Vault means nothing for lit but it’s a shorthand). Can’t clerk bc (a) citizenship and (b) can’t afford to “volunteer” as a clerk for a year unpaid. Is appellate lit after graduation practically impossible? If not, what can I do to get it?

[Anonymous User]

Will summer at an NYC v5 doing lit (yes, I know Vault means nothing for lit but it’s a shorthand). Can’t clerk bc (a) citizenship and (b) can’t afford to “volunteer” as a clerk for a year unpaid. Is appellate lit after graduation practically impossible? If not, what can I do to get it?

What you should do is try to clerk in Hawaii or Alaska. Failing that, California Supreme Court (in particular Liu or Kruger).

[Anonymous User]

Besides Hawaii and Alaska, don’t forget the territories.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Based on these responses, it seems the answer is no, you cannot do appellate without a clerkship?

[The Lsat Airbender]

OP here. Based on these responses, it seems the answer is no, you cannot do appellate without a clerkship?

Appellate is hard enough to get with a CoA clerkship (SCOTUS clerks can feel more comfortable). There are many more applicants than seats and clerking (along with school+grades) is one of the easier ways to cull résumés. If you're a charismatic Sears Prize winner you can presumably work your way into a group regardless but you'd probably still get nudged to clerk after starting.

[Anonymous User]

Try the state supreme courts of Texas, New York, DC, or California depending on where your office is.

[Wild Card]

Any kind of appellate?

I'm wondering whether citizenship is required to join a local prosecutor's office's appellate group (Manhattan DA), e.g.

But, yeah, you'd be extremely disadvantaged, because everyone else would have an appellate clerkship.

[CanadianWolf]

Besides Hawaii and Alaska, don’t forget the territories.

Are territorial clerkships helpful regarding biglaw employment in any area of litigation ?

I am familiar with one individual who had such a clerkship, but failed to realize any benefit from the experience regarding employment back in the continental US.

[Anonymous User]

Besides Hawaii and Alaska, don’t forget the territories.

Are territorial clerkships helpful regarding biglaw employment in any area of litigation ?

I am familiar with one individual who had such a clerkship, but failed to realize any benefit from the experience regarding employment back in the continental US.

Torruella’s/Gelpi’s clerks didn’t/don’t have any difficulty getting jobs. Same for D.P.R. clerks, to some extent. I take it you mean Art. IV judges (like D.V.I.). I have no idea there.

[Anonymous User]

Any kind of appellate?

I'm wondering whether citizenship is required to join a local prosecutor's office's appellate group (Manhattan DA), e.g.

But, yeah, you'd be extremely disadvantaged, because everyone else would have an appellate clerkship.

Appellate work at the Manhattan DA would be great.

And I thought as much, appreciate the honesty.

[Anonymous User]

Biglaw appellate? Very hard, unless you otherwise have a gold-plated resume. Government or regional appellate? More doable if you’re good. A SSC clerkship would be helpful, especially where you want to practice.

[Anonymous User]

One interesting option might be applying to the fellowships of appellate clinics of law schools. That’s a job where you live and breathe appellate lit and although a clerkship would help, it might not be impossible to get in your situation. If you liked it enough you could maybe even run your own someday.

[Anonymous User]

Talk to the administrators at your school. You may be able to set up a fellowship where the school pays you some stipend to volunteer clerk for a lower-48 federal judge. I have two foreign friends who have successfully secured this arrangement.

[Anonymous User]

Manhattan DA -- as do all NYS DA's offices -- requires US citizenship. But they hire entry-level (and lateral from BigLaw and elsewhere) ADAs straight into their Appeals Bureau and you'd do purely appellate work.

[Anonymous User]

Biglaw appellate? Very hard, unless you otherwise have a gold-plated resume. Government or regional appellate? More doable if you’re good. A SSC clerkship would be helpful, especially where you want to practice.

What even is biglaw appellate? Do any firms have actual pure appellate groups that take juniors? Even at like Jones Day Issues and Appeals the people aren’t just doing appellate work.

[Anonymous User]

Talk to the administrators at your school. You may be able to set up a fellowship where the school pays you some stipend to volunteer clerk for a lower-48 federal judge. I have two foreign friends who have successfully secured this arrangement.

From which school? Having two friends who've done this is very strange because (a) most lower-48 federal judges do not hire volunteer clerks, and (b) most schools don't like it when their students volunteer clerk because it shows up as a ding on their ABA employment reports. Not sure what happens with the employment report when someone does it on a fellowship, but I don't think it's a positive. Coming from someone who looked into it and decided not to go for it.

If Yale, that makes sense. I've heard anecdotally that Judge Calabresi, for instance, takes the top foreign student at Yale each year as a volunteer clerk.

Three more points to add about volunteer clerking. For one, some judges treat volunteer clerks like interns and do not permit volunteer clerks to use the title of Judicial Law Clerk. For another, judges who hire volunteer clerks as full law clerks apply the same hiring standards as they do for paid law clerks. So volunteer clerking is not a way for noncompetitive applicants to get in through the back door unless it's really an intern position. Lastly, and building on the last point, a volunteer clerkship (or any clerkship for that matter) will not make you competitive for positions that you are not already competitive for on paper.

OP might know all this already, but hopefully this helps!

[Anonymous User]

Talk to the administrators at your school. You may be able to set up a fellowship where the school pays you some stipend to volunteer clerk for a lower-48 federal judge. I have two foreign friends who have successfully secured this arrangement.

From which school? Having two friends who've done this is very strange because (a) most lower-48 federal judges do not hire volunteer clerks, and (b) most schools don't like it when their students volunteer clerk because it shows up as a ding on their ABA employment reports. Not sure what happens with the employment report when someone does it on a fellowship, but I don't think it's a positive. Coming from someone who looked into it and decided not to go for it.

If Yale, that makes sense. I've heard anecdotally that Judge Calabresi, for instance, takes the top foreign student at Yale each year as a volunteer clerk.

Three more points to add about volunteer clerking. For one, some judges treat volunteer clerks like interns and do not permit volunteer clerks to use the title of Judicial Law Clerk. For another, judges who hire volunteer clerks as full law clerks apply the same hiring standards as they do for paid law clerks. So volunteer clerking is not a way for noncompetitive applicants to get in through the back door unless it's really an intern position. Lastly, and building on the last point, a volunteer clerkship (or any clerkship for that matter) will not make you competitive for positions that you are not already competitive for on paper.

OP might know all this already, but hopefully this helps!

One from Yale, one from Columbia. All of the above cautions are correct. But some judges treat volunteer clerks as regular clerks and allow them to use that title, entitling them to the regular signing bonus.

[Anonymous User]

I know someone from NYU who was a volunteer clerk for a circuit judge and managed to fenegle a public interest fellowship monetary package thing.

[Anonymous User]

Talk to the administrators at your school. You may be able to set up a fellowship where the school pays you some stipend to volunteer clerk for a lower-48 federal judge. I have two foreign friends who have successfully secured this arrangement.

From which school? Having two friends who've done this is very strange because (a) most lower-48 federal judges do not hire volunteer clerks, and (b) most schools don't like it when their students volunteer clerk because it shows up as a ding on their ABA employment reports. Not sure what happens with the employment report when someone does it on a fellowship, but I don't think it's a positive. Coming from someone who looked into it and decided not to go for it.

If Yale, that makes sense. I've heard anecdotally that Judge Calabresi, for instance, takes the top foreign student at Yale each year as a volunteer clerk.

Three more points to add about volunteer clerking. For one, some judges treat volunteer clerks like interns and do not permit volunteer clerks to use the title of Judicial Law Clerk. For another, judges who hire volunteer clerks as full law clerks apply the same hiring standards as they do for paid law clerks. So volunteer clerking is not a way for noncompetitive applicants to get in through the back door unless it's really an intern position. Lastly, and building on the last point, a volunteer clerkship (or any clerkship for that matter) will not make you competitive for positions that you are not already competitive for on paper.

OP might know all this already, but hopefully this helps!

I also know people who’ve done this, though admittedly on district courts, so not quite the same and I can’t speak to how generally circuit court judges do.

I think your concerns are fair, but it’s hard to generalize. I know judges who’d be thrilled to get free labor. I also don’t think school funded fellowship numbers inevitably hurt schools (they can be looked at askance, but can also be a relatively common way for people to get into public interest work, for instance). And in any case, schools like any opportunity to strengthen connections with judges.

The biggest thing, though, is that someone who’s competitive for a COA but simply isn’t allowed to get paid for one due to their citizenship is differently situated than someone who isn’t really competitive and hopes to get in the door by working for free. And I think those differences come through pretty clearly.

And I think getting a clear path into an appellate group is an exception to a clerkship not being transformative. A clerkship may not open the door to firms that were closed to you pre-clerkship, but it may make a difference as to what kind of work you can get once you’re in the door.