Switching firms post-clerkship? In between clerkships? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I think this thread has gotten a little too granular. It's not helpful to OP to get into an argument about whether, say, Stras or Henderson is the "better" clerkship. As with most things, it depends on your goals, and clerkship hiring is random enough that even if on paper you could get hired by either one, you probably won't actually be making the choice in real life. And which one will look better to a hiring partner will probably vary from firm to firm.

Despite some comments from other posters, Henderson is a great clerkship. She's one of only four conservative judges on the D.C. Circuit who haven't taken senior status, so if you are a conservative looking to clerk on the DCC, there aren't many spots to go around and it is competitive for any of those judges. By all accounts, she is a good boss, issues opinions quickly, and doesn't overwork her clerks. Anyone who ends up clerking on the DCC, even if "only" for, say, Wilkins or Henderson, has achieved a desirable outcome and most likely has the resume to end up at an attractive DC firm afterward, which is what the original question was about.

[Anonymous User]

If you don’t get a decent location you end up in the pit of CA8 or what not. I don’t know a single person who applied wanting any of the flyover judges more than the good circuits, with the (notable) exception of the few bona fide fedsoc feeders like Sutton or Thapar. Have never heard anyone be like “wow I’d love to clerk for Stras, in whatever random place he’s in these days”. Desire begets competitiveness.

This might kind-of-sort-of describe how liberals at HYS apply, and reflects the heavy East Coast slant of liberal feeders, but of the 25 or so most competitive Fed Soc judges in the country, only 3 are on CADC, and of the top ten, only one. To choose judges at the same level of feeding, it’s just not true that the Newsom clerks are people who couldn’t get Collins or Menashi, even though Newsom is in (gasp) Alabama.

Fairly sure prior poster knows this though if they’re really as plugged in as they say and this is just anti-Fed Soc/non-coastal-elite trolling.

That's my guess also. The poster you're quoting is wrong twice over. First, it's not at all true that only tippy-top feeders like Thapar are more competitive than the least desirable DC Circuit judges. I'd hazard there are at least 20 more competitive clerkships on 3/4/5/6/8/10/11, and perhaps that many again on 1/2/7/9. Second, even if, to pick a name, Judge Henderson was more competitive than those judges based on some arbitrary metric, that doesn't mean selective employers would favor her clerks accordingly. And in fact, they clearly don't, probably because she has a poor reputation in DC among liberals and conservatives alike. There's an easy way of testing this: pick any selective employer (SCOTUS, DOJ, DC appellate groups, elite litigation boutiques...) and go hunting for her clerks. You won't find many. Instead, you'll see a lot of the "flyover" judges mentioned in this thread.

Quoted anon. I think this has been a tad misunderstood. This is a thread about how DC firms, staffed largely by older partners who tend to lean left, view certain clerkships. It was not intended to be an objective and current debate about relative judge competitiveness and feeding. Fwiw, the value of very right of center feeders can be somewhat negative in DC hiring processes from what I’ve seen at a lot of firms.

But if we want to debate the competitiveness, here’s how I see it. There are roughly 200 circuit judges in the country. You said maybe 40 are more competitive than the least competitive CADC judge, and several on CADC are amongst the most singularly competitive judges in the country. Taking your claim at face value, that means that the circuit alone pretty much guarantees top quartile of circuit judge competitiveness on its own. That was basically my point: generally, as compared to other circuits on balance, CADC is more competitive by a small but measurable amount. Henderson is, yes, probably the worst and least competitive judge on the circuit. But she’s also still pretty rare; more than 3/4 of the circuit is very, very competitive. Most partners generally know that, but are not plugged into yearly feeding stats, and just apply that presumption.

We got side tracked by a debate about whether Stras fits in that top 40 nationally competitive judges category, which was never really the point. Fwiw I’m actually in FedSoc and maybe it’s a school/chapter specific thing but he was not terribly highly sought after by my peers and friends. Perhaps he should be in the top category. But even if he’s up there, that doesn’t change the general point. He’s as far as I know probably the best known and most competitive judge on ca8 now?

Your point about the general competitiveness of the DC Circuit is well taken. My disagreement is with the bolded. In my experience, hiring partners at elite DC firms are savvy consumers of legal talent with well-formed views about the reputations of individual judges. The more elite the firm, the truer this becomes. Those views may or may not reflect a partisan valence, but the DC legal community is balanced between liberal firms (WilmerHale, Munger, O'Melveny), conservative firms (Kirkland, Gibson, Jones Day), and neutral firms (Williams & Connolly, Latham, Kellogg), and clerks self-sort during the application process. Within those political bands, I haven't seen a DC home field advantage. Maybe Munger wouldn't consider a Pryor clerk on principle, but it would certainly favor a Friedland or Watford clerk over a Rogers or Wilkins clerk. I also think the degree to which firms genuinely care about politics is overstated, but that's a subject for another day.

[Skrillionaire909]

Anyone know what impact clerking on the DC Circuit has on applying to the top DC firms? I assume there is some boost compared to other circuits, but does anyone know how much that boost is?

I have never seen a "DC Circuit" boost in comparison to other circuits by virtue of clerking on the DC Circuit. So if you have a 3.0 from Blue Mountain State Law School, but Wilkins or Henderson or whoever liked the cut of your jib, you aren't automatically going to get a spot in the appellate group at GDC or dramatically improve your post-clerking prospects as compared to someone with a 4.0 from HYS clerking on the 4th circuit.

DC Circuit clerks place well at DC firms because they usually have incredible grades and good connections, which is more or less required now to clerk on the circuit in the first place. They weren't struggling to get a DC law spot at OCI.

Pretty much. In fact, the top DC firms may be the least regionally biased firms in the country. They don't have much homerism for local law schools past Georgetown, and they're too sophisticated to conflate circuits with abstract notions of prestige. For instance, they'll know that Colloton or Stras (Eighth Circuit) are better clerkships than Henderson or Walker (D.C. Circuit), even though the Eighth Circuit is arguably the "least prestigious" regional circuit.

What crack are you smoking to think that Stras or Colloton is a better clerkship than anyone on CADC? They’re both fine judges and I agree people will treat you fine applying to DC, but that’s just patently untrue by any metric. CA8 docket will be less relevant to DC practice and those are just less competitive clerkships full stop. If you don’t get a decent location you end up in the pit of CA8 or what not. I don’t know a single person who applied wanting any of the flyover judges more than the good circuits, with the (notable) exception of the few bona fide fedsoc feeders like Sutton or Thapar. Have never heard anyone be like “wow I’d love to clerk for Stras, in whatever random place he’s in these days”. Desire begets competitiveness.

There is some CADC bump from what I’ve seen. DC firms have big regulatory practices and care about the admin chops you’re perceived to have. And everyone knows it’s super hard to get, so you just get prestige for being perceived to be either better connected or having superior credentials. Yes, other clerkships with well known judges elsewhere give you that, but the circuit offers a little bump.

Stras is in Minneapolis. Probably best place in 8th Circuit.

[Anonymous User]

Adding another anecdote to the mix re: circuit vs. judge competitiveness, politically unaffiliated S grad here clerking for a CA9 judge who’s competitive but has only fed a few times.

The top non-Fed Soc people at SLS pretty uniformly seem to apply 9/DC, with a smaller portion applying 2. Flyover feeders, aside from Wilkinson/Sutton, are pretty deemphasized. I couldn’t have told you who the T20 Fed Soc feeders were until stumbling on these threads as I consider a second clerkship; we just don’t send many folks their way.

That said, the students I know clerking for, say, Grant/Newsom/E. Jones (to name a handful of semi-feeders in “flyover” circuits), wouldn’t likely be competitive for Bress/Miller/Collins. Many of our law review officers clerk for semi/non-feeders on Ninth, which also describes the last couple of years’ moot court winners/semi-finalists. My judge has gotten the top student at Chicago and Stanford on more than a handful of occasions.

At least at Stanford, geographic prestige is pretty huge. Most of us wouldn’t consider a year in Minneapolis or Birmingham, but would jump at the chance to spend a year in Pasadena or SF clerking for someone with, like, 1/10 of W. Pryor’s feeds.

[Anonymous User]

At Chicago, Bress, Grant, Collins, Newsom, and Stras, and plenty of others like Menashi, Murphy, and Richardson, hire roughly the same people—magnaish Fed Soc students who didn’t win the magic Mortara ticket to get Oldham, Pryor, Sykes, Rao, Sutton, or Thapar. Random variance and home region matter more than grades to who ends up where in that group. Newsom sometimes probably punches somewhat above his weight and has some variance because he hires incredibly early. There is no strong regional preference, which is true of Chicago students generally, and part of why it has been so successful on the clerkship market.

Ikuta and Miller don’t hire particularly ideologically so they’re not really competing for the same group of students, especially as Miller is on-plan, but they are also roughly in that grade-selectivity band.

[Anonymous User]

Interesting; geographical agnosticism seems to be more pronounced at Chicago.

Where would you place the Bush-era appointees (e.g., Bea, Bybee, M. Smith) in relation to the Trump CA9 appointees in terms of who applies?

[Anonymous User]

Are we actually going to get back on track, or will everyone just keep obsessing over this “preftige” pissing contest that looks absurd to anyone who isn’t still in law school?

[Anonymous User]

Adding another anecdote to the mix re: circuit vs. judge competitiveness, politically unaffiliated S grad here clerking for a CA9 judge who’s competitive but has only fed a few times.

The top non-Fed Soc people at SLS pretty uniformly seem to apply 9/DC, with a smaller portion applying 2. Flyover feeders, aside from Wilkinson/Sutton, are pretty deemphasized. I couldn’t have told you who the T20 Fed Soc feeders were until stumbling on these threads as I consider a second clerkship; we just don’t send many folks their way.

That said, the students I know clerking for, say, Grant/Newsom/E. Jones (to name a handful of semi-feeders in “flyover” circuits), wouldn’t likely be competitive for Bress/Miller/Collins. Many of our law review officers clerk for semi/non-feeders on Ninth, which also describes the last couple of years’ moot court winners/semi-finalists. My judge has gotten the top student at Chicago and Stanford on more than a handful of occasions.

At least at Stanford, geographic prestige is pretty huge. Most of us wouldn’t consider a year in Minneapolis or Birmingham, but would jump at the chance to spend a year in Pasadena or SF clerking for someone with, like, 1/10 of W. Pryor’s feeds.

This is interesting but not shocking. SLS has a lot of west coast lifers, just as Columbia and NYU have people who would never move out of New York. Yale, Chicago, and Harvard students perhaps travel more. DC unusual in how open it is to the best clerks from across the country; in every other market I've encountered, clerking for the local circuit would be seen as a big advantage.