Berkeley Clerkship/Coif Discussion Forum

[Anonymous User]

3.1 for 2L got me to top 25%. any hope for district court clerkships in CA like a couple years after grad or am i well and truly fucked

3.1 is 25%? That doesn't sound right unless there was a lot of grade inflation.

Regardless, plenty of people get district court clerkships in CA without being in coif. CD and ED are much less competitive than ND. You will be fine as long as you are close and have good references.

[Anonymous User]

3.1 for 2L got me to top 25%. any hope for district court clerkships in CA like a couple years after grad or am i well and truly fucked

Is this based on an HH = 5 or 4 scale?

3.1 is 25%? That doesn't sound right unless there was a lot of grade inflation.

Regardless, plenty of people get district court clerkships in CA without being in coif. CD and ED are much less competitive than ND. You will be fine as long as you are close and have good references.

[Anonymous User]

3.29 got me coif for class of 2025 on the HH=4 scale. Email went out today.

[Anonymous User]

2025 Order of the Coif came out today (June 18, almost 2 weeks after final grades).

GPA of 3.22 was good enough for coif, which seems like lower than previous years.

[Anonymous User]

3.1 for 2L got me to top 25%. any hope for district court clerkships in CA like a couple years after grad or am i well and truly fucked

You just need some luck, persistence, and being strategic. Plenty of Berkeley Law applicants have landed dct clerkships without academic honors (as in they were below top 25-33%). You’ll see from the database that even people with mostly Ps have been able to secure Article III clerkships. This will mostly come down to being strategic about your professor recommenders and asking for calls and leveraging hooks where possible (geographic/personal ties, areas of interest, etc.). All this means that you’ll just have to advocate for yourself extra hard and be especially persistence because it may take multiple rounds of applications.

Can confirm as an applicant who landed a district clerkship without honors with ~2.6 grades, although standards in the IP world are different. No calls for the district (cold off 2L hiring plan), but am currently pulling a lot of strings trying to get a COA.

[Anonymous User]

2025 Order of the Coif came out today (June 18, almost 2 weeks after final grades).

GPA of 3.22 was good enough for coif, which seems like lower than previous years.

Wow, thanks for sharing! This is a really interesting datapoint since this means that you could theoretically have gotten 1 HH for every 3 Hs (assume HH = 4) and still have graduated top 10% of the class. Which further lends credence to the previous post arguing that when comparing transcripts, an HH should be thought of as a DS and H should be like an A.

It seems strange otherwise to think of HH = A and H = B when no other top law school would have magna/coif students with majority B grades.

[Anonymous User]

3.1 for 2L got me to top 25%. any hope for district court clerkships in CA like a couple years after grad or am i well and truly fucked

You just need some luck, persistence, and being strategic. Plenty of Berkeley Law applicants have landed dct clerkships without academic honors (as in they were below top 25-33%). You’ll see from the database that even people with mostly Ps have been able to secure Article III clerkships. This will mostly come down to being strategic about your professor recommenders and asking for calls and leveraging hooks where possible (geographic/personal ties, areas of interest, etc.). All this means that you’ll just have to advocate for yourself extra hard and be especially persistence because it may take multiple rounds of applications.

Can confirm as an applicant who landed a district clerkship without honors with ~2.6 grades, although standards in the IP world are different. No calls for the district (cold off 2L hiring plan), but am currently pulling a lot of strings trying to get a COA.

Can you say more about what kind of clerkship you landed? And did you work with CDO at all when you were navigating the process?

[Anonymous User]

3.1 for 2L got me to top 25%. any hope for district court clerkships in CA like a couple years after grad or am i well and truly fucked

You just need some luck, persistence, and being strategic. Plenty of Berkeley Law applicants have landed dct clerkships without academic honors (as in they were below top 25-33%). You’ll see from the database that even people with mostly Ps have been able to secure Article III clerkships. This will mostly come down to being strategic about your professor recommenders and asking for calls and leveraging hooks where possible (geographic/personal ties, areas of interest, etc.). All this means that you’ll just have to advocate for yourself extra hard and be especially persistence because it may take multiple rounds of applications.

Can confirm as an applicant who landed a district clerkship without honors with ~2.6 grades, although standards in the IP world are different. No calls for the district (cold off 2L hiring plan), but am currently pulling a lot of strings trying to get a COA.

Can you say more about what kind of clerkship you landed? And did you work with CDO at all when you were navigating the process?

Happily -- I'll be in one of the super patent-heavy districts, so a strong interest in patent law and prior patent and technical experience both worked in my favor. Definitely got lucky that the clerks looked past grades during their initial once-over! I worked with CDO to edit materials and for some advice about interviewing + letting my firm know, but didn't rely on them for any connections with prior clerks (like I said, cold off OSCAR). My most helpful resource for putting a judge list together was actually one of my recommenders, who was head of the IP lit department at my 1L firm.

(Feel free to shoot me an email -- if you have access to the database, I don't think it's too hard to narrow down who I am. XD)