What does it take to be the kind of candidate who gets feeder/competitive clerkships? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I’m a rising 3L in the top 5 students at a non-T6 T14, on LR, and have a clerkship lined up with a fairly competitive “semi-feeder” CoA judge.

Do I have any realistic path to a SCOTUS clerkship? I assume I’d need to improve my grades a bit and try for a more traditional feeder clerkship. I’ve also heard if it’s at all a possibility your school will let you know (and I’ve heard nothing).

Just trying to gauge if it’s worth working very hard during 3L to improve grades for an outside shot.

always hard to say, but i'd think if you were #1 or perhaps even #2-3 it would not be crazy to try for, though without something other than grades (lr eic, moot court champion, etc.) it would be difficult. and the commonly received wisdom about your school letting you know is not quite true. sometimes a professor will reach out and mention it, but from what I can tell (especially outside the T3 or T6) there's not a systematic plan in place for figuring out who might be competitive and reaching out to them -- so don't let that influence your thoughts on the matter. my best advice is to reach out to your profs, especially if you know any that have clerked on the Court, and ask them what they think.

[Anonymous User]

It's really going to be mostly connections and soft factors. It is very rare to brute force your way—so to speak—into a feeder clerkship. Whereas someone with top 5% grades at a T6 can likely eventually brute force their way into a clerkship. The feeders are picking from such a select few with institutional and heavy hitter support. I'm sure it happens, but wouldn't count on it.

This isn't correct, plenty of people get feeders who just do great in law school. That's more common than getting it via connections.

[Anonymous User]

This is a weird thread in that anyone who has seen feeder hiring up close knows that (1) grade standards for URMs are often significantly lower and (2) grade standards for white men (and women) with top-tier connections are often significantly lower. There are also more connected white men who get spots than URMs. None of these facts contradict each other.

It's also true that, due to shifts in SCOTUS composition that have also driven the above, liberal white men with sky-high grades who would have gotten SCOTUS ten years ago now have a very very small shot at SCOTUS. There are a ton of them relative to the size of the serious SCOTUS app pool and there's not much demand anymore. That's more to do with the conservative shift in the court than diversity preferences though, though diversity preferences play a role.

[Anonymous User]

Yeah, you can pretty easily dismiss the claim about over representation of“[m]oderate, liberal, white men from well-to-do backgrounds” in the top grade brackets being “just the facts.”

You're so far left you don't even see that you're undermining your own position. Table the empirical point for a minute. Do you or do you not believe that structural biases exist in law school that favor--all else equal--white folks over BIPOC folks, wealthy folks over less-wealthy ones, etc.? If you do, then surely you'd predict a statistical skew at the top of the curve. If you don't, great! No need for affirmative action or preferential hiring by law firms or judges. It has to be one of the two. Pick your poison.

The glaring omission here is “[m]oderate, liberal"—which was the most out-of-left-field claim in the original post. If anything, I noticed conservative overrepresentation, given that there are relatively few conservatives at top law schools but FedSoc upperclassmen do an excellent job of coaching 1Ls on how to succeed in law school.

[Anonymous User]

This is a weird thread in that anyone who has seen feeder hiring up close knows that (1) grade standards for URMs are often significantly lower and (2) grade standards for white men (and women) with top-tier connections are often significantly lower. There are also more connected white men who get spots than URMs. None of these facts contradict each other.

It's also true that, due to shifts in SCOTUS composition that have also driven the above, liberal white men with sky-high grades who would have gotten SCOTUS ten years ago now have a very very small shot at SCOTUS. There are a ton of them relative to the size of the serious SCOTUS app pool and there's not much demand anymore. That's more to do with the conservative shift in the court than diversity preferences though, though diversity preferences play a role.

+1. This post essentially gets it all right. I would just add that there are still many moderate/liberal people who land feeder clerkships without any connections or URM status. These candidates almost always have both extremely high grades from HYSC and influential professors who go to bat hard for them (often because they have formed a strong connection that is at least partially based on impressing the professor). That said, there aren't as many liberal feeders as there once were, so it's more common to see these people in clerkships with conservative feeders who hire non-conservative clerks (Wilkinson, Sutton, Newsom, Bibas).

[Anonymous User]

Yeah, you can pretty easily dismiss the claim about over representation of“[m]oderate, liberal, white men from well-to-do backgrounds” in the top grade brackets being “just the facts.”

You're so far left you don't even see that you're undermining your own position. Table the empirical point for a minute. Do you or do you not believe that structural biases exist in law school that favor--all else equal--white folks over BIPOC folks, wealthy folks over less-wealthy ones, etc.? If you do, then surely you'd predict a statistical skew at the top of the curve. If you don't, great! No need for affirmative action or preferential hiring by law firms or judges. It has to be one of the two. Pick your poison.

The glaring omission here is “[m]oderate, liberal"—which was the most out-of-left-field claim in the original post. If anything, I noticed conservative overrepresentation, given that there are relatively few conservatives at top law schools but FedSoc upperclassmen do an excellent job of coaching 1Ls on how to succeed in law school.

FedSoc leadership at t6. We did zero coaching. Always overrepresented in honors etc. I always thought explained by a certain type of person joining the group.

Agree w the above about lower standards for feeders. Supply and demand.

Will add that, in my experience, very few feeder caliber students come in with connections. They’re typically earned by doing a good job for a connected prof etc. That process is skewed by ideology, but nonetheless have been impressed by 80% of feed candidates I’ve come across.