PI-Interested Judges? Forum

[Anonymous User]

You are not cooked. I did not get Latin honors at a Duke/MVP-tier school and will be clerking in a competitive district (CDCA/NDIL/EDNY), albeit with post-grad work experience. But looking at our alum database of who’s clerking where — you are as in contention as you’ve ever been for COA clerkships. Clerkship offices give really conservative advice because to a certain extent it’s a zero-sum game from their perspective but you should just do your own thing.

[Pm23]

Also HLS, but a few years out.

I don't think anything is out of the question, but you should know the route to COA is much, much easier after you get a DC. Go for everything, but here's what I would say so you don't freak out: if you get DC this summer, count that as a win. The fight will continue after that.

[Anonymous User]

[/i]

This seems like very strange advice coming from a clerkship office.

I agree, OP's grades are in roughly the top 15% of the class. To be honest, outside of 5-6 judges like Srinivasan and Boasberg, there shouldn't be any judge that is completely out of reach due to grades, and for most judges those grades should put the OP in a pretty comfortable position. Assuming the OP has strong rec letters, I don't imagine they will have much difficulty landing a clerkship. If OCS gave that advice--unless OP initially sent a list of 10-20 of the most selective judges--the advice they gave is pretty whack. To be fair, OCS's interests diverge slightly from the interests of students so I always found it helpful to take their advice with a grain of salt; their interest is to get student any clerkship, while a student may be more interested in a specific clerkship.

I think this is underestimating how competitive the federal appellate clerk applicant pool is. The general rule of thumb for HLS is that competitive applicants should have more DSs than Ps. My semi-feeder judge would usually look for applicants with significantly more DSs than Ps, e.g. top five percent plus, and ideally HLR or a good board position on a good secondary. Remember that the top ten percent at HLS is something like 50 students--you see a lot of them reviewing clerkship apps for competitive judges.

Poster for the original 15% comment. I think that the roughly 15% comment is fairly accurate depends on where the Ps were, but 25% would also be reasonable. To be honest it really comes down less to the grades and more to the class credits of the classes OPs DS and Ps were in and how spread out the Ps versus DS's were based on the silly way in which HLS calculates honors by averaging years rather than overall. Pretty arbitrary The GPA for magna (top 10%) is roughly 3.98 and the cutoff for cum laude (top 40%) varies year to year but is generally around 3.6-3.7. It is also really hard to gauge the between the grouping only by looking at 2Ls.

Nevertheless, my point remains the same. As someone who is clerking and hired for a semi-feeder judge, grades tend to be a rough threshold and not dispositive (using them otherwise would be silly and show a profound laziness in the hiring process unlikely to yield consistently good clerk hires). My original point was that the grades would not take OP out of the running and might put OP in a fairly safe spot to get a clerkship given the other factors listed such as PI-focus, moot court, affinity org leadership, and board membership of a major secondary journal (given OP's credentials I am guessing CR-CL or JOLT). If they had a resume that also had other markers such as big PI orgs like ACLU, LDF, Earthjustice, DOJ (certain departments), etc. that would also help, as would a good story if the clerk overcame major adversity rather than just being an Andover kid with parents who are lawyers. And of course recommenders can make a big difference. The hiring process is really just a mix of factors put in a bowl and different judges and clerks put different weights to different factors. And at the end of the day the stuff that could get you picked out of a pile may end up being pretty arbitrary.

As someone who is clerking and hired for a semi-feeder judge, grades tend to be a rough threshold and not dispositive (using them otherwise would be silly and show a profound laziness in the hiring process unlikely to yield consistently good clerk hires). Like another poster said Cum Laude SDNY clerks are a dime a dozen, and those grades would likely still keep OP in running for Oetken (depending on other factors), although Rakoff and Furman are probably out of the picture unless OP gets no more Ps and like 6 DSs over the next year and a half--which is unrealistic. Subramanian and Abrams too but that might also depend on third year performance if OP chooses to wait. But the judges listed are already some of the most competitive judges on the planet. Justices Jackson (an HLS cum laude grad), Thomas, Sotomayor, and Kavanaugh, aren't even as picky with grades as those judges.

The previously mentioned "general rule of thumb" involving More DSs than Ps to be competitive (which is just the same as requiring magna/greater than 4.0 GPA) is just incorrect. I know for a fact that there are tons of HLS federal appellate clerks who are cum laude and many who didn't graduate with honors. Some of the feeders/semi-feeders are easier to get with magna and a very, very small handful of group judges (like I previously indicated) may be out of reach--the number is probably closer to 10-20 than 5-6 which was a bit of an exaggeration. But the grades OP listed are well within the threshold for 95-98% of judges in the federal judiciary. AFAIK the grades OP listed would not put them completely out of reach for any judges in CA1, CA5 (at least that I know of), CA7, CA8, CA9 (although absent truly extraordinary circumstances 3-4 judges are effectively out of reach) or CA10. The grades would take OP definitively out of the running for like 2-3 judges in CA2, Bibas in CA3, Wilkinson in CA4, 2-3 judges in CA6, Grant in CA11, 2 judges in CADC (although most of the others would be very hard to get clerkships with absent extraordinary circumstances and those that aren't like Pan, Wilkins, and Childs you probably wouldn't want to clerk for anyways).

In short, the advice from OCS is pretty off-base given the information the OP gave. But as I pointed out in my original comment, there may have been something else the OP did that caused OCS to give advice like what OP said (or that was received in the way OP stated even if OCS did not intend for it to come across that way).

Out of curiosity, which CA2, CA9, and CADC clerkships are the ones you think that would be totally out of reach?

Poster for the comment. For CA2 I would say Sullivan and Nathan. Lohier and Calabresi too (unless you have a very compelling life story/background). Maybe Sack and Park? But for most of the rest (although less sure about some of the Trump appointees) grades should be fine. CA9 Fletcher, Friedland, and Berzon are going to be effectively out of reach absent extraordinary circumstances. Grades probably shouldn't be disqualifying for the rest of the CA9 judges. CADC Srinivasan and Edwards, maybe Garcia (although his hiring patterns are still murky given how recent of an appointee he is), maybe Katsas too, but I have less knowledge of his hiring patterns. Rest of the CADC judges will be pretty tough but grades will not be disqualifying and most of those that aren't going to be as tough to get you probably won't want to clerk for because they are known to be terrible bosses (e.g., Pan, Childs, Rogers).

Now, as to the OP who I think recently posted that they were concerned given they received 3 Hs and 1P. To be honest, I really don't think those grades have changed your position in any way from where you were the previous semester. You are still roughly in the same place class-wise as you were before. Maybe slightly below. The 3 Hs are good and the 1 P isn't going to make a difference for any of the remaining judges. You are just as able to get a COA clerkship the day before you got your grades. All my previous advice still applies, as well as all my previous thoughts about your grades. It's a stressful time and is only going to get more stressful. But worrying about things is not going to help you. Nothing has changed and you are going to do great! Also, second the advice about it being easier to get an appellate clerkship once you get a District Court clerkship. To be honest, unless you want to clerk for SCOTUS, go into academia (although it probably matters less now, likely more important to have a PHD), or really want to exclusively focus on appellate law you are going to get so much more out of a district court clerkship than you will out of an appellate one.

[Anonymous User]

Clerked on 2/9/DC for a respected judge. Would definitely take a close look at someone with OP's on-paper credentials (though from experience, a lot of people with great grades and strong recs have let me down with their writing samples).

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Y’all, thanks for all the great advice. This is a huge relief. I’m now getting ready to fire off applications, but I’m stuck between sending them all out at once or in waves. Anyone tried applying in waves before, and would you recommend it? What was your timing like (a few days between waves, a week)?