A. Nony Mouse wrote:Statistically speaking, your stats don't look competitive. The thing with clerkship hiring, however, is that it can be really idiosyncratic. If a judge sees something interesting in your resume, or you find some way to make a connection to a judge, that can trump numbers. For instance, someone who posted in the 2014-15 clerkship thread got a federal district court clerkship with these stats:
School range: Top 50 law school (public)
Rank: Top third (but was unranked when I applied to clerkships)
On the face of it, those stats are not at all promising (not knocking this person at all, just stating the odds). However, they also had the following qualifications:
LR?: Yes, but not e-board
Published?: Nope
Recs: Glowing (2 professors, 1 employer)
2L/3L/Alum?: 2L
Where applying?: Focused on US District Courts in flyover states. Sent out 20 applications in April.
Any other factors: Won a national moot court competition last fall. I'm also on a full scholarship to law school (not GI Bill).
1L Summer - USAO
2L Summer - (split) The Hill in DC drafting legislation for the House and then DOJ SLIP
Also, prior to law school, I was a Navy tactical jet aviator (and I'm female, so there are only a handful of us). I'm still in the Reserves as an Intelligence Officer, so I have been drilling with the Navy all through law school.
Looking beyond the stats, being a (female) Navy tactical jet aviator has got to be a SPECTACULAR soft, and she also has other great law school experiences, especially in the view of a judge with a government background. Even more importantly, though, that person also said she interned for a judge who made a call to the judge who hired her, which is probably the best way to get your application to stand out. (My understanding - though this may be wrong - is that if you apply via OSCAR, judges can just weed out applications based on class rank/school, so someone with less competitive stats wouldn't even get looked at to see if they have something interesting to offer - unless they can have someone call to make sure the judge looks at the app.)
The converse of this is that people at/near the top of their class at schools ranked significantly higher can and do strike out, as that thread also attests (I know someone number one in their class who applied to about 50-60 federal judges and didn't get a single interview; they weren't at a very top school, but traditionally the top student from that school has had a good shot with local judges. But this can happen to students at much higher-ranked schools, too.)
So, what does this mean for you? First, it's true, you might never be a clerk for a federal district court judge, and honestly, I wouldn't rely on it happening (but again, because hiring is so individual, very few people can really *rely* on getting a federal clerkship). But you won't know unless you apply, and there's very little opportunity cost to applying (although the applications are kind of a pain, once you've got one down it's not really much harder to apply to 100 judges).
Second, if you really do want to be a federal clerk, apply really broadly, including to magistrate judges and state judges (SSC and COA). If you're willing to do 2 clerkships, getting a non-article III clerkship can be a huge boost to your chances at a federal clerkship for the following year (even though you won't have completed 1 day of the non-article III clerkship when you apply - just having the clerkship helps). For one thing, judges will count a prior clerkship as work experience, so the growing contingent of judges who prefer experienced clerks will consider you after a prior clerkship when they wouldn't consider you straight out of school. Conversely, you could work for a few years and then apply for clerkships, because again, judges who want experienced clerks will value your work experience (perhaps more than your grades/school).
Also, talk to your profs/previous employers/anyone who thinks well of you who might know a judge, and find out if any of them are willing to make calls on your behalf, to try to get your application noticed.
Finally, think about why you want a clerkship. If you want to clerk for the experience of it - working closely with a judge, intensive writing and research, honing skills etc. - a clerkship doesn't have to be federal to provide that experience. If you want to practice in a field where you'll be in federal court, of course, a federal clerkship will be more helpful than state. And if you want specifically a federal clerkship because you think it will help you get a better job - well, it can do that, but there are no guarantees (most of the people who get federal clerkships already have the qualifications to get a good job - it's unclear how much it always helps if you have borderline qualifications for the work you want. Clerking definitely helped me get a good job, but clerks can struggle, too). I mean, I completely understand how in this profession someone might want a federal clerkship simply because it's more prestigious, but it's worth thinking beyond that.
But unfortunately, no one can precisely quantify your chances at a clerkship, and even if they could, if you really want a clerkship, what odds make applying not worthwhile? You lose all the shots you don't take yadda yadda yadda.
(Full disclosure: I ended up with an improbable clerkship myself - not at the top of my class or from a fancy school - so it's possible. But you can't rely on it.)