Top Law Schools

I've been thinking this over, and can't make up my mind, so I thought I'd throw it out there to you all and see what you think.

I'm in my first year of a two-year district court clerkship. I haven't, as of yet, applied to any COAs. That said, I've certainly considered it and I think it would be a really interesting experience. I thought I'd have more time to think about it (except for the most competitive judges/feeders, which I was probably out of the running for anyway), but now that the plan is no more, I suspect I'm already behind.

So two questions:
1) Am I competitive for COA term 2015-2016?
2) Would doing a COA clerkship be valuable enough (in terms of experience and job opportunities) to start immediately collecting all of my application materials from two years ago? And will that value be outweighed by having been clerking for a third year?

Stats:
School - T20
Rank - ~5%
Honors - high honors/magna, Order of the Coif
Activities - Law Review (Articles Editor), Moot Court, teaching fellow in LRW
Published in school's LR
Current district court clerk

I think it's definitely worth a shot, especially in the circuit where you're currently clerking. But I think judges are hiring soon (and in some cases, now), so you'd want to get on it ASAP.

I was also considering applying to CoA after a 2-year district clerkship. Are there any other professional downsides to this? Do people get reputations as having "clerked too much"?

The only person I've heard of who caught flak for clerking too much was that Tulane grad who just got indicted for soliciting sex from a twelve-year-old. I don't think one more clerkship, especially at CoA level, is going to make people think you're a weirdo who avoids the job market.

OP here - any other thoughts?

My impression is that doing two clerkships at two different level courts (district + COA) is perfectly great. Three years clerking is longer than many people spend, but since it's only 2 clerkships, I don't think it looks like you're clerking too much. You may need to negotiate a little with a firm, in that they may not want to give three full years of credit (that's based on reading around here rather than personal experience, though, so I could be totally wrong about that). But a firm that likes clerks will probably like that you have both COA and district court experience. (Doing two of the same level clerkship in a row might raise an eyebrow - i.e. after you've done one district court clerkship, do you really need another one doing the exact same thing? But I'm sure there are ways to explain this.)

As for OP's chances - I suck at chancing people, but I completely agree that you should get a nice boost applying to judges in your circuit.