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Hello,

Unfortunately, I need to be as cryptically as possible with this. I am a recent grad without a job lined up. I have a family with kids, so income matters even more than most with me.

My focus is tax and I wish to go the litigation route. Finished top 1/3 from a T1 school, not T14. A federal judge in a local district (think St. Louis, Madison, Minneapolis, Atlanta) lost two clerks and is urgently looking for a grad to start right after the bar. The judge requested specifically from my school a graduate and requires the application to be in by early next week with multiple letters of recommendation. Because it is 4th of July weekend and the upcoming bar, not many are going to apply for this, so I should have a better shot to get an interview.

However, I am awaiting a decision regarding a Tax LLM from one of the top 3 Tax LLM programs. (Edit I got accepted to NYU LLM today). If I get in, my family and I would move to that location for 9 mos. Also I have sent out multiple applications for jobs, including a dream job I have not heard back from. I have been told I am perfect for because of past experience, but resume collection goes until July 11.

In essence, should I apply for the clerkship? I have no clue if I would accept it if I got it. Also, I went through an externship and the experience was ok. Do clerkships such as these help you with job placement in the future? If I went the clerkship route, I am pretty sure I would never go for the LLM in the future. In essence, if you could get a federal clerkship do you do it no matter what?

Thanks

This is contrary to the advice I would typically give most people. Normally if you were so gung-ho about tax, I would dissuade you from clerking at all and tell you to hold out for the LLM. But if you have no job right now and a family to support, that changes things. If you get no offers from firms, and you don't get into the LLM program that you're looking at, you'd be left with nothing.

To me, you're asking two separate questions: (1) Should you apply and (2) If you get the interview and are subsequently offered, should you take it?

If I was staring at the potential of nothing, even though it sounds like you may have some promising leads, I would apply just to give you another employment option for your family. Applying doesn't hurt, as there's no guarantee you'll get an interview in the first place, and at the very least you'd have another year while clerking to regroup, reapply to some LLM programs, or reapply to firms. Applying won't "lock you in" to a clerkship if you are offered an interview, however I would caution that you should only accept an interview if you are prepared to take the job.

As to job placement after, it's a crapshoot. Since it's a local clerkship, your odds are much higher of being placed locally (obviously). If the judge knows people, it may help. If you have the credentials to get the type of job you're looking for but you struck out right now for whatever reason, it probably wouldn't hurt. But it's no longer the golden ticket that it used to be (as a cursory reading of these boards will show). In the long run, though, I would think it better to clerk for a year than potentially do nothing if all your other options fall through.

Why not clerk and defer NYU for a year (if an NYU Tax LLM is legit--I don't know anything about tax). At least you'll be gainfully employed for a year, which is something you can't necessarily say without the clerkship.

bruinfan10 wrote:Why not clerk and defer NYU for a year (if an NYU Tax LLM is legit--I don't know anything about tax). At least you'll be gainfully employed for a year, which is something you can't necessarily say without the clerkship.

I think this is the best advice. If you don't have a job, you can't be picky. I'd apply to the clerkship - if you get it, defer LLM or defer the firm job. You'll also be competitive for other jobs coming off the clerkship.