How to spend 2L summer if gunning for COA Clerkship Forum

[Anonymous User]

I was going for Biglaw at OCI because I was led to believe that your application will never be seen by a judge if you don't have a big name firm on your resume. I struck out at OCI and now I need to figure out a back-up plan while I mass mail.

Should I try to get an internship/externship with a judge to develop a relationship so I can get a great LOR?
What would be the best use of my summer if I want a COA or District Clerkship?

Decent GPA at a bottom T14.

[Anonymous User]

If you had the grades for COA clerkship you would have gotten biglaw. Forget it.

For district court, I'd say working for a judge or us attorney's office near where your school is or where you would like to work after graduation.

[VulcanVulcanVulcan]

I was going for Biglaw at OCI because I was led to believe that your application will never be seen by a judge if you don't have a big name firm on your resume. I struck out at OCI and now I need to figure out a back-up plan while I mass mail.

Should I try to get an internship/externship with a judge to develop a relationship so I can get a great LOR?
What would be the best use of my summer if I want a COA or District Clerkship?

Decent GPA at a bottom T14.

Has the ship failed for federal government internships? Those appear, on their face, to be more selective than a random internship for a judge.

[Anonymous User]

I was going for Biglaw at OCI because I was led to believe that your application will never be seen by a judge if you don't have a big name firm on your resume. I struck out at OCI and now I need to figure out a back-up plan while I mass mail.

Should I try to get an internship/externship with a judge to develop a relationship so I can get a great LOR?
What would be the best use of my summer if I want a COA or District Clerkship?

Decent GPA at a bottom T14.

Has the ship failed for federal government internships? Those appear, on their face, to be more selective than a random internship for a judge.

The ship has not sailed and I have been applying to different gov internships.

As for my grades, tons of people got Biglaw with my GPA, I just played it wrong.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Honestly, I don't think most judges care about where you spend your 2L summer - there's no requirement that you be at a biglaw firm, at all. (I should add the caveat that I don't know anything really about feeders, but I've never seen anything suggesting that they look for biglaw specifically). As you move up the clerking food chain, you're more and more likely to be dealing with people who have the qualifications for biglaw, but it's generally correlation more than causation that people in good clerkships do biglaw 2L.

Admittedly, there are probably a few individual judges who do care, just because if you look hard enough you can probably find a judge somewhere who cares about any given possible qualification, but biglaw isn't a universally-agreed-upon requirement.

Personally, I would suggest looking for a 2L position that will help with your longer-term goals (whatever job you want after the clerkship), so I would look for something in government (state or federal) or a non-biglaw/non-OCI firm that might hire you after graduation (depending on what you want to do - federal post-grad jobs aren't easy to get, of course, but if you can identify a field you want to enter, doing something related to that field will probably help). Also, you could intern/extern for a judge during the school year, especially since it's often easier to get positions when the pool is limited to local students, rather than during the summer when you also have students from wherever who may try be getting positions (this depends on where you go to school and the local competition/options, of course).

Last thought - aren't a lot of judges hiring earlier now that the plan is dead? It seems that many (if not most) are hiring before students even start their 2L jobs. So for the purpose of a clerkship right after graduation, interning with a judge for 2L summer won't get you a recommendation when you need it. (Obviously if you're also looking to clerk as an alum, that's not true, but then you need to find something to in the interim year.)

[mw115]

If you had the grades for COA clerkship you would have gotten biglaw. Forget it.

For district court, I'd say working for a judge or us attorney's office near where your school is or where you would like to work after graduation.

this isn't true. know more than a few people who didn't get biglaw who had top-notch grades.

[Emma.]

If you had the grades for COA clerkship you would have gotten biglaw. Forget it.

For district court, I'd say working for a judge or us attorney's office near where your school is or where you would like to work after graduation.

this isn't true. know more than a few people who didn't get biglaw who had top-notch grades.

For the people with top-knotch grades but who nonetheless struck out at OCI, getting a clerkship is going to be tough. Presumably these folks struck out for "fit" reasons. Given the extremely close quarters of the chambers environment, most judges are even more fit conscious than firms.

[mw115]

I'm not sure that's true; people who are a little bit more on the academic side of the spectrum actually fit in pretty well with many appellate judges.

[sundance95]

As nony said, a big law sa is not generally required for clerking, and to the extent you've heard it is I'd chalk it up to the law school group think mill. But also as nony said, clerking hiring is idiosyncratic and so can surely find at least one judge somewhere who requires an sa.

[Emma.]

I'm not sure that's true; people who are a little bit more on the academic side of the spectrum actually fit in pretty well with many appellate judges.

Being "a little bit more on the academic side of the spectrum" while having great grades is not what causes folks to strike out at OCI

[VulcanVulcanVulcan]

As nony said, a big law sa is not generally required for clerking, and to the extent you've heard it is I'd chalk it up to the law school group think mill. But also as nony said, clerking hiring is idiosyncratic and so can surely find at least one judge somewhere who requires an sa.

This is accurate, but I think the story is a little bit more complicated. At least in the chambers I am familiar with, biglaw is not required but it signals "prestige" and "selectivity" if it's the right firm. It's just another data point when trying to determine the applicants with the best credentials. This is partially because it is extremely difficult to parse grades at each law school. So if an applicant summered at a place like Munger, Cravath, Covington, etc., this signals that the applicant probably (a) did very well in law school and (b) probably had some social skills and plays well with others. It's not perfect information but it is useful. I think this is especially true for COA judges who are more prestige-oriented and are generally more selective.

This doesn't leave OP out of it, of course, but it means that OP needs to compensate by finding something else that signals selectivity and prestige in another area of the law. A bigfed internship like SEC/DOJ SLIP is great, and would tie into a good story in the cover letter about public interest/government, whether or not that is actually OP's career goals. A lot of judges highly value public interest and encourage their clerks to do AUSA/DOJ honors/etc. An internship for a judge doesn't do a lot because that is something done as a 1L. 2Ls often have that already.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Yeah, there's definitely a prestige-ceiling on my knowledge; I have no experience with the prestige-seeking circuits. Not many of the judges in my LS circuit even did biglaw themselves, so don't care, but I'm sure that's different elsewhere.

[Anonymous User]

If you had the grades for COA clerkship you would have gotten biglaw. Forget it.

For district court, I'd say working for a judge or us attorney's office near where your school is or where you would like to work after graduation.

this isn't true. know more than a few people who didn't get biglaw who had top-notch grades.

You would have had to bid like a total idiot to miss out on biglaw with grades that make you competitive for a COA clerkship. If that is a case, I would question that person's judgment tremendously. Even if someone bid solidly DC, I would question why they didn't get something with COA-level grades.

I don't mean to say that a biglaw SA is required; obviously it isn't. I just meant to say that I really doubt that OP's grades are actually COA competitive if he missed out on biglaw. "Decent" grades at a lower T10 does not get you a COA clerkship. Top 10% at a lower T10 will put you in the running for a COA clerkship. That is not "decent"; that is knocking 1L out of the park.

I have COA level grades (have had interviews already), am aspie as fuck a lot of the time, and had no trouble getting multiple biglaw offers. Most people have better personalities than I do, so if I can do it, I don't know why OP couldn't if his grades were actually that good.

[Anonymous User]

OP here, I am not saying that I have COA-level grades at this moment; I just believe that I can have them by my 3rd year, and I want to do whatever I can to mitigate the impact of a "subpar" 1L and striking out at OCI.

[Desert Fox]

OP here, I am not saying that I have COA-level grades at this moment; I just believe that I can have them by my 3rd year, and I want to do whatever I can to mitigate the impact of a "subpar" 1L and striking out at OCI.

Don't you essentially have to start applying for 2016 clerkships right now or at least this spring?

You should be worried about getting a longterm job, not prestige clerking.

[Anonymous User]

I've been told that I can wait until next fall to start applying. And I can multitask, still sending e-mails to every known corporate firm.

[Anonymous User]

For COA you should have been applying two months ago basically.

For most district courts you're fine waiting until fall grades come out. I would start applying then though. I've seen OSCAR listings for district courts in ARE country already accepting apps.

eta: the district court listing I was referring to are for 2016, not 2015.

[Emma.]

For COA you should have been applying two months ago basically.

For most district courts you're fine waiting until fall grades come out. I would start applying then though. I've seen OSCAR listings for district courts in ARE country already accepting apps.

This. Having COA-caliber grades by 3L isn't going to help you land a COA clerkship unless you're looking to clerk like 2 years out of law school.

[Anonymous User]

OP here, I am not saying that I have COA-level grades at this moment; I just believe that I can have them by my 3rd year, and I want to do whatever I can to mitigate the impact of a "subpar" 1L and striking out at OCI.

Dude COA is competitive as fuck. There are many more people with COA competitive grades who want to clerk than there are COA clerkships. Unless you have a strong professor connection who is willing to go to bat for you, you can pretty much give up on getting a COA clerkship right out of law school. There is no mitigating "subpar" 1L grades for COA clerkships now that the hiring plan is dead.

District court clerkships are still in play though. You'll need to focus on judges that want 2 full years of grades, though. It goes without saying that you need to be busting your ass to pull your grades up. If your performance is the same as last year, you're done here.

Like DF said, your focus right now needs to be getting a job, not obsessing over hard to get, prestigious clerkships that you seem to think are a viable backup plan to relatively easy to get biglaw jobs.

[Anonymous User]

I appreciate the post. I'm not necessarily dead-set on COA straight out of law school, as evidenced by the fact that I didn't even know the application "dead"lines for 2016. I'd be happy to get a district clerkship, and I'd be happy to get a big law SA.

This thread was my attempt of getting an answer to this question: if someone does not secure a big law SA, are they better off interning for a judge than working at a small firm/district attorney's office during their 2L (if their goal is a federal clerkship)?

Not really obsessing, just covering my bases.

[Desert Fox]

DF Thread