Top Law Schools

TLS has been such a great resource for me while I was going through the job search (I am quite non traditional, but I am not going to go into details about that). I created this thread in an attempt to "give back [to the tls community]" so to speak by discussing what makes an fed d court clerkship applicant good enough on paper to select for interview and then what makes an applicant present well enough at the interview to seriously consider hiring.

of course i am not making these decisions alone. the judge and the other clerks weigh in as well, but my involvement in the process allows me to accurately assess and gauge what makes a bad applicant, a mediocre applicant, and a great one.

i figured that, instead of one epic post, I would take questions about this mysterious process (at least insofar as I am informed about it via my chambers). of course, my chambers could be a total anomaly on all fronts (I would have no way of knowing), but it probably isn't.

I will try to respond to all questions within one day max, depending on when they are posted. note, however, that I will not get into too much detail about myself or my judge/location/all that identifying-type stuff.

Thanks for taking Qs.

How many applications have you received?

Grade/journal/resume-wise, what is your judge looking for?

How much, if at all, is experience as an attorney valued? Huge plus or just slight boost? (You have two near identical candidates - one was top 20% at his school but has two years lit experience, the other is coming right out of law school but is top 5% at the same school, who wins?)

okay so the first important thing to note/keep in mind that I feel like so many clerkship applicants do not think about enough is how different the requisite skillset for (1) getting the job post interview and for (2) getting your res pulled for an interview. I'm going to interpret all of these questions as referring to what makes an applicant stand out enough on paper to get his res pulled

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks for taking Qs.

How many applications have you received?

Grade/journal/resume-wise, what is your judge looking for?

Unfortunately, I cannot answer the first Q with much accuracy. I have been a party of the process through and through, but I was basically assigned to screen a bunch of applications and grade them. I do not know if it was all (i don't think it was), but I have no real idea about the total number. If I had to guess, I would say about 500...but that's an absolute guess.

Your next question is broad. Grade-wise, we are first-round interviewing (clerks interview) some people who are just top 50%, but those people pretty much always have a ton of impressive work experience (think biggov or something like that) to separate them from their "okay" grades. additionally, for obvious reasons, we are way more into a HYS applicant with moderate grades than a TT applicant with moderate grades.

journal-wise, we literally don't give a shit. so you did well your 1L year? great. i'll see it on your transc. so you edited some random author's thing and cite-checked like a bitch? i don't care. so you are saying you're an epic writer because you happen to have gotten onto 1L law review based on a handful of grades, one of which MAY have had to do with writing? i'm not convinced.

if you're such a good writer, something else needs to tell me you're a great writer. this bring me to a related point. GET. PUBLISHED. period. end of story. if you can't on your own journal, do it somewhere else. I think mayyyybe 1/10 of our 1st round applicant picks do not at least have a publication in the works, and those people had some other epic shit going for them. i don't think as many of them were on journals, and honestly we gloss over LR so quickly that I cant even remember LR vs. secondary

to your general res question, way too broad. be more specific.

Anonymous User wrote:How much, if at all, is experience as an attorney valued? Huge plus or just slight boost? (You have two near identical candidates - one was top 20% at his school but has two years lit experience, the other is coming right out of law school but is top 5% at the same school, who wins?)

attorney experience is valued extremely highly, ESPECIALLY if it was as a former clerk. i think one of our applicants who's getting interviewed (who also had a lot of other shit going for him/her) was a state trial court clerk and is now applying to do this. as low-prestige as that is, the skills are so relateable that it is still a good flag for us.

regarding attorney experience more specifically, something interesting, public service-y or biggov is way bigger than like a highly regarded firm. highly regarded firm into d court clerk just makes it seem like ohh what's that? you hate your life? we don't want to be your escape, just so you can make even more money and possibly hate your life a bit less the subsequent year. maybe my chambers is different than others in that regard, but it's definitely something that everybody agrees on here.

your 5% hypo is interesting. when somebody is top 5%, they will always get a really good look before getting rejected, EVEN if TTT (but if you'ree below T1, might need to be more like "top handful of students" or something).

top 20% is pretty standard for people we will at least consider interviewing. below 20%, or even around 20%, and you're going to have to have something else "cool" (yes i realize that was ambiguous). once u get to like 10%, the coolness factor doesn't have to be as high.

with more work experience (see above), the requisite grade/school qualifications drop.

so yeah i can't really answer your q without the resumes directly in front of me.

Thanks for doing this. I hope to do the same one day! A few quick questions:

1. I'm a current 3L with a (flyover) CoA clerkship lined up for 2015–16. How helpful is that in applying for district court clerkships in 2016–17? Is there anything I can do to make better use of that? (Other than my interview, I don't know my judge for next year)
2. How far out does your judge hire? What year are you on now/when did you start/when do you think you'll finish
3. Is there a downside to applying before the judge is really hiring? Like, is there a separate pile/do early applications get thrown away? Or is everything on even footing once you accept apps?

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks for doing this. I hope to do the same one day! A few quick questions:

1. I'm a current 3L with a (flyover) CoA clerkship lined up for 2015–16. How helpful is that in applying for district court clerkships in 2016–17? Is there anything I can do to make better use of that? (Other than my interview, I don't know my judge for next year)
2. How far out does your judge hire? What year are you on now/when did you start/when do you think you'll finish
3. Is there a downside to applying before the judge is really hiring? Like, is there a separate pile/do early applications get thrown away? Or is everything on even footing once you accept apps?

1. you probably knew this, but that is absolutely huge. you should be looking at top and second tier non flyover d court clerkships. as I said, we look favorably on somebody with even a state trial court clerkship. it's less about the prestige and more about having extremely relevant experience. you have the prestige and comparably relevant experience with this, so yeah. you're good from an ap-pulling-for-interview perspective

2. it varies. kind of does what he wants...all the time (comes with the job I guess). call it thirteen months plus or minus 3 months

3. i wouldn't say there's a downside, but there's also no real upside to applying before he is hiring. or maybe the downside is that you won't be sure your ap is really getting considered. IMO, the only good time to do the applying early thing is if the judge has been nominated, but not yet confirmed...and even there, it's still a move with not much chance of success.

This may be something I should be able to find online -- but on OSCAR when it says a judge is taking applications from say, October 2014 to June 2015, does that mean the apps don't get looked at until the window closes or will a judge hire on a "rolling" type basis, i.e. he sees someone he really likes in November and hires them, so the window being "open" until June is in name only?

Grades: top 1/3 at MVP.

You mentioned I will likely need "cool" factor: tell me which one of these may help

1. I will spend 3L in France getting a Masters in French Law, specializing in arbitration
2. My journal has a note requirement, but it has to be about international law, I will try to get published
3. I have a V20 2L SA lined up

Anything else? In addition, will I have a chance straight out of law school, or will I need to wait?

mimimimimi1234 wrote:This may be something I should be able to find online -- but on OSCAR when it says a judge is taking applications from say, October 2014 to June 2015, does that mean the apps don't get looked at until the window closes or will a judge hire on a "rolling" type basis, i.e. he sees someone he really likes in November and hires them, so the window being "open" until June is in name only?

Mmmm you won't be able to find a decisive answer to that online because it depends on the chambers (I would imagine). Ours is rolling, but I have heard directly from COA chambers that they don't look until the position has closed. One way to maybe get a vague (not completely reliable) idea about which one a given chambers will do is to look at when, relative to the "standard" timeframe (call it one year before work would start) the judge seems to be hiring. if it's really early, might be a better bet that he'll get all the aps and look. if its really late, then the opposite. again, that's far from a sure bet, but something to consider.

Anonymous User wrote:Grades: top 1/3 at MVP.

You mentioned I will likely need "cool" factor: tell me which one of these may help

1. I will spend 3L in France getting a Masters in French Law, specializing in arbitration
2. My journal has a note requirement, but it has to be about international law, I will try to get published
3. I have a V20 2L SA lined up

Anything else? In addition, will I have a chance straight out of law school, or will I need to wait?

The first one is cool, but definitely not nearly the most interesting thing by far that I have seen on aps. That said, if all else is solid and it's between you and some other dude vying for the last interview spot and he doesnt have anyting "cool," you'd probably win.

when you say "do i need to wait," that answer depends completely on what you will be doing while you wait. being a 3yearish associate at a biglaw firm before u apply, without more, won't really help your chances. all that it'll tell us is that you hate biglaw and need an out and/or a break (big surprise).

i mentioned earlier--we don't care about journals or anything. i'll elaborate below

the v20 firm also doesn't matter in my chambers for the same reason.

If you can get a v20 SA, it probably came from your good performance in 1L. if you can get LR, it probably similarly resulted from a good performance in 1L. BUT WE CAN SEE THOSE GOOD 1L GRADES TOO. Do you see what I mean? That stuff is not intrinsically good for this purpose. You are not going to get better relevant experience at your barely 8 weeks or whatever at your SA than somebody would if, for example, they were writing appellate briefs for a DA's office. All that those things are, in our chambers' and in my personal opinion, indicators of another very important part of the application (grades), but won't be boosts in and of themselves.

I would argue (and some might disagree) that getting a d ct clerkship in a desirable spot is actually harder than landing a fancy biglaw SA. to land a sweet biglaw SA, you need good 1L grades in some sliding scale combo with school prestige yada yada yada, plus a personality/interviewing skills that don't suck. to land the clerkship, you need the first thing plus a really good personality ("good" here is subjectively dependent on the judge and the clerks if they are involved in the process), as well as really good interviewing skills and a compelling personal narrative that is reflected by your resume AND some luck. that's why there are however many people making bank at biglaw firms right after LS, and only like 500 (rough rough estimate) fedclerking. and that number goes way down when you look at top and second tier districts only. these jobs are really hard to get and most, if not all, chambers are inundated with resumes of really smart people.

What will be a boost, however, is if you get published once twice or three times (yes some applicants get published or publication offers 3X by the time they interview). You then need to be able to talk about this thing very concisely during your interview. that said, when I say "boost," it's almost as if the publication thing has turned into a necessary condition. I would say of the 10ish people who got first round interviews in our chambers, at least 8 or 9 had at least one publication coming or already out.

I want to emphasize that interview skills for these purposes actually differ from pull-your-resume-for-interview attributes that come across on paper.

if y'all are curious about the former, i am happy to answer questions about the interview itself as well.

What about things like D.Ct. and CoA externships? Is there a difference between summer and during the school year? Would a LoR from a clerk in a competitive place (e.g. SDNY, D. DC, 9th Cir) be a way to get from the application pile to the judge's desk?

T6, ~median, diverse, moderately interesting resume.

Anonymous User wrote:What about things like D.Ct. and CoA externships? Is there a difference between summer and during the school year? Would a LoR from a clerk in a competitive place (e.g. SDNY, D. DC, 9th Cir) be a way to get from the application pile to the judge's desk?

T6, ~median, diverse, moderately interesting resume.

We get so many aps that that LORs are not read for the application-pulling stage. they will be read if the person advances enough to seriously consider them, for example if they get to the final round. same goes for writing sample.

a former clerk for the judge or for a judge of the same district, however, might make a difference if it is in conjunction with a phone call.

[sorry i'm answering these out of order]. d court and coa externships are huge (again, echoing my point from before in that they show u have relevant experience). if you're gonna use space on your resume for anything, describe in detail all of the shit that you did for the judge/es. i did not have either of these things on my resume (only had state judge stuff), and I was later told that my lack of it was the weakest part of my res relative to the other applicants I beat out.

summer vs school year does not matter. do whichever one will result in you doing more responsibility-requiring stuff.

Sa,e person whose question you just answered. In describing what we did, what kind of verbiage should we use. For example, I drafted an order granting leave to amend that the judge approved and signed as-is, but I've been told that it's bad taste to say "drafted order granting leave to amend". However, I'm concerned that saying that I "assisted in drafting an order granting leave to amend" won't get across the full extent of my work.

Anonymous User wrote:Sa,e person whose question you just answered. In describing what we did, what kind of verbiage should we use. For example, I drafted an order granting leave to amend that the judge approved and signed as-is, but I've been told that it's bad taste to say "drafted order granting leave to amend". However, I'm concerned that saying that I "assisted in drafting an order granting leave to amend" won't get across the full extent of my work.

To your first question, your CSO would be the ones to ask

to the second, we read the resumes so quickly that it really doesnt matter between those 2 options

objctnyrhnr wrote: i mentioned earlier--we don't care about journals or anything. i'll elaborate below

the v20 firm also doesn't matter in my chambers for the same reason.

If you can get a v20 SA, it probably came from your good performance in 1L. if you can get LR, it probably similarly resulted from a good performance in 1L. BUT WE CAN SEE THOSE GOOD 1L GRADES TOO. Do you see what I mean?

objctnyrhnr wrote: What will be a boost, however, is if you get published once twice or three times (yes some applicants get published or publication offers 3X by the time they interview). You then need to be able to talk about this thing very concisely during your interview. that said, when I say "boost," it's almost as if the publication thing has turned into a necessary condition.

It's interesting to hear you say that journals/firm jobs don't matter because you can already see the grades but that publications matter.

I've heard some clerks say the reverse: that publications don't matter because the judge will just read the writing sample to see how well you write. Thus, they don't care if some students thought your writing was good enough to publish—they will judge for themselves. Maybe they worked in chambers where the judge screened more aggressively based on school/gpa and thus they read more writing samples on a first pass?

Anonymous User wrote:

objctnyrhnr wrote: i mentioned earlier--we don't care about journals or anything. i'll elaborate below

the v20 firm also doesn't matter in my chambers for the same reason.

If you can get a v20 SA, it probably came from your good performance in 1L. if you can get LR, it probably similarly resulted from a good performance in 1L. BUT WE CAN SEE THOSE GOOD 1L GRADES TOO. Do you see what I mean?

objctnyrhnr wrote: What will be a boost, however, is if you get published once twice or three times (yes some applicants get published or publication offers 3X by the time they interview). You then need to be able to talk about this thing very concisely during your interview. that said, when I say "boost," it's almost as if the publication thing has turned into a necessary condition.

It's interesting to hear you say that journals/firm jobs don't matter because you can already see the grades but that publications matter.

I've heard some clerks say the reverse: that publications don't matter because the judge will just read the writing sample to see how well you write. Thus, they don't care if some students thought your writing was good enough to publish—they will judge for themselves. Maybe they worked in chambers where the judge screened more aggressively based on school/gpa and thus they read more writing samples on a first pass?

A few responses to this:

first and most importantly, I do not claim to really know much about how any other chambers do anything. while I don't think we are an anomaly on everything re: hiring, it is certainly possible that we are an anomaly on some things. so yeah--i mean i provided a real assessment of how people in my chambers think about that type of stuff, but readers should certainly take it with the grain of salt that every chambers is different.

also (and maybe I didn't do a good enough job emphasizing this)--ONE publication is pretty much par for the course. if you want to get a serious look when we are deciding who to interview, you had best have one publication. BUT when you get to two publications, it starts to get to be a real plus for the following reason.

publications (and this becomes more the case when you get to 2+) show something in addition to legal writing ability. they show a passion for the law. if you get so into multiple topics (again, 2+ pubs) that you get full length articles published on those topics, that says a lot about you in my and in my chambers' opinion. we want people who love the law and who can talk about it on end for hours. it's those kinds of people that publish multiple times.

and also, we don't really read writing samples, TBH. when it comes down to it, there's no real guarantee that it's your work. you're not going to send something shitty. they all kind of blend together and like who has the time to read random memos on random shit. the only time i can see it making a difference is if everybody likes 2 candidates pretty equally and literally can't decide. that's a situation where we would scrutinize the LORs and the writing sample.

personality/interview matter a billion times more than either of those things, and if people are interested, I can discuss that phase of the selection process also.

Thanks for taking Q's, let me know how this looks.

Transfer from a T-35 to CCN. Made Law Review from my 1L school but decided not to do the write-on at my 2L school b/c
1. I didn't see any practical skills to be gained from being on LR
2. I thought I would get better experience from doing externships with Big Fed and judges (which I am doing and have lined up)
3. I have my own note idea that I am slowly working on and will do independent study to publish next year (hopefully) and didn't really feel like I had anything to gain from editing someone elses work.

Have interesting work experience living/working abroad for a few years.

Will the lack of a journal hurt me or will my ability to hit the ground running overcome?

objctnyrhnr wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

objctnyrhnr wrote:

personality/interview matter a billion times more than either of those things, and if people are interested, I can discuss that phase of the selection process also.

I would definitely appreciate hearing a bit more about this with interviews coming up - though I assume it is even more idiosyncratic and I should take solace that I have gotten along very well with clerks so far.

Anonymous User wrote:Thanks for taking Q's, let me know how this looks.

Transfer from a T-35 to CCN. Made Law Review from my 1L school but decided not to do the write-on at my 2L school b/c
1. I didn't see any practical skills to be gained from being on LR
2. I thought I would get better experience from doing externships with Big Fed and judges (which I am doing and have lined up)
3. I have my own note idea that I am slowly working on and will do independent study to publish next year (hopefully) and didn't really feel like I had anything to gain from editing someone elses work.

Have interesting work experience living/working abroad for a few years.

Will the lack of a journal hurt me or will my ability to hit the ground running overcome?

If you applied to my chambers, you would be all set for a serious look. We love transfers who also perform well at their new school. Fed judges externships are great. Publication, as I've said, is great. And, IMO, journals are useless for everything besides OCI.

Here's one big tip that you might not have thought of. It wouldn't make a difference for my chambers, but from what I've heard, it might for a great many. Assuming arguendo you are applying through Oscar, check the journal thing even though you arent technically on law review at your current school. It's not a complete lie because you did make law review at your 1L school. I say this because i've heard that some chambers (not a ton...just a few) screen for journal membership because they think it equates with solid grades, which it usually does. DOn't let yourself get screened out and not looked at as a result.

I'm a d. ct. clerk. As OP has said many times, chambers vary dramatically. OP's chambers' hiring practices sound very different from mine.

For one, the judge and us clerks do not care about academic publications. The writing style and whatnot is so drastically different from writing for a d.ct. judge that it's almost meaningless, IMO.

We place A LOT of value on interning/clerking with other judges. There is no better experience, and references from judges therefore go a long way. We recently hired a clerk with decent but not outstanding credentials on paper due to references (particularly one from the judge the applicant had just clerked for who wrote a glowing LOR).

Brings me to my next point. We put a huge premium on relevant recommendations. By relevant, that means someone who's familiar with an applicant's writing and research ability, preferably in a litigation-based environment.

Good grades are always important but they're neither necessary nor sufficient. I doubt the judge would look at anyone with terrible grades no matter what, but from what I've gathered from prior and current clerks, we range from HYS magna grads to T1 median grads.

Judge hires exclusively alumni because s/he has a pretty hands-off policy compared to most judges. S/he expects us to be able to figure out things with minimal guidance and oversight, so demonstrable ability to do so (e.g., from experience and references) is critical.