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Haven't seen this discussed anywhere on here yet, so I thought I'd start a thread. According to last year's thread, firm hiring seemed to pick up in early January.

Anyone hear anything/send out apps/intend to apply soon?

Also very curious about this. People kept telling me to wait and wait and wait but all of a sudden a few of my clerk friends were given offers by the end of December. Some of them were in niche areas, but still...worried I'm missing the boat.

Tagging.

I don't think there is any need to worry yet. Our circuit just now started to be bombarded with invites to clerk cocktail hours. I have a handful of initial interviews set up this month (looking at boutique litigation firms) but have gotten responses from others saying they aren't looking at application materials until end of January/February. I think starting to send out apps now is more than fine; doubt anyone has missed the boat yet.

Interested as well. Already have an offer from small firm in small market I clerked for after 2l, but kind of want to test the waters. My chambers has received one solicitation letter so far, but I'm in a flyover district.

For those of you clerking in flyover COAs, are your chambers getting solicitation letters? I'll be clerking on the 10th in 2016-17, and I'm not counting on active interest from coastal firms. Would love to be wrong, though.

COA, we've gotten 2 solicitation letters so far. I've only applied to 1 job, but it it was a government job.

Tagging

Anonymous User wrote:COA, we've gotten 2 solicitation letters so far. I've only applied to 1 job, but it it was a government job.

If you're not planning to apply, would you mind posting the firm names? I need to start the hunt soon, although I'll probably just go back to my pre-clerkship firm (shudder)

Anonymous User wrote:For those of you clerking in flyover COAs, are your chambers getting solicitation letters? I'll be clerking on the 10th in 2016-17, and I'm not counting on active interest from coastal firms. Would love to be wrong, though.

I'll be clerking at the same court during the same year, and I have the same question as well.

Anonymous User wrote:For those of you clerking in flyover COAs, are your chambers getting solicitation letters? I'll be clerking on the 10th in 2016-17, and I'm not counting on active interest from coastal firms. Would love to be wrong, though.

A few years back I clerked for a 9th Cir. judge in a flyover city. We got solicitation letters from lots of firms, including huge ones. Off the top of my head, we got them from Susman, S&C, WLRK, Keker, Kellogg Huber, Caldwell Leslie, some big name plaintiff's firms (maybe Cohen Milstein?), and I'm pretty sure we got one from Cravath. Other than Keker and Caldwell Leslie, who have a geographical reason to send letters to the 9th Circuit only, I doubt the firms would send letters to middle-of-nowhere 9th Circuit but not to middle-of-nowhere 10th Circuit.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:COA, we've gotten 2 solicitation letters so far. I've only applied to 1 job, but it it was a government job.

If you're not planning to apply, would you mind posting the firm names? I need to start the hunt soon, although I'll probably just go back to my pre-clerkship firm (shudder)

1 was Fried Frank. The other was this random firm in Denver whose name escapes me at the moment. My clerkship is not anywhere near Denver.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:COA, we've gotten 2 solicitation letters so far. I've only applied to 1 job, but it it was a government job.

If you're not planning to apply, would you mind posting the firm names? I need to start the hunt soon, although I'll probably just go back to my pre-clerkship firm (shudder)

1 was Fried Frank. The other was this random firm in Denver whose name escapes me at the moment. My clerkship is not anywhere near Denver.

The Denver firm was likely Wheeler Trigg O'Donnell. We recently received a solicitation letter from them too.

FWIW, if you are interested in Denver, WTO is considered one of the top litigation firms in town. (The standard vault-whatever ratings don't really make much sense in Denver.) Though it is kind of random that they're doing that kind of solicitation.

And Fried Frank spams everyone - I think my flyover district court chambers got 2 solicitation letters during the year I was there, and one was Fried Frank.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:For those of you clerking in flyover COAs, are your chambers getting solicitation letters? I'll be clerking on the 10th in 2016-17, and I'm not counting on active interest from coastal firms. Would love to be wrong, though.

I'll be clerking at the same court during the same year, and I have the same question as well.

Former CA10 clerk. We received some solicitation letters from NY firms, but not that many. To my knowledge, there were no invitations to firm receptions (not even among Denver firms). But coastal firms were receptive to unsolicited applications, so the lack of formal solicitation didn't seem to have much of an impact.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:For those of you clerking in flyover COAs, are your chambers getting solicitation letters? I'll be clerking on the 10th in 2016-17, and I'm not counting on active interest from coastal firms. Would love to be wrong, though.

I'll be clerking at the same court during the same year, and I have the same question as well.

Former CA10 clerk. We received some solicitation letters from NY firms, but not that many. To my knowledge, there were no invitations to firm receptions (not even among Denver firms). But coastal firms were receptive to unsolicited applications, so the lack of formal solicitation didn't seem to have much of an impact.

Anon from above: Thanks for the response. I wonder if the lack of a formal solicitation makes it harder to get the timing right?

Anonymous User wrote: A few years back I clerked for a 9th Cir. judge in a flyover city. We got solicitation letters from lots of firms, including huge ones. Off the top of my head, we got them from Susman, S&C, WLRK, Keker, Kellogg Huber, Caldwell Leslie, some big name plaintiff's firms (maybe Cohen Milstein?), and I'm pretty sure we got one from Cravath. Other than Keker and Caldwell Leslie, who have a geographical reason to send letters to the 9th Circuit only, I doubt the firms would send letters to middle-of-nowhere 9th Circuit but not to middle-of-nowhere 10th Circuit.

Interesting. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I'm willing to bet that firms spam 9th Circuit COA chambers without regard to location just because it's the 9th Circuit. That seems less likely with the 10th.

D. Ct. clerk in not super desirable secondary market.

We got a ton of solicitation letters last year around this time, but haven't gotten any so far.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:For those of you clerking in flyover COAs, are your chambers getting solicitation letters? I'll be clerking on the 10th in 2016-17, and I'm not counting on active interest from coastal firms. Would love to be wrong, though.

I'll be clerking at the same court during the same year, and I have the same question as well.

Former CA10 clerk. We received some solicitation letters from NY firms, but not that many. To my knowledge, there were no invitations to firm receptions (not even among Denver firms). But coastal firms were receptive to unsolicited applications, so the lack of formal solicitation didn't seem to have much of an impact.

Future CA10 clerk here. When did you start sending out applications? What were your target markets?

Thoughts on whether Quinn will move the market clerkship bonus to $75K?
http://abovethelaw.com/2016/01/clerkshi ... -standard/

Cleary Gottlieb DC recently sent us a solicitation letter. We are no where near DC.

Anonymous User wrote:Cleary Gottlieb DC recently sent us a solicitation letter. We are no where near DC.

We also got one from Sullivan and Cromwell and some LA public interest type firm. I haven't seen the Quinn letter yet, though. Is that COA only?

Quinn letter is not just COA. We got one, fed. dist. court in the 5th circuit.

Received Cleary DC (last week) and WTD (December) mailers in D.Ct. in the Eleventh Circuit—not N.D.Ga. or S.D.Fla., so not a huge district. Didn't receive the Quinn letter, but a friend clerking on CA5 forwarded it to me. We also got a mailer from Fried Frank in the fall about some kind of public interest fellowship, and a mailer from SPLC.

As far as hiring, I've had three interviews (NY/DC) and accepted a position. Without revealing too much, I was top quarter at lower T14, no summer SA position. I applied to about forty firms, mostly V50, in December and early January (Southeast plus NY/DC) and have heard from about half; most were form rejections.

Word on the street is Gibson DC has been interviewing people (not me though ). I have friends on other courts who've interviewed in Houston. If you're interested in Atlanta, I don't think they've started moving yet; I hear they're typically March. PM if you're interested in who I interviewed with, if that would be helpful.

My advice: start applying if you haven't already, although apply to your top choices first; the cycle is definitely a rolling one.

Anonymous User wrote:Received Cleary DC (last week) and WTD (December) mailers in D.Ct. in the Eleventh Circuit—not N.D.Ga. or S.D.Fla., so not a huge district. Didn't receive the Quinn letter, but a friend clerking on CA5 forwarded it to me. We also got a mailer from Fried Frank in the fall about some kind of public interest fellowship, and a mailer from SPLC.

As far as hiring, I've had three interviews (NY/DC) and accepted a position. Without revealing too much, I was top quarter at lower T14, no summer SA position. I applied to about forty firms, mostly V50, in December and early January (Southeast plus NY/DC) and have heard from about half; most were form rejections.

Word on the street is Gibson DC has been interviewing people (not me though ). I have friends on other courts who've interviewed in Houston. If you're interested in Atlanta, I don't think they've started moving yet; I hear they're typically March. PM if you're interested in who I interviewed with, if that would be helpful.

My advice: start applying if you haven't already, although apply to your top choices first; the cycle is definitely a rolling one.

How do we PM when we're all anonymous?

You could just post a non-anon saying "PM me."