SSC -> CoA

[Anonymous User]

I'd like to clerk on the 10th circuit. Is there any value in applying for SSC clerkships in Utah/Colorado etc.? Would they provide a bump while applying for COA? If so, are there any judges in that region that would look particularly good?

[Anonymous User]

Anecdotally, I know a couple of people who have gone from Colorado SSC to 10th Circuit. DCt to COA is more common, though. I don't know if any judge/justice is particularly more helpful than any other, except that you will probably have better luck with COAs sitting in the state you SSC for (these are small legal markets so connections help).

[Anonymous User]

How competitive are these spots generally? Are spots with Allison Eid or Tom Lee who clerked on SCOTUS themselves harder to get?

[Anonymous User]

Eid is amazing, but she usually hires one from Chicago, one from CU, and one from DU (I don't know that that's a rule, but it's very common for her to do that). Other than that I don't know that it's harder to clerk for her. I don't know anything about Utah justices, sorry.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks! Would top 7-8% at a T14 + secondary journal be in the running to do SSC to COA, in your experience?

[Anonymous User]

You'd definitely be competitive for SSC in Colorado (and probably Utah), I would think, although Colorado justices often seem to prefer Colorado ties. (Gabriel maybe not so much - he seemed to hire T14-type clerks over the local grads when on the state COA). The people I know who went COA after SSC were the top-5 in the class from the local school types, so I'm not really sure how that translates to T14 qualifications. You sound to me like you'd have a great shot - maybe not with Gorsuch, but with the rest. But if anyone else has insight they should definitely weigh in.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks! Would top 7-8% at a T14 + secondary journal be in the running to do SSC to COA, in your experience?

You'd be competitive to do it in Texas, especially if you can articulate some Texas ties, but sometimes even if you cannot.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks for the replies all. Do you have a sense of how much pull Eid has with Thomas? Would a clerkship with him be a possibility even if the COA after her isn't necessarily a feeder? (i.e. Tymkovich/Matheson etc.)

[Anonymous User]

The only Eid clerk who has gone on to clerk for Thomas clerked for Gorsuch in between. I'm sure clerking for Eid didn't hurt her, but I think that was incidental on the way to clerking for a feeder. Honestly, if you're asking about SSC in the hopes of leveraging that to a COA, you're not competitive for SCOTUS. I suspect if you haven't already had people suggest SCOTUS to you, you're not competitive for SCOTUS.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks, that makes sense. I don't think I need the SSC to leverage for CoA as I've had a couple of straight up CoA interviews already, I just thought it might help for CA10 as there are some judges/places I'd particularly like to be.

[Anonymous User]

Oh, I get it, sorry. I still tend to think that a DCt clerkship will make you more appealing to COA judges in that circuit than a SSC clerkship will, but if the SSC is easier to get to place you where you want to be, it could help.

I tend to think that people who are competitive for SCOTUS are competitive right off the bat - that is, you're not competitive for SCOTUS because you clerk for a feeder, you get the feeder clerkship because you're competitive for SCOTUS. But SCOTUS is also pretty far outside my wheelhouse and you're certainly more competitive than I ever would be.

(Eid is really great regardless of getting you any future jobs, just for the record.)

[Anonymous User]

Yeah, that could well be. There's one professor who said he'd go to bat for me for SCOTUS/ COA, so I was thinking maybe that in conjunction with Eid/Lee/ somekne who personally is close to a justice would give me an outside shot.

[Anonymous User]

Oh, I get it, sorry. I still tend to think that a DCt clerkship will make you more appealing to COA judges in that circuit than a SSC clerkship will, but if the SSC is easier to get to place you where you want to be, it could help.

I tend to think that people who are competitive for SCOTUS are competitive right off the bat - that is, you're not competitive for SCOTUS because you clerk for a feeder, you get the feeder clerkship because you're competitive for SCOTUS. But SCOTUS is also pretty far outside my wheelhouse and you're certainly more competitive than I ever would be.

(Eid is really great regardless of getting you any future jobs, just for the record.)

I'm not trying to suggest at all that SCOTUS is anything less than super-competitive, but I think that there are two broad buckets of eventual clerks. Bucket #1 is the group with exceptional softs or an extremely compelling personal story, e.g., Rhodes scholars, a Purple Heart, a genuine academic contribution, etc.

Bucket #2 is the sort of generic hyper-prestige, let's say something like Ivy+ -> McKinsey -> HYS magna / LR (and in both cases, with all the other requirements like good recs and some quirky resume bits thrown in). Obviously, this is a quite sizable pool, and most in this category don't make it up to SCOTUS. But a fair number do, and this is where I think that getting lucky with a feeder clerkship along the way could really make a difference.

[Anonymous User]

My SCOTUS strategy is to try to do two CoA clerkships (non-feeder then feeder) and hope for the best. I have the non-feeder now and am applying to feeder judges. I'm on track to be magna at HYS, but have less of the pre-law school prestige points. So it's still an outside shot, but that isn't stopping me from trying.

[Anonymous User]

Anon from above - yeah, I'm really not qualified to comment on SCOTUS chances, apart from reading a lot of the profiles when they get posted on Above the Law.

[Anonymous User]

There are at least three current Colo. SSC clerks going to 10th Cir. next year, none of whom clerk for Eid.