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Hi everyone,

Oscar says that to be eligible for JSP-12, one would need to have "One or more years of post-graduate legal work experience and bar membership".

My question is -- does the "one or more year" apply just to "post-graduate legal work" OR does it also apply to "bar membership"? I will have over a year of legal work (clerking), but not over a year of bar membership.

Thanks in advance

This is relevant to my interests. I had always assumed the 2-year requirement applies to both experience and bar membership, but now I see that it's ambiguously worded, and you've given me hope.

In my experience, the one-year only applies to legal experience, not bar membership. I was given the boost to JS-12 with one year of legal experience and less than a year of bar membership.

No, I'm pretty sure those are two distinct requirements, not one merged requirement. You must be at the time of beginning your clerkship (1) bar eligible, for however long, and (2) have one or more years of work experience.

I think this is correct. When I started my federal clerkship the only date that was at issue was when I had started working the previous year, not when I became barred (which was a couple of months later, so if I'd needed a full year of both, it would have come up to determine when I would get bumped to JSP-12).

What if you started at a firm in e.g. september 2015, and your clerkship starts August 1, 2016. Is that considered a year, or do you have to wait until September to get JS-12 and you are paid JS-11 until then?

Anonymous User wrote:What if you started at a firm in e.g. september 2015, and your clerkship starts August 1, 2016. Is that considered a year, or do you have to wait until September to get JS-12 and you are paid JS-11 until then?

This was my experience, that it is literally 365 days - I had started my previous job right after Labor Day, and then started the clerkship the following August 20. I did have to wait the two weeks or so to get bumped to JS-12.

This was very helpful -- thank you all!