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Do you all generally send thank you emails after a clerkship interview? I sort of feel like I'm just wasting the judge's time without adding anything, but is it standard protocol to do so?

For the clerkship I eventually received I overnighted the judge a handwritten thank you note. He seemed to appreciate it as he acknowledged it via email. I got the clerkship the next day.

Not standard by any means, nor necessary.

But, for what it's worth, I went 0 for 5 on my first five COA interviews. After the sixth one, I sent handwritten Thank You cards to the judge, his clerks, and the JA, and got the offer the day the cards were received.

I don't think a thank you is absolutely required, but I think it's often appreciated. I worked for a judge who would have been annoyed if you'd spent money to overnight it, though.

I always sent a thank you email to the chambers email address thanking the judge and asking that he/she pass my thanks along to the assistant for arranging the interview and the law clerks for answering my questions. In many chambers, having the assistant like you is almost as important as having the judge like you.

OutCold wrote:I always sent a thank you email to the chambers email address thanking the judge and asking that he/she pass my thanks along to the assistant for arranging the interview and the law clerks for answering my questions. In many chambers, having the assistant like you is almost as important as having the judge like you.

Oh for sure

A. Nony Mouse wrote:I don't think a thank you is absolutely required, but I think it's often appreciated. I worked for a judge who would have been annoyed if you'd spent money to overnight it, though.

Same. This breaks the "don't be weird" rule.

rpupkin wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:I don't think a thank you is absolutely required, but I think it's often appreciated. I worked for a judge who would have been annoyed if you'd spent money to overnight it, though.

Same. This breaks the "don't be weird" rule.

When we hired my coclerk, this was actually a p.significant factor.

FSK wrote:

rpupkin wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:I don't think a thank you is absolutely required, but I think it's often appreciated. I worked for a judge who would have been annoyed if you'd spent money to overnight it, though.

Same. This breaks the "don't be weird" rule.

When we hired my coclerk, this was actually a p.significant factor.

Whether someone overnighted a thank-you note was a significant factor? Really?

Just shows the takeaway for clerk hiring: it's idiosyncratic. But I still wouldn't overnight a thank you note - I'd just email if I was worried about timing.

Huh, didn't realize the overnighting was so controversial. Guess I lucked out. Maybe it also helped the city was relatively close and in the same state so the overnight was just a half step up from normal mail.

Anonymous User wrote:Huh, didn't realize the overnighting was so controversial. Guess I lucked out. Maybe it also helped the city was relatively close and in the same state so the overnight was just a half step up from normal mail.

I wouldn't call it controversial, exactly. It's just socially unusual behavior. Sending a hand-written thank you note is a traditional gesture of politeness. To the extent it helps you at all, it's because it makes you appear kind and thoughtful. But if you send a thank-you note by express mail, it looks like you're trying to get the note there quick in order to score points with the judge. The quaint benefit of a thank-you note is defeated if you treat it like a deadline-driven task that you're trying to complete for your own benefit.

This is not a big deal one way or the other. And, given how mail is opened in chambers, the judge probably won't even know that you sent the note by express mail (though the JA likely will). Still, if you're going to send thank you notes, I suggest against sending them by express mail. I think it falls in the category of blatantly gunnerish behavior, which is something that at least some judges are on guard against.

I don't recommend them.

My judge didn't hire her first choice because of a typo in a thank you.

I generally didn't do them for the reasons discussed above. They don't usually move the needle in a positive direction very much: as pupkin said, they generally just tell the judge that you're kind and thoughtful. If the judge has reservations about that after an interview with you, though, you may already be in trouble, and a thank you note is not that likely to save you. There are also potential pitfalls like typos. Based on the timing of the offer/rejection/calls to my references, I'm also pretty sure that most of the judges I interviewed with made some decision on my application (or had a strong leaning that would not have been influenced much by a thank you note) before a thank you note would have arrived.