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I had an interview Friday w/ a district court judge. The judge values w/e. Interview style was a bit "cross-examiney."

She basically said my pedigree is great, but wants someone who is a 'lawyer.' None of her previous clerks (that I know of) came straight out of LS.

Also, the judge did not seem satisfied with my generic "what I will do after clerkship response" -- essentially torn between govt. and big law.

On the other hand, I did get the interview in the first place, and the judge did seem to like me.

Thoughts?

Are you hoping your judge posts on TLS or something? I'm not sure what you want us to tell you. It's good that the judge seemed to like you. Good luck.

Anecdotally, I think a bad, generic answer to "why do you want to clerk/what do you plan to do after clerking" caused me to lose out on a clerkship opportunity. I changed my answer and did better the next time around, even though I'm still not certain what I want to do. If this interview doesn't pan out, you may want to re-visit whether there's a better answer that you can give next time. It's not like anyone will hold you to your answer as long as you can make a credible argument for it during the interview.

I also wouldn't put too much stock in whether the judge seemed to like you or not: many judges have a lot of experience being quite cordial to all kinds of people, even those they can't stand.

That said, the clerkship process is really idiosyncratic and it's virtually impossible to know what will make or break your candidacy. More importantly, aside from polishing your answers and application materials for next time, there's not much you can do right now but wait for an offer or rejection to come in. Best of luck.

If there's one thing I've learned from the clerkship interview process, it's that judges are hard to read. Most are very nice and offer good advice. How can you tell if the judge likes you?

Anonymous User wrote: How can you tell if the judge likes you?

If they hire you, they (probably) like you.