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If this is a dumb question I apologize. If there’s already been a relevant thread just go ahead and link me to that. I’ve searched on here and not found a great example.

I’ve heard the advice that clerkships will mean the most if you do them where you want a job. I’ve also heard any clerkship is a good one.

Let’s say you’re at Iowa. If you take a clerkship in Oklahoma or Montana (with no ties to any of the 3 markets), what is your best employment options? Will Des Moines firms just care that you went to Iowa and have a clerkship? Or will you be limited to OK or MT? Will those places be turned off that you only have one year of clerking worth of ties?

Or if this is turned on bigger locales. Say you still went to Iowa, but you get a clerkship in Phoenix or Dallas. Will the Phoenix/Dallas firms hire you? Again, will the Des Moines firms still be open to you?

I would say it’s not that mechanical. Any federal clerkship is worthwhile and valued by employers. A clerkship can carry more weight locally as that will tend to be where your judge has the most connections. However a clerkship won’t usually transform your original qualifications - if you weren’t originally qualified for biglaw, for instance, you won’t necessarily have an easier time getting biglaw after a clerkship. (If you have the right basic qualifications for biglaw but you strike out for various reasons, clerking can kind of reset your opportunities, but it doesn’t completely transform you.)

I think that if you’re at Iowa, where ties are important, and you get a federal clerkship elsewhere (whether Montana or Phoenix), you will probably be able to go back to Iowa, but since you’re not originally from there it will depend on you working to make and maintain connections throughout your time in school and during the clerkship itself. (It also depends on what you want to do - if you’re thinking about iowa’s equivalent of biglaw, you may well get the job lined up before you clerk and an offer to come back after you clerk. It might need to be negotiated on an individual basis, but is fairly common.) You could also use the clerkship to get into the new market, but again, you will probably need to network and work on getting to know people and such. You would certainly have a better shot than coming from Iowa without the clerkship.

(A state clerkship tends to have more value in the state where it’s located since you learn state law, although especially state Supreme Court clerkships can have some portability, especially to neighboring states. I also know people who lined up biglaw jobs in the usual major metros and then did SSC clerkships elsewhere entirely, but they already had biglaw qualifications, clearly.)

Tl;dr - clerking doesn’t *limit* you to any market per se, but where it will help you *most* will depend on a lot of factors.

(I’m working across the country from where I clerked and went to school, and my clerkship was not in my law school market. But my employer expressly cares more that you have the experience than where you got it.)