Top Law Schools

Apparently T-14s right now have wildly different policies regarding "off-plan" clerkship applications. Berkeley insists that all T-14s agreed not to release any letters of recommendation until June 17. Michigan instructed their students that they're free to apply to any judge off-plan whenever they want. The school has no issue sending early paper applications and releasing letters of recommendation prior to June 17. Can folks at other T-14s share what their school's policies are? This is a really frustrating and opaque process.

At Y, administration is asking faculty members to not provide recommendations before June 17th. Many students in fedsoc have clerkships already, but they have a separate placement process. As far as I know, all students not affiliated with fedsoc are following the plan.

Chicago is fine with students applying off-plan. The plan has still definitely cut down the number of hires.

The Columbia clerkship office is refusing to support applications prior to June 17--ie, they won't send paper applications for you, won't help with letters of recommendation, and so forth. But many professors are still perfectly willing to write for off-plan judges. Not just FedSoc people; know non-FedSoc 2Ls who have already secured appellate clerkships.

Like the above poster said, Chicago supports the plan but understands that they have an obligation to their students to not only not actively obstruct their students' job search but to actually provide the support their students pay for. They provide full support to students who apply off plan.

Can I just say that I think this crap these schools are pulling is ridiculous and disrespectful to their students. I understand that they can take a position that they support the hiring plan. But students are paying money and to decide that they will obstruct their students' job chances (judges are hiring whether the school lets their students apply) is ridiculous to me.

What am I missing? How do these schools justify that they are actively reducing their students' job prospects? Maybe I'm off; I'm certainly willing to admit I don't know everything about it.

GULC is similarly "supporting the plan" by screwing its students.

This is a pretty simple collective action problem - each individual school might serve their students by abandoning the plan, but if all (or even most) schools do, the plan functionally goes away. That was why the prior plan fell apart; without public institutional commitment, it's too easy for everyone to quietly cheat on the side. OTOH, if NO schools helped students apply off-plan, no students would be getting quote "screw[ed]" by their schools, because ALL students would be similarly disadvantaged. If judges want to hire without the benefit of recommendations, so be it, but they'd be hiring from any and all schools with similarly limited information.

So: blame schools like Michigan that are apparently violating the plan to give their students an edge - they're the ones screwing students at schools that are following the plan. And don't worry, there will still be plenty of clerkships available when plan hiring starts, just as there were during all the years the prior plan was in place.

^I mean it's literally a voluntary plan. If they didn't want a collective action problem they should have made it mandatory.

Anonymous User wrote:This is a pretty simple collective action problem - each individual school might serve their students by abandoning the plan, but if all (or even most) schools do, the plan functionally goes away. That was why the prior plan fell apart; without public institutional commitment, it's too easy for everyone to quietly cheat on the side. OTOH, if NO schools helped students apply off-plan, no students would be getting quote "screw[ed]" by their schools, because ALL students would be similarly disadvantaged. If judges want to hire without the benefit of recommendations, so be it, but they'd be hiring from any and all schools with similarly limited information.

So: blame schools like Michigan that are apparently violating the plan to give their students an edge - they're the ones screwing students at schools that are following the plan. And don't worry, there will still be plenty of clerkships available when plan hiring starts, just as there were during all the years the prior plan was in place.

I think it'd be more accurate to say that if no judges hired off plan, no students would be getting screwed by their schools. The schools aren't really driving the bus here, just trying to figure out where the ride is going.

nixy wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:This is a pretty simple collective action problem - each individual school might serve their students by abandoning the plan, but if all (or even most) schools do, the plan functionally goes away. That was why the prior plan fell apart; without public institutional commitment, it's too easy for everyone to quietly cheat on the side. OTOH, if NO schools helped students apply off-plan, no students would be getting quote "screw[ed]" by their schools, because ALL students would be similarly disadvantaged. If judges want to hire without the benefit of recommendations, so be it, but they'd be hiring from any and all schools with similarly limited information.

So: blame schools like Michigan that are apparently violating the plan to give their students an edge - they're the ones screwing students at schools that are following the plan. And don't worry, there will still be plenty of clerkships available when plan hiring starts, just as there were during all the years the prior plan was in place.

I think it'd be more accurate to say that if no judges hired off plan, no students would be getting screwed by their schools. The schools aren't really driving the bus here, just trying to figure out where the ride is going.

My point is that if no schools help their students, then no students are disadvantaged vis-a-vis each other - judges who hire off-plan won't be getting recommendation letters for any of their applicants. Schools can't stop judges from hiring off plan, but if they all refuse to play along, all students are on an equal playing field.

Re: making it mandatory, unless the ABA made it mandatory as part of the law school certification process, I don't think there's any way to make it mandatory for schools. (And there's certainly no way to make it mandatory for the two life-tenured, no-one-tells-me-what-to-do parties involved in this: hiring judges and recommending law professors.)

I think this is a sensible solution to a real problem: the race to hire law students before they've even completed 1/3rd of their legal education, and where pre-law school connections and qualifications end up taking precedence over mostly non-existent law school accomplishments and credentials. Is it perfect? No. But it is for the greater good. Just go tell Michigan to stop peeing in their own pool.

Anonymous User wrote:^I mean it's literally a voluntary plan. If they didn't want a collective action problem they should have made it mandatory.

I think making it mandatory - either on judges, or on the schools, or both - is really the only way to make it succeed. Otherwise you're bound to have defecting schools (at least Chicago & Michigan), or defecting professors (at least Columbia), or defecting FedSoc. Then students who aren't lucky enough to go through a defecting school/prof simply get the shaft. The added randomness and stress caused by this partial hiring plan adoption, on top of an already random and stressful process, is simply absurd.

Anonymous User wrote:(And there's certainly no way to make it mandatory for the two life-tenured, no-one-tells-me-what-to-do parties involved in this: hiring judges and recommending law professors.)

I think this is the real problem, and while I get your point about schools, the problem is that there isn't any motive for the schools to band together. Since judges are going to hire off-plan (and profs will recommend off-plan), I can't really blame schools for not wanting to disadvantage their own students by enforcing the plan. There's no real reason for, say, Michigan, to care whether say, Penn, is following the plan if they think that not following the plan will help more of their students than it will harm.

(My bias comes from going to law school during the previous plan, in a part of the country where judges ignored it. So I tend to think that it's a nice hypothetical solution that in practice creates more problems than it solves.)

nixy wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:(And there's certainly no way to make it mandatory for the two life-tenured, no-one-tells-me-what-to-do parties involved in this: hiring judges and recommending law professors.)

I think this is the real problem, and while I get your point about schools, the problem is that there isn't any motive for the schools to band together. Since judges are going to hire off-plan (and profs will recommend off-plan), I can't really blame schools for not wanting to disadvantage their own students by enforcing the plan. There's no real reason for, say, Michigan, to care whether say, Penn, is following the plan if they think that not following the plan will help more of their students than it will harm.

(My bias comes from going to law school during the previous plan, in a part of the country where judges ignored it. So I tend to think that it's a nice hypothetical solution that in practice creates more problems than it solves.)

The top schools signed onto a joint letter—sent to all the A3 judges—urging the Judiciary to go back to the Plan. This was their idea, not the Judiciary’s.

Well, they supported the idea. The letter doesn’t make clear to me that they initiated it rather than supported the committee working on it.

But also, a nicely united letter before the plan goes into effect doesn’t mean that schools don’t face the same dilemma once it exists. It makes it more hypocritical, sure.

Michigan is the type of school hurt by uncoordinated hiring early in student’s careers. When hiring occurs without a full year of grades, schools or based on shadowy faculty recommendations, schools like HYS are the ones that win.

FedSoc is a little different because there’s more judges who’d prefer to screen by ideology than desirable applicants with those ideologies.

Anonymous User wrote:Michigan is the type of school hurt by uncoordinated hiring early in student’s careers. When hiring occurs without a full year of grades, schools or based on shadowy faculty recommendations, schools like HYS are the ones that win.

FedSoc is a little different because there’s more judges who’d prefer to screen by ideology than desirable applicants with those ideologies.

Sure, if everyone followed the Plan, Michigan would benefit on net, but at the moment, when there's rampant noncompliance, Michigan benefits more from defecting than from following the Plan. By defecting, Michigan's students get to go after clerkships facing reduced competition thanks to students at Plan-compliant schools getting held back by their clerkship offices.

Duke will allow students to apply via email or mail to any judge that is currently accepting applications, as long as they are not located in a circuit that has committed to following the hiring plan. For example, this means that Duke won't allow students to apply for clerkships in DDC, even if the judges are accepting, because the DC Circuit is following the plan. But we can apply to EDVA because the 4th Circuit has not fully committed to the plan.

QContinuum wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:^I mean it's literally a voluntary plan. If they didn't want a collective action problem they should have made it mandatory.

I think making it mandatory - either on judges, or on the schools, or both - is really the only way to make it succeed. Otherwise you're bound to have defecting schools (at least Chicago & Michigan), or defecting professors (at least Columbia), or defecting FedSoc. Then students who aren't lucky enough to go through a defecting school/prof simply get the shaft. The added randomness and stress caused by this partial hiring plan adoption, on top of an already random and stressful process, is simply absurd.

Making it mandatory on the judges just isn't an option.