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Looking for some advice. I am long out of law school, but would like to explore COA clerkships for career reasons. Do COA judges ever hire people who have been out of school a substantial period of time?

If the question is "ever," the answer is "yes" -- some judges, like Callahan on CA9, exclusively or nearly-exclusively hire people with significant pre-clerkship legal experience (5-10+ years out of school). If the question is "is it realistic," the answer depends a lot on your stats, market, etc., but it will probably be a significantly more uphill road than your average, like, top 10% at HYSCCN 2L. My read is that experience is a bigger plus for d.ct. judges than COA ones.

How many years out are we talking? And would your law school / grades / etc have been competitive if you'd applied coming out of law school?

~10 years. I was competitive for COA judges after law school but it didn't work out at the time. Just wondering if there are particular judges I should target (thanks for that), or if there is a strategy I should employ to narrow down the list. Hardly feels like I should apply to *everyone* at this point.

Yea, Callahan is the main one that sticks out, but my knowledge is pretty limited to CA9. As a broader strategy, if there are newly-appointed judges whose politics you can stomach, that would be another situation that might make sense; have anecdotally heard that they hire older candidates more frequently to smooth out the first couple years, and because they need people to start at odd times/can't rely on plan day for the first year at least.