Is Katsas off-plan? Forum

[barredown]

DC but I heard rumors of 2L's already having locked up spots with him

[Anonymous User]

He is at least not strictly on-plan. He hired a 1L back in April, at least.

[Anonymous User]

He is at least not strictly on-plan. He hired a 1L back in April, at least.

how do 1Ls get hired? Some judges can identify legal talent well ahead of time, but you have literally not even taken half of the doctrinal courses if you are hired in april of your 1L year.

[Anonymous User]

He is at least not strictly on-plan. He hired a 1L back in April, at least.

how do 1Ls get hired? Some judges can identify legal talent well ahead of time, but you have literally not even taken half of the doctrinal courses if you are hired in april of your 1L year.

FedSoc is one hell of a pipeline.

[jackshunger]

He is at least not strictly on-plan. He hired a 1L back in April, at least.

how do 1Ls get hired? Some judges can identify legal talent well ahead of time, but you have literally not even taken half of the doctrinal courses if you are hired in april of your 1L year.

There was a Yale 1L in an earlier thread stating that Katsas (along with Thapar, Grant, and Pryor) was hiring Yale FedSoc students without any grades.

For non-Yale students hiring seems to have moved up as no schools had grades second semester this year -- there was no reason for judges to wait.

[nixy]

He is at least not strictly on-plan. He hired a 1L back in April, at least.

how do 1Ls get hired? Some judges can identify legal talent well ahead of time, but you have literally not even taken half of the doctrinal courses if you are hired in april of your 1L year.

Also pre law school qualifications.

[Anonymous User]

He is at least not strictly on-plan. He hired a 1L back in April, at least.

how do 1Ls get hired? Some judges can identify legal talent well ahead of time, but you have literally not even taken half of the doctrinal courses if you are hired in april of your 1L year.

There was a Yale 1L in an earlier thread stating that Katsas (along with Thapar, Grant, and Pryor) was hiring Yale FedSoc students without any grades. This year hiring seems to have moved up as no schools had grades second semester -- there was no reason for judges to wait.

To be fair, though, YLS doesn't have grades at all, at least for 1Ls, right? So the only real risk in doing what they're doing is hiring someone who will turn out to actually flunk a class or two, which I'm guessing is pretty rare, and which profs can probably predict reasonably well before sending them through the pipeline. What I'm more shocked about is that FedSoc 2/9/DC and feeders will often hire 1Ls from Chicago with 1 quarter of grades--15% of their first-year GPA. I personally shot up from no honors to high honors after my second quarter there, and if I were FedSoc, I would've hated to lose an opportunity with an early-hiring judge because of an absurdly small sample size of exams.

[jackshunger]

He is at least not strictly on-plan. He hired a 1L back in April, at least.

how do 1Ls get hired? Some judges can identify legal talent well ahead of time, but you have literally not even taken half of the doctrinal courses if you are hired in april of your 1L year.

There was a Yale 1L in an earlier thread stating that Katsas (along with Thapar, Grant, and Pryor) was hiring Yale FedSoc students without any grades. This year hiring seems to have moved up as no schools had grades second semester -- there was no reason for judges to wait.

To be fair, though, YLS doesn't have grades at all, at least for 1Ls, right? So the only real risk in doing what they're doing is hiring someone who will turn out to actually flunk a class or two, which I'm guessing is pretty rare, and which profs can probably predict reasonably well before sending them through the pipeline. What I'm more shocked about is that FedSoc 2/9/DC and feeders will often hire 1Ls from Chicago with 1 quarter of grades--15% of their first-year GPA. I personally shot up from no honors to high honors after my second quarter there, and if I were FedSoc, I would've hated to lose an opportunity with an early-hiring judge because of an absurdly small sample size of exams.

Yale normally has their version of grades second semester, but the real downside to hiring extremely early is that you pass up the opportunity to hire more sure students at other schools. If you had the choice, would you hire a top HSCN student with all their 1L grades or a Y/Chicago student with almost no grades that could turn out to be median-level? Some judges mentioned seem to prefer the latter, so it's apparently working out for them though.

[Anonymous User]

Hiring 1Ls only based on 1 semester's grades isn't exclusively a YLS thing OR exclusively a FedSoc thing (the people pushing the latter clearly have their own politics/agenda to push). I know 1Ls who had clerkships locked down at HLS and one person at UVA. But we're talking truly a handful of people here.

Also, sometimes it's the professors who can tell when their students are truly extraordinary in terms of the particular skills judges like to see in chambers. I know of a few people at HLS who at SCOTUS clerkships secured coming *into* 3L, meaning only 2 years of grades and no judges who could speak to their performance in chambers yet. Obviously their grades must have been stellar. But also, I imagine, the professors really saw something in them.

TBD whether that translates into being a great or even a pretty good lawyer!

[Anonymous User]

Hiring 1Ls only based on 1 semester's grades isn't exclusively a YLS thing OR exclusively a FedSoc thing (the people pushing the latter clearly have their own politics/agenda to push).

Not a political agenda, just pointing out current trends. Liberals have certainly hired early in the past (I've heard of Srinivasan hiring mid-1L before, even from CCN), but currently, the overwhelming majority of them are on-plan. And I assume many of them will return to hiring 1Ls if the plan crashes again.

[barredown]

Hiring 1Ls only based on 1 semester's grades isn't exclusively a YLS thing OR exclusively a FedSoc thing (the people pushing the latter clearly have their own politics/agenda to push).

Not a political agenda, just pointing out current trends. Liberals have certainly hired early in the past (I've heard of Srinivasan hiring mid-1L before, even from CCN), but currently, the overwhelming majority of them are on-plan. And I assume many of them will return to hiring 1Ls if the plan crashes again.

Interesting. Any other liberals who "cheat", even if their MO is on-plan?