Will a bankruptcy court clerkship help me get a district court clerkship? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Currently, I'm a second year biglaw associate in financial restructuring. I'm looking to make a career move toward more standard commercial litigation and where the only bankruptcy aspects of my practice (if any) would be limited to bankruptcy litigation. Accordingly, I think a district court clerkship would help me make this transition. My question is whether first getting a bankruptcy clerkship would help me at all in getting a district court clerkship. Like I said, I'm two years out of law school. My grades were OK (T10 in the top 33-45% range). Does the quality of the bankruptcy clerkship matter (.e.g, D. Del or S.D.N.Y. vs. a flyover district)? Thanks.

[Anonymous User]

Currently, I'm a second year biglaw associate in financial restructuring. I'm looking to make a career move toward more standard commercial litigation and where the only bankruptcy aspects of my practice (if any) would be limited to bankruptcy litigation. Accordingly, I think a district court clerkship would help me make this transition. My question is whether first getting a bankruptcy clerkship would help me at all in getting a district court clerkship. Like I said, I'm two years out of law school. My grades were OK (T10 in the top 33-45% range). Does the quality of the bankruptcy clerkship matter (.e.g, D. Del or S.D.N.Y. vs. a flyover district)? Thanks.

I wouldn't think you'd need a bankruptcy clerkship to land a district court clerkship -- T10 + Top Third + work experience is pretty competitive for most districts.

If that doesn't pan out though, it probably wouldn't hurt to take a bankruptcy clerkship, but I'm not sure how helpful it would be. At a minimum, bankruptcy judges are usually friendly with the Article IIIs in their district and could maybe swing you an interview that way if they like your work. Beyond that subjective boost, I wouldn't consider it to make you significantly more competitive than you already are.

Source: Former district court clerk and current appellate clerk who's seen a lot of applicants.

[LBJ's Hair]

if long-term, you want to move *away* from bankruptcy I would not do a bankruptcy court clerkship?

it'd somewhat help the district court application, but you should be competitive for most district courts anyway (T10 + your grades + two years of work experience), so why take the pay-cut, weird narrative, do work you don't seem to like when you can go straight to district court

[shoebox]

if long-term, you want to move *away* from bankruptcy I would not do a bankruptcy court clerkship?

This, exactly.

The bankruptcy practice runs pretty independently from the work of most district courts. So, it's not a given that the bankruptcy judge will have any meaningful relationships with the Article III judges in their district. If you don't want to have a bankruptcy practice, this is a pretty risky strategy just to possibly, maybe, increase your odds of a district court clerkship.

[Anonymous User]

You're competitive as-is for a district court clerkship—perhaps not SDNY, NDCal, or DDC, but you should have a good shot at the other districts. If you're located in a major city, I'd aim for the clerkships in the immediately-surrounding districts of major cities (for example, DNJ or DConn for proximity to NYC) to ensure that you have good post-clerkship options

[stoopkid13]

I'm a little more bear-ish than other posters on your chances, but agree that a bankruptcy court clerkship doesn't really make a whole lot of sense here. If you really want to clerk, you could also look at magistrate judges, but you may also be able to just lateral to another firm.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a little more bear-ish than other posters on your chances, but agree that a bankruptcy court clerkship doesn't really make a whole lot of sense here. If you really want to clerk, you could also look at magistrate judges, but you may also be able to just lateral to another firm.

I graduated from a T10 with 2yrs of V10 tax experience and was plenty competitive for district court clerkships outside of SDNY, NDCal, DDC, NDIL, and the likes. A top school and a couple of years of experience doing actual legal work instead of just reading about it in casebooks can go a long way for many judges.

[Anonymous User]

I think in general doing a bankruptcy clerkship would be helpful for applying to district court clerkships. Having done a clerkship would be seen as good experience for another clerkship. However, you may want to try applying to a district court clerkship directly first and see how your applications/interviews play out. Or you may just want to try to lateral/transition to lit without a clerkship. The reason I say that is that the bankruptcy court clerkship application process is less competitive and is relatively expedited -- I think people get hired pretty quickly and judges don't hire years out. So you could apply to one and get one quickly, and then you'd be locked into spending a year doing that. If your goal is just to transition to lit, you may want to see how district court clerkship apps or other attempts to get into lit play out before going for a bankruptcy court clerkship. Another reason for this is that district courts sometimes hire far out, so you probably want to get on the applications relatively quickly. Also, if you land a district court clerkship, you can probably just say to your firm that you have a clerkship and want to do lit before you clerk, and if they don't let you switch other firms would probably consider taking you as a lit lateral.

May I ask why you are trying to switch from bankruptcy into litigation?