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Hello, TLS! Looking for your thoughts on my shot at an Article III clerkship. Current 2L.

T2, GPA: 3.88, top 6%, Law Review note published, Fed Soc Exec. This summer working at a V30 in NYC.

Coming from a T2, you're unlikely to get picked out of a pile based on your stats alone. However, you seem like a plausible candidate for a judge to hire if you can get your application pulled. The way to do that is to work your connections--apply to judges who went to your school or regularly hire from your school and get in contact with professors and alumni who know those judges. Otherwise it will be an uphill battle.

namefromplace wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 29, 2021 8:14 pm

Coming from a T2, you're unlikely to get picked out of a pile based on your stats alone. However, you seem like a plausible candidate for a judge to hire if you can get your application pulled. The way to do that is to work your connections--apply to judges who went to your school or regularly hire from your school and get in contact with professors and alumni who know those judges. Otherwise it will be an uphill battle.

Anon poster. Thanks! Would mass mailing do me any good? Like contacting the clerks and asking them for informational interviews?

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 29, 2021 8:18 pm

namefromplace wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 29, 2021 8:14 pm

Coming from a T2, you're unlikely to get picked out of a pile based on your stats alone. However, you seem like a plausible candidate for a judge to hire if you can get your application pulled. The way to do that is to work your connections--apply to judges who went to your school or regularly hire from your school and get in contact with professors and alumni who know those judges. Otherwise it will be an uphill battle.

Anon poster. Thanks! Would mass mailing do me any good? Like contacting the clerks and asking them for informational interviews?

I feel like you're asking two different questions here. If by mass mailing, you mean sending your application to a bunch of different judges, then you can do it, it won't hurt you, but you're unlikely to get bites. But it seems like you're asking about contacting clerks. I would recommend against contacting current fed clerks unless they're from your school and you knew them during your 1L year, or at least have a classmate who can make an introduction and vouch for you.

It could also be helpful to reach out to former fed clerks who graduated from your school to ask them how they landed their clerkship. Some former clerks may be willing to forward your resume to their judge, but I wouldn't count on that. I'd rely on professors. Is there a professor advisor for your FedSoc chapter? That would be a good resource to start with.

Yeah, some people frown very heavily on contacting current clerks, so I wouldn’t do that. I don’t think that past clerks will pass on your resume, but you could ask generally what the experience was like and any tips for applications. But ideally that’s also going to be clerks you have some kind of connection to (alma maters for instance). And you can’t possible do that for all the judges you should apply to (the max on OSCAR is 100, right? I agree that following connections tends to be more productive than mass mailing, but that said, I also think you should apply everywhere you think you could spend a year, because the potential return is great and it’s not that much of a burden to shoot out the apps. But you can’t realistically network with 100+ past clerks).

namefromplace wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 29, 2021 8:14 pm

Coming from a T2, you're unlikely to get picked out of a pile based on your stats alone. However, you seem like a plausible candidate for a judge to hire if you can get your application pulled. The way to do that is to work your connections--apply to judges who went to your school or regularly hire from your school and get in contact with professors and alumni who know those judges. Otherwise it will be an uphill battle.

Remember Fed Soc, which should help OP quite a bit. But yeah act like you're not guaranteed to get hired and follow all of the normal advice--use your school, firm mentors, and profs, focus on areas where you have ties, apply very widely, etc.