Columbia's Clerkship Office is Awful Forum

[Anonymous User]

CLS alum & clerk here. In addition to just not being helpful, the CLS clerkship office is actively harmful. For some reason Dean S tries to redirect even competitive applicants to bankruptcy and ALJ clerkships. In my personal experience, Dean S made unsolicited phone calls to judges that, based on my intuition and at least one judge's comments, were strange and painted me in a weird light.

Less competitive CLS students who are interested in clerking would do well to: join FS/ACS, seek out relationships with active professors, apply off plan, be as geographically flexible as possible, reach out to recently nominated & confirmed folks, and not listen to anything OJC says.

[Anonymous User]

CLS alum, clerked on CA2. ~3.7 was basically table stakes, and people we seriously considered were usually well above. A+s were not a requirement and were only a meaningful boost if they were in a real class.

Two main problems I saw with CLS apps:
- Lack of meaningful faculty support, including perfunctory letters and failures to call. Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant. This happened everywhere, but it seemed to happen very frequently at CLS.
- Notably stupid course selection relative to other schools. My hypothesis was that this came from some (incorrect) perception that getting Kent is all-important, even if achieved through fake grades. We saw tons of transcripts with maybe 2 or 3 exam classes across 2L/3L, with the rest some combination of Note credit, RA credit, clinics, and non-rigorous seminars. Those people got rejected. The clerkship office is doing applicants a disservice if they're not qualifying "get Kent" advice with "in real classes."

[Anonymous User]

CLS alum, clerked on CA2. ~3.7 was basically table stakes, and people we seriously considered were usually well above. A+s were not a requirement and were only a meaningful boost if they were in a real class.

Two main problems I saw with CLS apps:
- Lack of meaningful faculty support, including perfunctory letters and failures to call. Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant. This happened everywhere, but it seemed to happen very frequently at CLS.
- Notably stupid course selection relative to other schools. My hypothesis was that this came from some (incorrect) perception that getting Kent is all-important, even if achieved through fake grades. We saw tons of transcripts with maybe 2 or 3 exam classes across 2L/3L, with the rest some combination of Note credit, RA credit, clinics, and non-rigorous seminars. Those people got rejected. The clerkship office is doing applicants a disservice if they're not qualifying "get Kent" advice with "in real classes."

This is so true. My judge was not overly familiar with Columbia (we got a lot of apps from CLS every year but it wasn't one of the 3-4 schools he most commonly hires from), but he knew Kent = "good" and he'd ask us to flag the Kent applicants. Then he'd complain that none of the Columbia transcripts had any real classes on them, and we'd be off to calculating GPA's from Penn by hand (Penn registrar, if you are reading this: your policy of giving letter grades but not calculating GPA in order to avoid disadvantaging your students is the single dumbest and most obnoxious thing any law school does. And it takes a lot to beat Chicago's system.)

[Anonymous User]

Anon because I am still expecting them to provide at least the most basic aid in sending out apps. I'm frustrated.

I wish I had gone to Chicago, UVA, NYU, or one of the other peer schools I was accepted at. The office here is not only completely unhelpful, but they are more interested in making sure their jobs are a little easier than helping students get clerkships. Whenever they do send out information about judge openings or something else it seems like the emphasis is more on "This is CONFIDENTIAL information do not share with anyone from any other school" than on actually being helpful. Plus we just got a very passive aggressive email from the Dean about making it easier for them to process apps. As a 3L with good grades but not on LR, I feel like I've gotten little to no support through this process. Forget any guidance.

Here is the first line of that email.

"From time to time, OJC will receive a request from an applicant to send "on file" faculty recommendation letters in connection with a new round of clerkship applications.  The expectation appears to be that OJC will update the "on file" letters with the name, address and salutation information for each of the new judges in this new round of applications. This expectation is incorrect."

Basically they're more interested in their byzantine internal procedures being followed than results and helping the students get out apps. Yuck.

CLS clerk here. The clerkship office is perfectly adequate at logistics, but if you really want to clerk, you must speak with your professors.

They also do worse than Chicago and UVA because, unlike them, Columbia's office takes the Plan quite seriously to the detriment of Columbia students.

Former UVA clerk here. It was the same for us in terms of the professors being able to offer much more in the way of strategy than the clerkship office, although supposedly our office has gotten better in the past few years. When I was there the CW was the professors did a great job of getting people placed despite the clerkship office being subpar.

[Anonymous User]

- Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant.

Any chance you can elaborate on this? What does an actively harmful letter look like? Suspect one of my recommenders might have just phoned it in on my letter.

[Anonymous User]

- Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant.

Any chance you can elaborate on this? What does an actively harmful letter look like? Suspect one of my recommenders might have just phoned it in on my letter.

Two-sentence letters saying "this person was in my class and so far as I can tell she seems fine," letters actually discussing negative qualities of the applicant, and letters getting the applicant's name wrong multiple times. Normal phoning it in, which looked like a few paragraphs saying "this person was in my class, her performance was strong, she seemed pleasant," would just be neutral (and is very common across schools).

[Anonymous User]

- Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant.

Any chance you can elaborate on this? What does an actively harmful letter look like? Suspect one of my recommenders might have just phoned it in on my letter.

Not that person, but we'd see stuff like:
- Less than a page, double-spaced -- totally perfunctory
- "This person got a good grade in my class and went to office hours sometimes and participated in class" -- gist of the letter, even if longer. which isn't "bad" but it's not "helpful"
- "Student X, who RA'd for me, was good at doing [some clerical/administrative task]." -- notably, does not say that student was [good at legal research and writing/an incisive thinker/intelligent]
- "I don't really know this student, but he/she asked me to write a letter" -- we get these, basically verbatim
- Letters using wrong name/pronouns, addressed to wrong court -- clearly cut-and-paste
- Letters talking about the professor rather than the student (lol)

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L at CLS with a low 3.8 with all black-letter grades. Kind of applied on a flyer to 2023-2024 NY area judges and got dead silence thus far. The biggest problem is 99% faculty support. My recs all seemed extremely enthused to write for me but when it was time for actual support (calls, emails to chamber), dead silence. I assume it's going to be hard to get taken out of a pile (even with good grades) when there isn't someone in the clerk's ear saying look at this person.

My plan is to try to connect to one of the few profs with a strong reputation of connecting students to judges and maybe use my firm partners to help me. I've heard similar issues from my friends so I'm not sure it's the clerkship office as much as it is CLS profs seem either unwilling or unable (both maybe) to connect students to judges. The Dean has been very nice in my convos with her but does seem v protective of the faculty/office in a way that might be counter-productive. The school needs to go to the faculty and emphasize this kind of stuff matters if our #s are going to improve.

[Anonymous User]

- Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant.

Any chance you can elaborate on this? What does an actively harmful letter look like? Suspect one of my recommenders might have just phoned it in on my letter.

Not that person, but we'd see stuff like:
- Less than a page, double-spaced -- totally perfunctory
- "This person got a good grade in my class and went to office hours sometimes and participated in class" -- gist of the letter, even if longer. which isn't "bad" but it's not "helpful"
- "Student X, who RA'd for me, was good at doing [some clerical/administrative task]." -- notably, does not say that student was [good at legal research and writing/an incisive thinker/intelligent]
- "I don't really know this student, but he/she asked me to write a letter" -- we get these, basically verbatim
- Letters using wrong name/pronouns, addressed to wrong court -- clearly cut-and-paste
- Letters talking about the professor rather than the student (lol)

Poster from above - I definitely saw all of these flavors of bad. And to clarify, while we didn't usually view generic phoning-it-in letters as "harmful" in the sense that they actually counted as a negative, missing out on one of your best chances to stand out is still a big downside overall.

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L at CLS with a low 3.8 with all black-letter grades. Kind of applied on a flyer to 2023-2024 NY area judges and got dead silence thus far. The biggest problem is 99% faculty support. My recs all seemed extremely enthused to write for me but when it was time for actual support (calls, emails to chamber), dead silence. I assume it's going to be hard to get taken out of a pile (even with good grades) when there isn't someone in the clerk's ear saying look at this person.

Was your call list like, Furman/Oetken/Cote/Lohier/Lynch/Katzmann. Or something to that effect.

B/c if so, there are maybe 5 people in each class at CLS who are gonna get the professor "push" for those judges, and the professors coalesce around them well-before Plan day. Don't make that ask if you don't know the answer you're gonna get.

I recommend asking your profs who *they* think you have a shot at/would be good fits for. They'll be more receptive.

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L at CLS with a low 3.8 with all black-letter grades. Kind of applied on a flyer to 2023-2024 NY area judges and got dead silence thus far. The biggest problem is 99% faculty support. My recs all seemed extremely enthused to write for me but when it was time for actual support (calls, emails to chamber), dead silence. I assume it's going to be hard to get taken out of a pile (even with good grades) when there isn't someone in the clerk's ear saying look at this person.

Was your call list like, Furman/Oetken/Cote/Lohier/Lynch/Katzmann. Or something to that effect.

B/c if so, there are maybe 5 people in each class at CLS who are gonna get the professor "push" for those judges, and the professors coalesce around them well-before Plan day. Don't make that ask if you don't know the answer you're gonna get.

I recommend asking your profs who *they* think you have a shot at/would be good fits for. They'll be more receptive.

Nah it was all seniors like lynch or sack or non feeder district judges. When I say dead silence I mean didn’t response to two emails each one with list and one asking what u just said. They just didn’t give an F basically

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L at CLS with a low 3.8 with all black-letter grades. Kind of applied on a flyer to 2023-2024 NY area judges and got dead silence thus far. The biggest problem is 99% faculty support. My recs all seemed extremely enthused to write for me but when it was time for actual support (calls, emails to chamber), dead silence. I assume it's going to be hard to get taken out of a pile (even with good grades) when there isn't someone in the clerk's ear saying look at this person.

Was your call list like, Furman/Oetken/Cote/Lohier/Lynch/Katzmann. Or something to that effect.

B/c if so, there are maybe 5 people in each class at CLS who are gonna get the professor "push" for those judges, and the professors coalesce around them well-before Plan day. Don't make that ask if you don't know the answer you're gonna get.

I recommend asking your profs who *they* think you have a shot at/would be good fits for. They'll be more receptive.

In my experience with CLS professors, asking which judges they think I'd have a shot with didn't get me anywhere. They would just say to ask OJC about competitiveness and that if they knew any of the judges on the list I provided them with then they would email/call. They never seemed to offer to call certain judges, but maybe that's because I wasn't a super competitive 3.9 applicant or something and they wanted to reserve their pull for those students.

[Anonymous User]

CLS alum, clerked on CA2. ~3.7 was basically table stakes, and people we seriously considered were usually well above. A+s were not a requirement and were only a meaningful boost if they were in a real class.

Two main problems I saw with CLS apps:
- Lack of meaningful faculty support, including perfunctory letters and failures to call. Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant. This happened everywhere, but it seemed to happen very frequently at CLS.
- Notably stupid course selection relative to other schools. My hypothesis was that this came from some (incorrect) perception that getting Kent is all-important, even if achieved through fake grades. We saw tons of transcripts with maybe 2 or 3 exam classes across 2L/3L, with the rest some combination of Note credit, RA credit, clinics, and non-rigorous seminars. Those people got rejected. The clerkship office is doing applicants a disservice if they're not qualifying "get Kent" advice with "in real classes."

This is so true. My judge was not overly familiar with Columbia (we got a lot of apps from CLS every year but it wasn't one of the 3-4 schools he most commonly hires from), but he knew Kent = "good" and he'd ask us to flag the Kent applicants. Then he'd complain that none of the Columbia transcripts had any real classes on them, and we'd be off to calculating GPA's from Penn by hand (Penn registrar, if you are reading this: your policy of giving letter grades but not calculating GPA in order to avoid disadvantaging your students is the single dumbest and most obnoxious thing any law school does. And it takes a lot to beat Chicago's system.)

CLS also refuses to give out GPAs by the way. Which wasn't a huge deal - we can do the math in chambers, but I advise ignoring OJC and just putting it on the resume. Makes your reviewer a much happier person.

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L at CLS with a low 3.8 with all black-letter grades. Kind of applied on a flyer to 2023-2024 NY area judges and got dead silence thus far. The biggest problem is 99% faculty support. My recs all seemed extremely enthused to write for me but when it was time for actual support (calls, emails to chamber), dead silence. I assume it's going to be hard to get taken out of a pile (even with good grades) when there isn't someone in the clerk's ear saying look at this person.

Was your call list like, Furman/Oetken/Cote/Lohier/Lynch/Katzmann. Or something to that effect.

B/c if so, there are maybe 5 people in each class at CLS who are gonna get the professor "push" for those judges, and the professors coalesce around them well-before Plan day. Don't make that ask if you don't know the answer you're gonna get.

I recommend asking your profs who *they* think you have a shot at/would be good fits for. They'll be more receptive.

Nah it was all seniors like lynch or sack or non feeder district judges. When I say dead silence I mean didn’t response to two emails each one with list and one asking what u just said. They just didn’t give an F basically

Lynch and Sack are incredibly selective -- Sack has literally only hired the top student in the class from CLS in the past decade. You need to have a more honest conversation with your recommenders about what they are willing to do - and also take a look at who is clerking for the judges you asked for.

[Anonymous User]

Nah it was all seniors like lynch or sack or non feeder district judges. When I say dead silence I mean didn’t response to two emails each one with list and one asking what u just said. They just didn’t give an F basically

Lynch isn't senior. [This is wrong] He was recently elevated to CA2 from SDNY, where he fed a couple people (iirc?). He is extremely well-regarded, and extremely competitive. Judge Sack is senior, but he only occasionally hires from CLS, and the most recent clerk he hired was the Class of 2020's valedictorian.

Obviously your professors shouldn't blow you off, but perhaps it came across like you didn't put a ton of thought into your class list/the application process.

EDIT: Lynch went senior, my mistake. Thought he was nominated later in Obama administration.

[Anonymous User]

Nah it was all seniors like lynch or sack or non feeder district judges. When I say dead silence I mean didn’t response to two emails each one with list and one asking what u just said. They just didn’t give an F basically

Lynch isn't senior. He was recently elevated to CA2 from SDNY, where he fed a couple people. He is extremely competitive. Judge Sack is senior, but he only occasionally hires from CLS, and the most recent clerk he hired was the Class of 2020's valedictorian.

Obviously your professors shouldn't blow you off, but perhaps it came across like you didn't put a ton of thought into your class list/the application process.

Lynch is absolutely senior and has been on CA2 since 2009. He is very competitive, though, and keeps close to an active-level caseload.

[Anonymous User]

Nah it was all seniors like lynch or sack or non feeder district judges. When I say dead silence I mean didn’t response to two emails each one with list and one asking what u just said. They just didn’t give an F basically

Lynch isn't senior. He was recently elevated to CA2 from SDNY, where he fed a couple people. He is extremely competitive. Judge Sack is senior, but he only occasionally hires from CLS, and the most recent clerk he hired was the Class of 2020's valedictorian.

Obviously your professors shouldn't blow you off, but perhaps it came across like you didn't put a ton of thought into your class list/the application process.

Gerald Lynch is senior status, I think you are mistaking him for Sullivan.

[Anonymous User]

Nah it was all seniors like lynch or sack or non feeder district judges. When I say dead silence I mean didn’t response to two emails each one with list and one asking what u just said. They just didn’t give an F basically

Lynch isn't senior. He was recently elevated to CA2 from SDNY, where he fed a couple people (iirc?). He is extremely well-regarded, and extremely competitive. Judge Sack is senior, but he only occasionally hires from CLS, and the most recent clerk he hired was the Class of 2020's valedictorian.

Obviously your professors shouldn't blow you off, but perhaps it came across like you didn't put a ton of thought into your class list/the application process.

I can’t speak to Sack I guess - but I was told I was competitive for everyone I asked about (obviously wouldn’t waste an ask on someone impossible).I think not responding is a bad absurd and this level of unhelpfulness is not uncommon based on what has been said by my peers and our clerkship numbers.

The point being that it’s less the office than the faculty and the lack of emphasis on a clerkships from the school

[Anonymous User]

I can’t speak to Sack I guess - but I was told I was competitive for everyone I asked about (obviously wouldn’t waste an ask on someone impossible).I think not responding is a bad absurd and this level of unhelpfulness is not uncommon based on what has been said by my peers and our clerkship numbers.

The point being that it’s less the office than the faculty and the lack of emphasis on a clerkships from the school

it's not necessarily that you're not "competitive"--a 3.8 is very good. but you want to have a conversation with the professor(s) about the application process, who's on your list, who makes sense, etc. a call to Judge Lynch or Sack is a meaningful ask. the profs care about their reputation with these judges. so you want to have laid the groundwork before you make it.

I'm not excusing them blowing you off, BTW. that's a shitty thing to do. I'm just giving context.

[Anonymous User]

I have close friends at Harvard who have shared how unsupportive the clerkship office can be - only general advice. It seems that at most of these schools (besides chicago?) if you don’t have perfect grades then you have to know professors who can vouch for you.

[Anonymous User]

I have close friends at Harvard who have shared how unsupportive the clerkship office can be - only general advice. It seems that at most of these schools (besides chicago?) if you don’t have perfect grades then you have to know professors who can vouch for you.

General advice can be fine I think, and at least HLS sends lists about which judges have moved and stuff like that. Little things like that could make OJC better

[Anonymous User]

I have close friends at Harvard who have shared how unsupportive the clerkship office can be - only general advice. It seems that at most of these schools (besides chicago?) if you don’t have perfect grades then you have to know professors who can vouch for you.

General advice can be fine I think, and at least HLS sends lists about which judges have moved and stuff like that. Little things like that could make OJC better

True. OJC knows exactly which 2/SDNY/EDNY judges have hired this cycle for example -- they've hired a good number of CLS students -- and have just decided that telling students to wait in vain hope instead of rethinking their clerkship strategy is a better course of action.

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L at CLS with a low 3.8 with all black-letter grades. Kind of applied on a flyer to 2023-2024 NY area judges and got dead silence thus far. The biggest problem is 99% faculty support. My recs all seemed extremely enthused to write for me but when it was time for actual support (calls, emails to chamber), dead silence. I assume it's going to be hard to get taken out of a pile (even with good grades) when there isn't someone in the clerk's ear saying look at this person.

My plan is to try to connect to one of the few profs with a strong reputation of connecting students to judges and maybe use my firm partners to help me. I've heard similar issues from my friends so I'm not sure it's the clerkship office as much as it is CLS profs seem either unwilling or unable (both maybe) to connect students to judges. The Dean has been very nice in my convos with her but does seem v protective of the faculty/office in a way that might be counter-productive. The school needs to go to the faculty and emphasize this kind of stuff matters if our #s are going to improve.

Apply beyond New York. Part of Chicago’s success is that students there use all 100 slots, plus often off-plan or paper apps, something that’s conventional wisdom on here but seemingly not at CLS.

[Anonymous User]

Rising 3L at CLS with a low 3.8 with all black-letter grades. Kind of applied on a flyer to 2023-2024 NY area judges and got dead silence thus far. The biggest problem is 99% faculty support. My recs all seemed extremely enthused to write for me but when it was time for actual support (calls, emails to chamber), dead silence. I assume it's going to be hard to get taken out of a pile (even with good grades) when there isn't someone in the clerk's ear saying look at this person.

My plan is to try to connect to one of the few profs with a strong reputation of connecting students to judges and maybe use my firm partners to help me. I've heard similar issues from my friends so I'm not sure it's the clerkship office as much as it is CLS profs seem either unwilling or unable (both maybe) to connect students to judges. The Dean has been very nice in my convos with her but does seem v protective of the faculty/office in a way that might be counter-productive. The school needs to go to the faculty and emphasize this kind of stuff matters if our #s are going to improve.

Apply beyond New York. Part of Chicago’s success is that students there use all 100 slots, plus often off-plan or paper apps, something that’s conventional wisdom on here but seemingly not at CLS.

Not only is applying to judges that openly accept off-plan applications not conventional wisdom at CLS, OJC forbids it and will not facilitate getting LORs sent to chambers.

[externalpiano]

CLS alum, clerked on CA2. ~3.7 was basically table stakes, and people we seriously considered were usually well above. A+s were not a requirement and were only a meaningful boost if they were in a real class.

Two main problems I saw with CLS apps:
- Lack of meaningful faculty support, including perfunctory letters and failures to call. Some of the bigger names at CLS wrote letters that actively harmed the applicant. This happened everywhere, but it seemed to happen very frequently at CLS.
- Notably stupid course selection relative to other schools. My hypothesis was that this came from some (incorrect) perception that getting Kent is all-important, even if achieved through fake grades. We saw tons of transcripts with maybe 2 or 3 exam classes across 2L/3L, with the rest some combination of Note credit, RA credit, clinics, and non-rigorous seminars. Those people got rejected. The clerkship office is doing applicants a disservice if they're not qualifying "get Kent" advice with "in real classes."

How many real classes is enough? OJC said 4, is that bullshit?