Clerkship Courses Forum

[Anonymous User]

Recommended courses to take for a district court clerkship?

[Anonymous User]

Evidence, Advanced Civ Pro, Federal Courts, Admin Law, Employment Law, Criminal Procedure, Advanced Legal Research, First Amendment

[Anonymous User]

Evidence, Advanced Civ Pro, Federal Courts, Admin Law, Employment Law, Criminal Procedure, Advanced Legal Research, First Amendment

School offers two CrimPros, one in investigations and another in adjudication. Would you recommend taking both?

[Sarkhan]

Will throw in Complex Litigation [kind of like advanced CivPro + MDLs/Class Actions] and Conflicts of Law if offered.

[Anonymous User]

Evidence, Advanced Civ Pro, Federal Courts, Admin Law, Employment Law, Criminal Procedure, Advanced Legal Research, First Amendment

School offers two CrimPros, one in investigations and another in adjudication. Would you recommend taking both?

You attend Columbia right? Columbia usually doesn't offer Advanced Civ Pro, Criminal Procedure, Complex Litigation, a useful Immigration Law class outside of the clinic, or First Amendment. They apparently stopped teaching Advanced Admin Law this year. Don't ask me why having 15 different prison abolition classes is considered more of a priority.

Take both Crim Investigations and Adjudication, LegReg as soon as possible, and FedCourts. My understanding is that Barenberg's Employment Law and Labor Law classes are similar, but I'd bet both are helpful. I've heard mixed things about the usefulness of Monaghan's Conflict of Laws class. Copyright with Ginsburg is a right pain in the butt, but I found it helpful to learn some IP concepts, probably would think about Patents too.

Not a class, but if the district court externship program application is still open, the SDNY/EDNY externships are helpful, and EDNY isn't competitive because your classmates don't want to travel to Brooklyn during the year.

Edit: Black-letter Advanced Civ Pro isn't offered, but Roberta Kaplan sometimes teaches a seminar on Advanced Civ Pro. I've never taken it, and you'd probably have to rank it first if you want to get it, but I'd imagine it would be useful, though it seems more geared toward people pursuing impact litigation.

[nixy]

No idea where the Columbia-specific advice came from (lots of schools separate crim pro into investigative and adjudicative so that’s not a tell) but I’ll agree with evidence and admin law especially, and I think employment law is a decent basic and crim pro would be useful. But I’ll also say that it’s not at all necessary to gear all your coursework for the clerkship - you’ll be able to learn as you go. Most of these suggestions are perfectly great and broadly useful to select among, but don’t feel you have to take *all* of them. If there’s other stuff you want to take that fits your long term goals, take that stuff. I muddled through without having taken fed courts or crim pro or advanced civ pro or first amendment, and there’s a decent learning curve no matter how many courses you take.

[Anonymous User]

Evidence, Advanced Civ Pro, Federal Courts, Admin Law, Employment Law, Criminal Procedure, Advanced Legal Research, First Amendment

School offers two CrimPros, one in investigations and another in adjudication. Would you recommend taking both?

You attend Columbia right? Columbia usually doesn't offer Advanced Civ Pro, Criminal Procedure, Complex Litigation, a useful Immigration Law class outside of the clinic, or First Amendment. They apparently stopped teaching Advanced Admin Law this year. Don't ask me why having 15 different prison abolition classes is considered more of a priority.

Take both Crim Investigations and Adjudication, LegReg as soon as possible, and FedCourts. My understanding is that Barenberg's Employment Law and Labor Law classes are similar, but I'd bet both are helpful. I've heard mixed things about the usefulness of Monaghan's Conflict of Laws class. Copyright with Ginsburg is a right pain in the butt, but I found it helpful to learn some IP concepts, probably would think about Patents too.

Not a class, but if the district court externship program application is still open, the SDNY/EDNY externships are helpful, and EDNY isn't competitive because your classmates don't want to travel to Brooklyn during the year.

Edit: Black-letter Advanced Civ Pro isn't offered, but Roberta Kaplan sometimes teaches a seminar on Advanced Civ Pro. I've never taken it, and you'd probably have to rank it first if you want to get it, but I'd imagine it would be useful, though it seems more geared toward people pursuing impact litigation.

Immigration Law and First Amendment would be useful clerkship courses?

[Anonymous User]

No idea where the Columbia-specific advice came from (lots of schools separate crim pro into investigative and adjudicative so that’s not a tell) but I’ll agree with evidence and admin law especially, and I think employment law is a decent basic and crim pro would be useful. But I’ll also say that it’s not at all necessary to gear all your coursework for the clerkship - you’ll be able to learn as you go. Most of these suggestions are perfectly great and broadly useful to select among, but don’t feel you have to take *all* of them. If there’s other stuff you want to take that fits your long term goals, take that stuff. I muddled through without having taken fed courts or crim pro or advanced civ pro or first amendment, and there’s a decent learning curve no matter how many courses you take.

I'm thinking more about the courses that a judge and that judge's clerks want to see on a transcript to ensure that the student didn't take easy classes to pad a GPA.

[Anonymous User]

No idea where the Columbia-specific advice came from (lots of schools separate crim pro into investigative and adjudicative so that’s not a tell) but I’ll agree with evidence and admin law especially, and I think employment law is a decent basic and crim pro would be useful. But I’ll also say that it’s not at all necessary to gear all your coursework for the clerkship - you’ll be able to learn as you go. Most of these suggestions are perfectly great and broadly useful to select among, but don’t feel you have to take *all* of them. If there’s other stuff you want to take that fits your long term goals, take that stuff. I muddled through without having taken fed courts or crim pro or advanced civ pro or first amendment, and there’s a decent learning curve no matter how many courses you take.

True - I guess I was primed from the previous Columbia thread. Anyway I'll maintain the advice is good and if anyone was wondering, CLS's course selection isn't geared toward future clerks.

[beepboopbeep]

Immigration Law and First Amendment would be useful clerkship courses?

Depending on the circuit, immigration absolutely is. Though more for appellate clerkships than district courts.

[nixy]

No idea where the Columbia-specific advice came from (lots of schools separate crim pro into investigative and adjudicative so that’s not a tell) but I’ll agree with evidence and admin law especially, and I think employment law is a decent basic and crim pro would be useful. But I’ll also say that it’s not at all necessary to gear all your coursework for the clerkship - you’ll be able to learn as you go. Most of these suggestions are perfectly great and broadly useful to select among, but don’t feel you have to take *all* of them. If there’s other stuff you want to take that fits your long term goals, take that stuff. I muddled through without having taken fed courts or crim pro or advanced civ pro or first amendment, and there’s a decent learning curve no matter how many courses you take.

I'm thinking more about the courses that a judge and that judge's clerks want to see on a transcript to ensure that the student didn't take easy classes to pad a GPA.

Fair, I read the original question as someone already having the clerkship and wanting to prepare, but that may not be what they meant.

I think the concern about looking like you’re padding with easy classes is a little overblown - I think the standard “don’t take a ton of ‘Law and X’ seminars” advice is fine as far as it goes, but otherwise I think there are lots of other courses that will fit the bill (environmental, tax, antitrust, corporations, trusts and estates, family law, etc etc). Once you’re in “standard black letter subjects” territory, whether a course is easy depends a lot more on the specific prof than the title (apart from fed courts, which I think is pretty universally regarded as hard). So I’d still say just go with the stuff that interests you apart from the clerkship.

I agree with beepboopbeep about immigration in certain circuits, but really only at the appellate level. I think first amendment is kind of like environmental law or employment discrimination - it’s going to look fine to judges for the purposes of applying, but it may or may not come up at all during the clerkship itself. It completely depends on the luck of the draw.

[Anonymous User]

I clerked for a DJ. Evidence is the only course that I think is a must. Everything else you can learn as you go, and a lot of stuff you'll learn in other courses (e.g., Admin, Federal Courts) might not come up at all while clerking.

[Anonymous User]

1A came up quite a bit in my clerkship--1A retaliation cases are pretty common. I was glad I'd taken it in law school. Definitely not as important as something like evidence, but worth it if you have the slot open.

[Anonymous User]

What about Federal Indian Law? Asking not because I expect these cases to arise as a clerk, but more so about whether judges/clerks would take it seriously as a BLL course.

[Anonymous User]

I think judges located anywhere in Indian country certainly would. I’d like to think others would as well, but in any case it’s not a “law and” seminar so you should be fine.

[Anonymous User]

I went to UChicago recently. I think the most useful upper-level classes I took in law school were probably Legislation/Statutory Interpretation, Crim Pro I (Investigations), Advanced Civ Pro, and Advanced Legal Research. The last one sounds like a joke and it is easy but it also really is practical, you will become a much more efficient researcher which pays long-term dividends. I don't know how practically useful Fed Courts is but Baude's version of it is fantastic. If you can handle Mortara his habeas seminars are useful for clerks and will certainly help you get a clerkship more than anything else you can take.