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Anyone hear about any red flags about DJs in the 8th Circuit (specifically Menendez, Brasel, Ebinger)?

Ebinger is very competent, and the one Ebinger clerk I know liked her, but she is very formal and strict with lawyers, which isn’t popular in a state where the norm is a more genteel and friendly bench-bar relationship. It probably doesn’t help that she became a judge so young and never practiced at an Iowa firm. For whatever reason she also doesn’t have much of a local alumni network compared to Rose or especially Gritzner and Jarvey if that matters to you.

On SD Iowa, most lawyers I’ve worked with consider Rose to be the best judge. Locher also will be an excellent clerkship once he’s nominated and confirmed—he was a top litigator at Belin McCormick, traditionally Iowa’s most prestigious firm, and personally is great. Jarvey is the polar opposite of Ebinger—he doesn’t think twice about hitting the bars or the links with lawyers—and is also very competent, but he’s retiring. Pratt is public-interest-focused and liberal, as you’d expect from his background, and sits quite a bit on CA9.

For all two active judges of the Northern District of Iowa, Judges Strand and Williams are both super competent and super busy. The Williams clerk I know is really happy there, though.

Yes, that tallies with my understanding of NDIA—the judicial selection process is genuinely fairly merit-based, hence the uniformly high quality of the judges. I would not clerk for Linda Reade, however—I’m not sure if she’s still hiring clerks, and I don’t know her personally, but I’ve never heard a good word about her either personally or as a judge.

Anything about D. Minn. judges?