Must-take classes for clerkships? Forum

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:53 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:33 pm
As a double clerk (SDNY/CA2) I’m a little baffled by the clerks who seem to regularly use Admin. It’s an important class for YLS students because it’s one of the few classes there that’s graded strictly, so judges look for it, but I haven’t used it beyond basic stuff. Whereas some far more obscure classes like Admiralty have come up repeatedly (though that’s an SDNY-specific thing). Your mileage may vary though as his thread shows.
Yeah, honestly admin was helpful for me mostly because we had a big environmental case during my term, but if that case hadn’t been on the docket, or my co-clerk had handled it, it wouldn’t have been that relevant.

Also the person who says it’s not hard to learn is probably right - you can really honestly learn most things (like I never took fed courts and didn’t feel the lack, although I’m sure it’s useful - I just had to learn whatever elements of it were needed for whatever case I was working on and it was fine). And there’s sort of a luck of the draw aspect to which cases come up, unless of course there’s something pertinent to your district (like admiralty in SDNY, apparently, or the patent examples already referenced). And it may or may not be something people would typically take (see admiralty; also I think tribal jurisdiction can be a big issue if you’re in Indian country, but I don’t think that many people take Indian law, except like in NM where I think it’s on the bar).

The question of what judges like to see on your transcript is of course a separate question from what you need to know to do the job reasonably well. Though I’ll admit that I’d look really askance at an applicant who hasn’t taken (or doesn’t plan to take) evidence.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:04 pm

Very surprised at commenters saying they do not scrutinize transcripts. My judge explicitly instructed us to look for serious classes and be careful for any indication of padding. If there was a lack of black letters that would definitely come up during the interview. While yes a 3.8 is better than a 3.6, a 3.6 is not going to be considered absent a call and there are a ton of qualified 3.8s so for the purpose of making this easy if you padded, you're cut.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:09 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:04 pm
Very surprised at commenters saying they do not scrutinize transcripts. My judge explicitly instructed us to look for serious classes and be careful for any indication of padding. If there was a lack of black letters that would definitely come up during the interview. While yes a 3.8 is better than a 3.6, a 3.6 is not going to be considered absent a call and there are a ton of qualified 3.8s so for the purpose of making this easy if you padded, you're cut.
This is the thing about clerkship hiring - it depends entirely on the preferences of one person. There are obviously some universals (the higher the GPA the better, a call from someone the judge respects is going to help you) but a lot of the details are just going to vary unpredictably.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Nov 10, 2022 10:45 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:09 pm
Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:04 pm
Very surprised at commenters saying they do not scrutinize transcripts. My judge explicitly instructed us to look for serious classes and be careful for any indication of padding. If there was a lack of black letters that would definitely come up during the interview. While yes a 3.8 is better than a 3.6, a 3.6 is not going to be considered absent a call and there are a ton of qualified 3.8s so for the purpose of making this easy if you padded, you're cut.
This is the thing about clerkship hiring - it depends entirely on the preferences of one person. There are obviously some universals (the higher the GPA the better, a call from someone the judge respects is going to help you) but a lot of the details are just going to vary unpredictably.
Yeah, I struck out as unpadded near magna at HLS, there's a ton of idiosyncracy

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Nov 11, 2022 4:00 pm

I clerked in S.D.N.Y. and encountered securities, copyright, patent, and even admiralty matters. It was hellish drafting opinions for those cases, but I don't think a two-credit crash course in admiralty would have helped me very much. At the same time, it's definitely nice to have a strong grasp on basic concepts. For instance, materiality, scienter, and safe harbors in the 10b-5 securities context.

CivPro I used all the time, but that's to confirm very simple stuff like complete diversity, amount in controversy, etc.

Well, actually, Rule 23 analyses were also painful. I'm glad I took my law school's version of advanced CivPro.

There's nothing you NEED to take, in short.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Nov 11, 2022 4:32 pm

Current district court clerk who will be clerking on a COA next year, and I think folks are going a little overboard with classes you absolutely need to take. Maybe the super-competitive judges want to see the entire course load, but I definitely did not take that many black-letter classes and still got like 7 or 8 interview requests. If a class sounds incredibly boring (and thus is more likely to hurt your GPA than help it), don't take it just because it's on a list you saw on TLS.

If it's just about feeling prepared for the job, I also didn't find my school's black-letter law classes all that helpful (maybe that's a comment on the quality of my T-14's professors...). It differs for every clerkship, but even with cases where I had no idea what is going on, it takes like 20 minutes to understand the broader framework and then most of my work has been on figuring out a very narrow question (which the professor skimmed over in my classes on the subject). My judge likes to see more legal research/writing classes and clinics/externships, as he's of the view that those typically involve getting a legal question you don't know much about and finding an answer in a limited time - the judges who are former legal academics probably have a different view, but taking a couple practical classes/clinics & externships never hurt.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Dec 10, 2022 12:55 pm

What are thoughts on having a lower GPA with a higher credit-load? For example, this was my spring semester schedule 2L year at a T14.

Evidence (A) (3)
Critical Race Theory (B) (2)
Professional Responsibility (B) (3)
International Humanitarian Law (2) (A)
Business Associations (3) (B)
Copyright (A) (3)
Cybersecurity Law & Policy (A) (2)

I took 18 full units, and got like a 3.5 GPA that semester. Just to note that I am sitting at just below median (3.3) 3L year after a rough 1L year (3.1 GPA). I also took 18 units in the fall semester and had a similar smattering of As and Bs and my semester GPA was just around a 3.4. My clerkship office basically said I have no chance at any federal clerkship because of my GPA, even though I take a lot of classes. I think they also take issue with how random my classes are but I just have a lot of interests. For the record I am working at a V5 so I think I can interview well but the clerkship office is unwilling to go to bat for me because of my GPA.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Dec 13, 2022 9:36 pm

My feeling is that most judges you will get little to no advantage from taking more classes, and absent unusual factors not mentioned here, you are not a realistic A3 clerkship applicant. You might consider other types of clerkships if you’re interested. That said, I feel like it’s really weird for your office to refuse to help you, even if they aren’t going to make calls.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Dec 13, 2022 11:18 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Sat Dec 10, 2022 12:55 pm
What are thoughts on having a lower GPA with a higher credit-load? For example, this was my spring semester schedule 2L year at a T14.

Evidence (A) (3)
Critical Race Theory (B) (2)
Professional Responsibility (B) (3)
International Humanitarian Law (2) (A)
Business Associations (3) (B)
Copyright (A) (3)
Cybersecurity Law & Policy (A) (2)

I took 18 full units, and got like a 3.5 GPA that semester. Just to note that I am sitting at just below median (3.3) 3L year after a rough 1L year (3.1 GPA). I also took 18 units in the fall semester and had a similar smattering of As and Bs and my semester GPA was just around a 3.4. My clerkship office basically said I have no chance at any federal clerkship because of my GPA, even though I take a lot of classes. I think they also take issue with how random my classes are but I just have a lot of interests. For the record I am working at a V5 so I think I can interview well but the clerkship office is unwilling to go to bat for me because of my GPA.
Judges aren’t going to care that you took a lot of classes, unfortunately. They’re going to have candidates who took a lot of classes AND got excellent grades. I don’t think the class selection is an issue at all - it doesn’t need to be coherent unless you are certain that already know what field you want to do and want to organize all your classes around that practice area. But the overall GPA/rank is an issue.

You might be a stronger candidate after working for a couple of years.

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Anonymous User
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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Dec 13, 2022 11:41 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Tue Dec 13, 2022 11:18 pm
Anonymous User wrote:
Sat Dec 10, 2022 12:55 pm
What are thoughts on having a lower GPA with a higher credit-load? For example, this was my spring semester schedule 2L year at a T14.

Evidence (A) (3)
Critical Race Theory (B) (2)
Professional Responsibility (B) (3)
International Humanitarian Law (2) (A)
Business Associations (3) (B)
Copyright (A) (3)
Cybersecurity Law & Policy (A) (2)

I took 18 full units, and got like a 3.5 GPA that semester. Just to note that I am sitting at just below median (3.3) 3L year after a rough 1L year (3.1 GPA). I also took 18 units in the fall semester and had a similar smattering of As and Bs and my semester GPA was just around a 3.4. My clerkship office basically said I have no chance at any federal clerkship because of my GPA, even though I take a lot of classes. I think they also take issue with how random my classes are but I just have a lot of interests. For the record I am working at a V5 so I think I can interview well but the clerkship office is unwilling to go to bat for me because of my GPA.
Judges aren’t going to care that you took a lot of classes, unfortunately. They’re going to have candidates who took a lot of classes AND got excellent grades. I don’t think the class selection is an issue at all - it doesn’t need to be coherent unless you are certain that already know what field you want to do and want to organize all your classes around that practice area. But the overall GPA/rank is an issue.

You might be a stronger candidate after working for a couple of years.
Yeah it sucks that your clerkship office was pretty dismissive of your chances, but unfortunately it's a pretty uphill battle to get a federal clerkship with a below median GPA. The reality is that judges have to filter all the applications out somehow because they get so many, and I can't imagine a judge or clerk having time to pull out lower-GPA apps to look at how many/what classes they were taking. A few years of work experience would definitely help though - especially if you look at magistrate judges in less competitive districts where you have strong ties.

Also, at least at my school it wasn't the clerkship office going to bat for students so much as professors themselves (except I would guess the clerkship committee put some effort into helping the like #1 ranked student or whatever). Maybe it's different at your school, but the clerkship office not doing much to help seems pretty normal. If they won't meet with you or are just like "you have no shot, go away," then yeah that's unprofessional.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by jotarokujo » Wed Dec 14, 2022 3:17 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Sat Dec 10, 2022 12:55 pm
What are thoughts on having a lower GPA with a higher credit-load? For example, this was my spring semester schedule 2L year at a T14.

Evidence (A) (3)
Critical Race Theory (B) (2)
Professional Responsibility (B) (3)
International Humanitarian Law (2) (A)
Business Associations (3) (B)
Copyright (A) (3)
Cybersecurity Law & Policy (A) (2)

I took 18 full units, and got like a 3.5 GPA that semester. Just to note that I am sitting at just below median (3.3) 3L year after a rough 1L year (3.1 GPA). I also took 18 units in the fall semester and had a similar smattering of As and Bs and my semester GPA was just around a 3.4. My clerkship office basically said I have no chance at any federal clerkship because of my GPA, even though I take a lot of classes. I think they also take issue with how random my classes are but I just have a lot of interests. For the record I am working at a V5 so I think I can interview well but the clerkship office is unwilling to go to bat for me because of my GPA.
you still have time to up your gpa. 1/3 of your gpa is yet undetermined. I would go as hard as possible during 3L to maximize chances. even if you don't get as high grades as you want, you'll still have benefited from trying

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Dec 20, 2022 11:23 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Fri Oct 28, 2022 1:54 pm
I'm a 2L hoping to apply for clerkships next summer. Are there any classes I should absolutely take before then (vs. telling judges "I'll happily take X if you'd like me to" in an interview)? Planning to take evidence. Not interested in DC Circuit; would like to avoid taking admin if possible. (Not interested in it.) Or does it not matter much as long as I'm taking classes that aren't "Law and X" milquetoast seminars?
It's hard to say whether there are specific classes you should take before applying for clerkships, as it will largely depend on what type of court/judge you want to clerk for and the area of law you're interested in. Taking an evidence class is a great idea, and if you're interested in avoiding administrative law, then I would suggest looking at classes related to the type of law you're interested in. You should research the judge/court you're interested in and see what courses they recommend their clerks take, as different judges may have different preferences.

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Re: Must-take classes for clerkships?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:40 am

Remedies, especially for district court. Would have really helped me out. Parties often don't know remedies and lots of requested briefing on remedies will suck. Parties are much more likely to focus on the substance of their claims; the very specifics of what the court does after it rules for them is often an afterthought. Better that you try to understand it yourself.

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