HLS - clerkship help please Forum

[Anonymous User]

Clerkship office is starting to really hammer on prepping materials but have given effectively no substantive advice. I want to clerk and have talked to the clerkship people but the info they provided was pretty generic and seemed to reflect institutional incentives (maxing clerkship numbers without regard for student situations). This makes me apprehensive to rely on their advice (which was - basically - everyone here is competitive but clerkships are hard to get, so apply all over the country)

I have debt and am concerned about whether doing a district court clerkship in a flyover state justifies putting off a big law salary for a year or two with interest accruing. Any perspective on how to weigh this? I looked at the clerkships that associates at the firm I am going have done and it's heavily appellate or urban districts.

Past that, I have absolutely no fucking clue what type of student is competitive for what sort of clerkship. I've tried to talk to older students and reach out to clerks to get a sense for either question, but it seems like the outcomes/perspectives are so wildly idiosyncratic to the point of not really helping at all.

Please talk down to me, I have no idea what's going on

[Anonymous User]

We need to know your gpa before we can give you advice on this. At HLS your gpa could make you not competitive for anything and potential SCOTUS contender or anything in-between.

[Anonymous User]

We need to know your gpa before we can give you advice on this. At HLS your gpa could make you not competitive for anything and potential SCOTUS contender or anything in-between.

That is an incredibly fair point and I didn't wanna add because I didn't want this to come across like a ~chance me~

I have slightly under a 4.0. 2 Ps (both in first semester 1L), 2 DS (one seminar, one black letter), everything else H.

[Anonymous User]

We need to know your gpa before we can give you advice on this. At HLS your gpa could make you not competitive for anything and potential SCOTUS contender or anything in-between.

That is an incredibly fair point and I didn't wanna add because I didn't want this to come across like a ~chance me~

I have slightly under a 4.0. 2 Ps (both in first semester 1L), 2 DS (one seminar, one black letter), everything else H.

These grades are good enough to get you a serious look in many chambers, including COAs and district courts in competitive markets. But there are a lot of factors that go into clerkship hiring beyond grades. Are you close with any profs? HLR/BSA/HLAB/Ames? Are you liberal or conservative?

Are you open to clerking a year or two out? That can really boost your odds, especially if you’re targeting the most competitive markets.

[Anonymous User]

I have debt and am concerned about whether doing a district court clerkship in a flyover state justifies putting off a big law salary for a year or two with interest accruing. Any perspective on how to weigh this? I looked at the clerkships that associates at the firm I am going have done and it's heavily appellate or urban districts.

yes a district court clerkship in a flyover state is worth putting a year off. Two years is dicier and probably depends on personal circumstances such as whether you have a children you'd be away from or something

[Anonymous User]

I can’t weigh in on the HLS chances part, but more generally: what do you want to do long term and how would a clerkship benefit you? If, for instance, you want to make a move to a government gig at some point, I would say that having a clerkship checks an important box regardless of where the clerkship is. I would also say that there are judges where the value of clerking for them is independent of the location they’re in (like Thapar in Cincinnati, which some people if not you might consider flyover). And if you’re really looking for the value of the experience, you still get that in a flyover state (speaking from personal experience), though as with any location you can have a crappy experience with a crappy judge.

None of that is to say that you have to be willing to go anywhere to clerk, of course. If there are places you don’t want to live, don’t clerk there. But I very much don’t think that being in a flyover state makes a clerkship less valuable. Clerking in the market where you want to work long term can be especially helpful, and yes, yes, there are some clerkships that are especially shiny looking. But I don’t think that clerking without those things is less valuable than not clerking at all, even with the debt consideration, assuming you’re talking about standard law school debt (like if you have some kind of personal circumstance where you have to support a family member or something and literally cannot afford to clerk, that’s different).

[Anonymous User]

I actually do not think that a district court clerkship in a flyover state (assuming you aren’t interested in living/working in that flyover state down the line) justifies the financial burden you say you have. I would think you should be going for COA anywhere or a district court in a premier district where “big law” firms tend to practice.

[Anonymous User]

Your clerkship office is giving you excellent advice for a strong but not rockstar applicant like yourself. You could definitely get a COA, but you could also strike out, there’s a lot of randomness. Where you should be willing to clerk depends on how much you want to clerk. The correct strategy for most people in your position is to apply everywhere within reason, but if you’re lukewarm about clerking, that may not be the correct choice for you.

Also, why do you want to clerk? If you want to pursue a career path clerking is pretty necessary for, or to learn to litigate, or to get a good mentor, those all exist in “flyover” districts as well. There are plenty of “flyover” judges who can run rings around many of the judges in larger jurisdictions. And caseloads across districts are more similar than you might think (from experience, even in SDNY, you’re not seeing biglaw firms much). But if you want to do it primarily for networking, it helps a lot to be in the jurisdiction you plan to practice in.

[Anonymous User]

I actually do not think that a district court clerkship in a flyover state (assuming you aren’t interested in living/working in that flyover state down the line) justifies the financial burden you say you have. I would think you should be going for COA anywhere or a district court in a premier district where “big law” firms tend to practice.

Yeah idk about this. The difference between flyover COA and flyover district court is not massive in terms of value. either focus on major cities where you want to work for both COA and district, or be broad for both COA and district

[Anonymous User]

I actually do not think that a district court clerkship in a flyover state (assuming you aren’t interested in living/working in that flyover state down the line) justifies the financial burden you say you have. I would think you should be going for COA anywhere or a district court in a premier district where “big law” firms tend to practice.

Yeah idk about this. The difference between flyover COA and flyover district court is not massive in terms of value. either focus on major cities where you want to work for both COA and district, or be broad for both COA and district

This is terrible advice, there isn’t much difference in “prestige” or career benefits between circuits, it depends much more on the individual judge. And nobody who isn’t a SCOTUS-level applicant can confidently apply exclusively to major-coastal-city COAs—there just aren’t many judges and many of them are among the most competitive in the country.

[Anonymous User]

We need to know your gpa before we can give you advice on this. At HLS your gpa could make you not competitive for anything and potential SCOTUS contender or anything in-between.

That is an incredibly fair point and I didn't wanna add because I didn't want this to come across like a ~chance me~

I have slightly under a 4.0. 2 Ps (both in first semester 1L), 2 DS (one seminar, one black letter), everything else H.

These grades are good enough to get you a serious look in many chambers, including COAs and district courts in competitive markets. But there are a lot of factors that go into clerkship hiring beyond grades. Are you close with any profs? HLR/BSA/HLAB/Ames? Are you liberal or conservative?

Are you open to clerking a year or two out? That can really boost your odds, especially if you’re targeting the most competitive markets.

A lot to respond to here --

Profile-wise, centrist, none of the big 3 ECs, advanced in Ames but didnt get through to the final, TF for a 1L prof and RA for different prof. Completely open to clerking a few years out - even prefer it since it would let me pay down loans first.

Interest is tied to long term interest in gov (although more interested in SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, DOJ Civil over USAO). Also spent my 1L summer with a judge and loved the work stream and mentorship.

The "apply broadly" advice I got was not tailored to COA! Really good to know it is a total shit show/I should apply as broadly as possible and that there aren't diminishing returns based on location.

I am surprised (and relieved) to hear there are not diminishing returns of clerking for a district in like Indiana or Oklahoma and then going back to practice in NYC or DC. The spread of clerkships that people at my current firm have done + the post-clerk application thread had me a little antsy

[Anonymous User]

If you're willing to work a year or two before clerking you can afford to apply narrowly. If you are like I need to clerk after I graduate then yes the career office is right that you need to apply broadly. There just isn't going to be enough spots for competitive judges in high profile areas to guarantee you anything. Hell, you could even strike out applying broadly.

[Anonymous User]

There absolutely is a difference between doing a district court clerkship in a flyover district and SDNY etc. I have no idea what these other posters are talking about. I am a current CoA clerk and can assure you of that. Also the firm i summered at straight up said that you should go for court of appeals anywhere (the work is similar everywhere) and the elite district courts. I fail to see how with your credentials a “district of Nebraska” is helpful.

[Anonymous User]

Re: post-clerk application thread - that thread is generally tougher to parse based on anonymity than even other employment threads here. There’s also a lot of variation as to when firms hire (I tend to think only now is about the time of year when firms start to look seriously into hiring clerks, and that people in that thread tend to want to lock down jobs early and panic prematurely, but it also depends a lot on the state of the hiring market generally). There are always plenty of people who end up getting hired later in the year - including June/July - and I get that that feels really stressful in the moment, but it’s not clear that means they end up with actually worse outcomes. I also think that thread suffers even more from the phenomenon that people don’t come here to report how smoothly everything has gone in their job search.

I think the thing to avoid is assuming that clerks get their pick of jobs without effort. Clerking is definitely a bonus, don’t get me wrong. But there are people who do end up clerking who weren’t incredibly competitive for biglaw pre-clerking, and they are going to struggle more than people who already had all the brass rings in place before they clerked. (Clerking will certainly help them more than not clerking, but won’t completely transform them.) Conversely, if you were a strong candidate for biglaw before you clerked, you’re going to continue to be a strong candidate even if your clerkship is in Abilene.

Where I think clerkships shift the needle most for immediate biglaw hiring is when 1) you have a really connected judge who goes to bat for you; 2) you use the year of your clerkship to develop relationships (obviously easier if you’re in the market where you want to work); or 3) it’s one of the (relatively few) objectively more impressive clerkships (like a feeder). You still have to be able to sell yourself effectively, too, and you have to be looking in a market that isn’t flooded with clerks.

Also, I’d bet the spread of clerkships at your current firm is more egg than chicken - your firm is hiring people who were top students who were able to get major metro clerkships, not hiring those people purely because of their clerkships.

I do think clerking is helpful in going to government positions and in actually giving you insight into litigation, but I don’t think those things translate into radically improved biglaw hiring potential. The upside is that you have good biglaw credentials as it is, it seems to me. (And frankly most clerks do so I think there’s a lot of correlation where people see causation.)

[Anonymous User]

There absolutely is a difference between doing a district court clerkship in a flyover district and SDNY etc. I have no idea what these other posters are talking about. I am a current CoA clerk and can assure you of that. Also the firm i summered at straight up said that you should go for court of appeals anywhere (the work is similar everywhere) and the elite district courts. I fail to see how with your credentials a “district of Nebraska” is helpful.

This is the conventional wisdom and it's the approach many strong applicants take. It probably makes sense for you given that you are happy to work first.

[Anonymous User]

This is terrible advice, there isn’t much difference in “prestige” or career benefits between circuits, it depends much more on the individual judge.

I agree. I wasn't saying to focus on cities for prestige, I was saying to focus on cities for the reasons people want to live in cities if that is OP's preference, e.g. they want to work in that city after clerking

My point was OP should decide where they want to live. If they can live anywhere, then apply broadly both COA and district court. If they only want to live in certain places (not for prestige reasons), apply only to those places both COA and district court

The difference between COA and district court is (on average, not including feeders) not going to make someone happy living somewhere they do not want to live

[Anonymous User]

There absolutely is a difference between doing a district court clerkship in a flyover district and SDNY etc. I have no idea what these other posters are talking about. I am a current CoA clerk and can assure you of that. Also the firm i summered at straight up said that you should go for court of appeals anywhere (the work is similar everywhere) and the elite district courts. I fail to see how with your credentials a “district of Nebraska” is helpful.

Yes, exactly this. Don't take the advice here as saying you can clerk in any district court and it'll have the same weight for hiring. For a candidate like you, I think it's better to be geographically flexible in the sense that you shouldn't rule out districts that you may not have considered before. Places like DNJ, EDPA, etc. are still very competitive and good resume lines but are also less competitive than SDNY, DDC, or NDCA.

[Anonymous User]

This is terrible advice, there isn’t much difference in “prestige” or career benefits between circuits, it depends much more on the individual judge.

I agree. I wasn't saying to focus on cities for prestige, I was saying to focus on cities for the reasons people want to live in cities if that is OP's preference, e.g. they want to work in that city after clerking

My point was OP should decide where they want to live. If they can live anywhere, then apply broadly both COA and district court. If they only want to live in certain places (not for prestige reasons), apply only to those places both COA and district court

The difference between COA and district court is (on average, not including feeders) not going to make someone happy living somewhere they do not want to live

This isn't really responsive to OP's question though. Their question was whether it's worth putting off a year of Big Law to go to a flyover clerkship. The answer is that it's less worth it for district court but is worth it for COA. Your initial point that the difference between flyover COA and flyover district court is not massive in terms of value is bad advice.

[lavarman84]

There absolutely is a difference between doing a district court clerkship in a flyover district and SDNY etc. I have no idea what these other posters are talking about. I am a current CoA clerk and can assure you of that. Also the firm i summered at straight up said that you should go for court of appeals anywhere (the work is similar everywhere) and the elite district courts. I fail to see how with your credentials a “district of Nebraska” is helpful.

This is the conventional wisdom and it's the approach many strong applicants take. It probably makes sense for you given that you are happy to work first.

I concur. Good advice in both of these posts. You can choose to be picky at the district court level because you aren't intent on landing a clerkship immediately out of law school. On the COA level, apply as broadly as you're willing/interested. And I'm stating the obvious here, but talk to the professors you've connected with. They likely can offer guidance and connections.

[Anonymous User]

This isn't really responsive to OP's question though. Their question was whether it's worth putting off a year of Big Law to go to a flyover clerkship. The answer is that it's less worth it for district court but is worth it for COA. Your initial point that the difference between flyover COA and flyover district court is not massive in terms of value is bad advice.

Okay fair, I think I was responding to not OP but to answer OP's question, both are worth it even though COA has more value. We all agree COA is worth it, and I'm saying the gap between COA and district is not big enough to make it not worth it or at least we need to clarify what "flyover state" means. If it's a significant city in a flyover state like Atlanta, that is not so much less valuable than a flyover COA to turn it to non-worthiness. Random town district court clerkships like Tyler, Texas may tilt it to non-worthiness. At my YS, it was pretty common for strong students to go to the Atlanta-type cities prior to going to biglaw and they don't regret it. Don't know exactly their debt situations though. But it's true that I don't know anyone who did random town district court clerkships. So I think the random-town/significant city distinction is meaningful not just in enjoyability of the locale, but in "value" or "prestige"

[Anonymous User]

This isn't really responsive to OP's question though. Their question was whether it's worth putting off a year of Big Law to go to a flyover clerkship. The answer is that it's less worth it for district court but is worth it for COA. Your initial point that the difference between flyover COA and flyover district court is not massive in terms of value is bad advice.

Okay fair, I think I was responding to not OP but to answer OP's question, both are worth it even though COA has more value. We all agree COA is worth it, and I'm saying the gap between COA and district is not big enough to make it not worth it or at least we need to clarify what "flyover state" means. If it's a significant city in a flyover state like Atlanta, that is not so much less valuable than a flyover COA to turn it to non-worthiness. Random town district court clerkships like Tyler, Texas may tilt it to non-worthiness. At my YS, it was pretty common for strong students to go to the Atlanta-type cities prior to going to biglaw and they don't regret it. Don't know exactly their debt situations though. But it's true that I don't know anyone who did random town district court clerkships. So I think the random-town/significant city distinction is meaningful not just in enjoyability of the locale, but in "value" or "prestige"

I agree with this sentiment to the extent that you are saying random district court in smaller town, but my understanding is Tyler, Texas is actually not in that category because they get like a shit ton of patent cases because of forum shopping.

[Anonymous User]

There absolutely is a difference between doing a district court clerkship in a flyover district and SDNY etc. I have no idea what these other posters are talking about. I am a current CoA clerk and can assure you of that. Also the firm i summered at straight up said that you should go for court of appeals anywhere (the work is similar everywhere) and the elite district courts. I fail to see how with your credentials a “district of Nebraska” is helpful.

Oh fuck, total whiplash over to the other side of things!

I don't want to overestimate the currency of my credentials at this point, but I am nervous about the firm stuff. I'm going to one of the preftige places in NYC/DC and with how fucked post-clerk hiring seems to be, I worry that if I don't clerk somewhere in line with where existing associates seem to have clerked, that I might struggle to get back to the firm (or a comparable firm) post-clerk.

Maybe this is getting too idiosyncratic, but do you have any advice on how district court targeting should look for someone in my position? I'd like to maximize my options and am comfortable waiting, but I also kinda assume (and have come to terms with) that I am not really competitive for feeders/semi-feeders/DDC type places

[Anonymous User]

Oh fuck, total whiplash over to the other side of things!

I don't want to overestimate the currency of my credentials at this point, but I am nervous about the firm stuff. I'm going to one of the preftige places in NYC/DC and with how fucked post-clerk hiring seems to be, I worry that if I don't clerk somewhere in line with where existing associates seem to have clerked, that I might struggle to get back to the firm (or a comparable firm) post-clerk.

Maybe this is getting too idiosyncratic, but do you have any advice on how district court targeting should look for someone in my position? I'd like to maximize my options and am comfortable waiting, but I also kinda assume (and have come to terms with) that I am not really competitive for feeders/semi-feeders/DDC type places

Sure. If you want as much prestige as possible and are fine with striking out this cycle, start by going solely for SDNY, DDC, NDIL. I think you have a good shot there, but you may strike out. In that event, and assuming you do want to clerk, expand to other significant cities like Denver, Boston, Dallas, Seattle. I don't think given your grades there's ever any need to apply to your random towns like Frankfurt, Kentucky.

[Anonymous User]

Government-focused student here. If I have moderately worse grades than OP, does the prestige of district matter much for government honors programs? (Think DOJ, FTC, CFPB)

[lavarman84]

Government-focused student here. If I have moderately worse grades than OP, does the prestige of district matter much for government honors programs? (Think DOJ, FTC, CFPB)

I think when your goal is government honors, there's much more value to being flexible with where you clerk. That's because you can't retain eligibility if you go to a firm, but you can if you clerk. And Honors values clerkships highly. You're in a situation where striking out during law school actually hurts you.