How does your Career Office help students get Clerkships? Forum

[Anonymous User]

What are ways in which your school or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's career office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

[Anonymous User]

HYSC

Mostly functions as an administrative office, collating LORs and mail merging, etc.

I always hear stories about how CSO offices at top schools identify students who are serious SCOTUS contenders or whatever and help them, but I haven't really seen that born out in practice.

Graduated magna and have a friend who was vying for summa and was on main journal and we both got the exact same advice that my friends who were cum laude or non-honors got. Maybe neither of us were high enough in the class or something, but idk.

All of the substantive help funnels through professors or student orgs. From anecdote, there were professors who, if you took their classes/impressed/did work for them, were willing to be like "yo, here are judges you are competitive at that I know, choose 3-5 and I'll call," which (allegedly) basically functioned to guarantee an interview with those judges. It was on the students to ID those opportunities, which sucks cuz that info was basically gossip and often gated behind student org involvement or journal membership.

[Anonymous User]

Berkeley: Not at all, usually.

CDO is actively unhelpful, except rumor has it that Anna/Eric pick some students to push hard at judges in their network. In Berkeley fashion, those students don't seem to be chosen based on grades or law school success or likelihood of getting clerkships or anything, apparently just how much the CDO personally likes them (and maybe also whether they want to do PI after clerkship, as the dean cares about that a lot). Allegedly CDO also has professors (who may or may not know the student in question) call on behalf of students. Again, from what I've heard it's totally a CDO-controlled thing where the student doesn't know the CDO is doing it for them, and it's not based on whether this particular student wants this particular clerkship. Kind of weird, IMO, since I know sometimes this means they will literally have a professor who is close with a judge call on behalf of Student 1 (who has a *worse* application) than Student 2 (with a *stronger* application) even though Student 1 doesn't care about the judge and the judge is Student 2's top choice, purely because the CDO would rather Student 1 get a clerkship.

[Anonymous User]

Another berkeley anon here.

Agreed that I don’t think cdo is particularly very helpful, at least not in the beginning. I was able to line up a district court clerkship on my own, and once I told CDO about it, they were very helpful in guiding me and I was able to secure a COA clerkship in part bc of their guidance.

It felt tough getting any real support before I got my first clerkship, though.

[Anonymous User]

What are ways in which your school or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's career office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

I don’t think career offices have that kind of pull. Some professors, maybe (I know I’ve heard about one very eminent judge who apparently hires the student that a specific prof at one of the top schools recommends each year). But even if a school could get you an interview, 99.5% of judges are going to interview before they hire.

The degree to which your school/faculty can directly help you get a clerkship depends a lot on what school and which faculty. Generally, well-connected profs can call judges and recommend you, which can get you an interview. You have to be able to make a good impression on the right profs who have connections to judges.

Otherwise a school can provide administrative support with things like coordinating your letters of recommendation and info sessions about what applications entail. There’s also often a clerkship committee who can advise you on where you’re competitive and review your application materials. These vary a lot depending on where you’re at. (My school’s committee was very supportive but not always the most accurate in things like assessing your competitiveness.)

[Anonymous User]

At Chicago, the clerkship committee helps to align recommender support in a way that matches students with judges they are good fits for. As part of the process you rank the judges you’re applying to. Plus of course certain profs have connections with certain judges and that affects who you get. They also have a more involved role in choosing clerks for a couple of judges with particularly strong connections to Chicago (most notably Easterbrook but I’ve heard of a couple of others to lesser extents).

[Anonymous User]

At NYU the CDO arranges to have professors make a few calls on behalf of students who don’t have recommenders to do so. They also compile a comprehensive database of every NYU student who’s clerked in the past few decades, and a less comprehensive (but still reasonably extensive) database of interview/clerkship evaluations. I’m not sure they do much to actively reach out to judges for students though (although I guess it’s possible they are more actively involved for the very top students).

[Anonymous User]

I think the problem with this thread and the Penn thread is that people hear about how helpful Yale faculty and support are (and to a lesser degree Stanford and Harvard), and they think that just because they're a top student at a T-14 university, their school should be doing the same thing. Sorry, that's not how it works. Yale can swing their weight around like that because judges believe they have the best students. It's a self-fulling cycle.

[Anonymous User]

I think the problem with this thread and the Penn thread is that people hear about how helpful Yale faculty and support are (and to a lesser degree Stanford and Harvard), and they think that just because they're a top student at a T-14 university, their school should be doing the same thing. Sorry, that's not how it works. Yale can swing their weight around like that because judges believe they have the best students. It's a self-fulling cycle.

No doubt it's easier at YHSC, but there are other factors at play. Some offices are clearly more committed to upholding the hiring plan, even at the expense of their own candidates' chances. So students may not be aware of available opportunities, and even if they are, could have issues getting their materials in. Some clerkship offices are more aggressive than others about networking or forming connections with judges' chambers or about pushing candidates. This doesn't always require faculty members that know the particular judges. And while this process is inherently subjective, it's clear from many of the stories posted here that some offices let biases affect their work. At my own school, I've seen what a difference this can make.

[Anonymous User]

What are ways in which your school or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's career office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

I don’t think career offices have that kind of pull. Some professors, maybe (I know I’ve heard about one very eminent judge who apparently hires the student that a specific prof at one of the top schools recommends each year). But even if a school could get you an interview, 99.5% of judges are going to interview before they hire.

Not sure if this is what you have in mind, but I've heard that McConnell at SLS has this kind of pull with Sutton

[Anonymous User]

I think the problem with this thread and the Penn thread is that people hear about how helpful Yale faculty and support are (and to a lesser degree Stanford and Harvard), and they think that just because they're a top student at a T-14 university, their school should be doing the same thing. Sorry, that's not how it works. Yale can swing their weight around like that because judges believe they have the best students. It's a self-fulling cycle.

No doubt it's easier at YHSC, but there are other factors at play. Some offices are clearly more committed to upholding the hiring plan, even at the expense of their own candidates' chances. So students may not be aware of available opportunities, and even if they are, could have issues getting their materials in. Some clerkship offices are more aggressive than others about networking or forming connections with judges' chambers or about pushing candidates. This doesn't always require faculty members that know the particular judges. And while this process is inherently subjective, it's clear from many of the stories posted here that some offices let biases affect their work. At my own school, I've seen what a difference this can make.

What do you mean by biases?

[Anonymous User]

Berkeley: Not at all, usually.

CDO is actively unhelpful, except rumor has it that Anna/Eric pick some students to push hard at judges in their network. In Berkeley fashion, those students don't seem to be chosen based on grades or law school success or likelihood of getting clerkships or anything, apparently just how much the CDO personally likes them (and maybe also whether they want to do PI after clerkship, as the dean cares about that a lot). Allegedly CDO also has professors (who may or may not know the student in question) call on behalf of students. Again, from what I've heard it's totally a CDO-controlled thing where the student doesn't know the CDO is doing it for them, and it's not based on whether this particular student wants this particular clerkship. Kind of weird, IMO, since I know sometimes this means they will literally have a professor who is close with a judge call on behalf of Student 1 (who has a *worse* application) than Student 2 (with a *stronger* application) even though Student 1 doesn't care about the judge and the judge is Student 2's top choice, purely because the CDO would rather Student 1 get a clerkship.

Berkeley here too. How confident are you on this CDO stuff? I can sort of see it, but my understanding is that Berkeley can't give everyone that extra push because, as a public school that eschews elitism and is PI focused, clerkships just aren't a high priority compared to other schools.

[Anonymous User]

What are ways in which your school or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's career office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

I don’t think career offices have that kind of pull. Some professors, maybe (I know I’ve heard about one very eminent judge who apparently hires the student that a specific prof at one of the top schools recommends each year). But even if a school could get you an interview, 99.5% of judges are going to interview before they hire.

Not sure if this is what you have in mind, but I've heard that McConnell at SLS has this kind of pull with Sutton

Would be surprised if this is true. Sutton (presumably) has 4 clerks, and historically does 2 on plan/2 off plan. He has hired the 2 off plan from my school for the last 3 years. Unless Sutton is trending away from the 2/2 thing or McConnell just isnt exercising his pull . . . idk

[Anonymous User]

Berkeley: Not at all, usually.

CDO is actively unhelpful, except rumor has it that Anna/Eric pick some students to push hard at judges in their network. In Berkeley fashion, those students don't seem to be chosen based on grades or law school success or likelihood of getting clerkships or anything, apparently just how much the CDO personally likes them (and maybe also whether they want to do PI after clerkship, as the dean cares about that a lot). Allegedly CDO also has professors (who may or may not know the student in question) call on behalf of students. Again, from what I've heard it's totally a CDO-controlled thing where the student doesn't know the CDO is doing it for them, and it's not based on whether this particular student wants this particular clerkship. Kind of weird, IMO, since I know sometimes this means they will literally have a professor who is close with a judge call on behalf of Student 1 (who has a *worse* application) than Student 2 (with a *stronger* application) even though Student 1 doesn't care about the judge and the judge is Student 2's top choice, purely because the CDO would rather Student 1 get a clerkship.

Berkeley here too. How confident are you on this CDO stuff? I can sort of see it, but my understanding is that Berkeley can't give everyone that extra push because, as a public school that eschews elitism and is PI focused, clerkships just aren't a high priority compared to other schools.

“We don’t want clerkships anyway” seems like a bad excuse—few Berkeley students go into PI and clerkships are helpful for PI (take a look at FPD hiring)

[Anonymous User]

Berkeley: Not at all, usually.

CDO is actively unhelpful, except rumor has it that Anna/Eric pick some students to push hard at judges in their network. In Berkeley fashion, those students don't seem to be chosen based on grades or law school success or likelihood of getting clerkships or anything, apparently just how much the CDO personally likes them (and maybe also whether they want to do PI after clerkship, as the dean cares about that a lot). Allegedly CDO also has professors (who may or may not know the student in question) call on behalf of students. Again, from what I've heard it's totally a CDO-controlled thing where the student doesn't know the CDO is doing it for them, and it's not based on whether this particular student wants this particular clerkship. Kind of weird, IMO, since I know sometimes this means they will literally have a professor who is close with a judge call on behalf of Student 1 (who has a *worse* application) than Student 2 (with a *stronger* application) even though Student 1 doesn't care about the judge and the judge is Student 2's top choice, purely because the CDO would rather Student 1 get a clerkship.

Berkeley here too. How confident are you on this CDO stuff? I can sort of see it, but my understanding is that Berkeley can't give everyone that extra push because, as a public school that eschews elitism and is PI focused, clerkships just aren't a high priority compared to other schools.

“We don’t want clerkships anyway” seems like a bad excuse—few Berkeley students go into PI and clerkships are helpful for PI (take a look at FPD hiring)

Yeah it's a priority I disagree with as well. But the school is clearly trying to double down as the premier place for progressive activists in the law. Look at the Chesa Boudin hiring. Look at the junior faculty piece that came out recently. 7-8 of them out of 10 are all progressive activists and none were SCOTUS clerks. And of course, there weren't any conservative hires in there either.

On your point regarding Berkeley's PI pipeline, don't have any hard stats on this, but I'd be surprised if Berkeley didn't have the highest percentage of students go into PI or government out of all the T-14s, with the exception of maybe Yale if you include academia.

[Anonymous User]

What are ways in which your school or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's career office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

I don’t think career offices have that kind of pull. Some professors, maybe (I know I’ve heard about one very eminent judge who apparently hires the student that a specific prof at one of the top schools recommends each year). But even if a school could get you an interview, 99.5% of judges are going to interview before they hire.

Not sure if this is what you have in mind, but I've heard that McConnell at SLS has this kind of pull with Sutton

Would be surprised if this is true. Sutton (presumably) has 4 clerks, and historically does 2 on plan/2 off plan. He has hired the 2 off plan from my school for the last 3 years. Unless Sutton is trending away from the 2/2 thing or McConnell just isnt exercising his pull . . . idk

All that I know is that Sutton has 5 clerks as chief, and that he has an SLS clerk slated for 2024 and 2 SLS clerks for 2025, all off plan. don't know how historical this trend is though

[Anonymous User]

On your point regarding Berkeley's PI pipeline, don't have any hard stats on this, but I'd be surprised if Berkeley didn't have the highest percentage of students go into PI or government out of all the T-14s, with the exception of maybe Yale if you include academia.

Recognizing that I'm a dweeb for typing this out, but I got curious re correlation (if any) between PI and clerkships. So per Law School Transparency:

Yale: PI = 28.2% (this doesn't include academia); fedclerk = 23.9%
Berkeley: PI = 20.1%; fedclerk = 5.6%
NYU: PI = 19.2%; fedclerk = 6.3%
Stanford: PI = 17.5%; fedclerk = 24.9%
Michigan: PI = 17.2%; fedclerk = 9.8%
Georgetown: PI = 17.1%; fedclerk = 6.8%
Harvard: PI = 11.6%; fedclerk = 12.6%
Northwestern: PI = 10.6%; fedclerk = 7.5%
Penn: PI = 9.9%; fedclerk = 10.3%
Columbia: PI = 9.5%; fedclerk = 4.1%
Duke: PI = 7.5%; fedclerk = 11.7%
Virginia: PI = 8.6%; fedclerk = 12.8%
Chicago: PI = 5.1%; fedclerk = 20.3%
Cornell: PI = 4%; fedclerk = 3.5%

(Caveat that just a snapshot 9 mos post-grad, doesn't account for people who go to PI or clerkships later)

[Anonymous User]

On your point regarding Berkeley's PI pipeline, don't have any hard stats on this, but I'd be surprised if Berkeley didn't have the highest percentage of students go into PI or government out of all the T-14s, with the exception of maybe Yale if you include academia.

Recognizing that I'm a dweeb for typing this out, but I got curious re correlation (if any) between PI and clerkships. So per Law School Transparency:

Yale: PI = 28.2% (this doesn't include academia); fedclerk = 23.9%
Berkeley: PI = 20.1%; fedclerk = 5.6%
NYU: PI = 19.2%; fedclerk = 6.3%
Stanford: PI = 17.5%; fedclerk = 24.9%
Michigan: PI = 17.2%; fedclerk = 9.8%
Georgetown: PI = 17.1%; fedclerk = 6.8%
Harvard: PI = 11.6%; fedclerk = 12.6%
Northwestern: PI = 10.6%; fedclerk = 7.5%
Penn: PI = 9.9%; fedclerk = 10.3%
Columbia: PI = 9.5%; fedclerk = 4.1%
Duke: PI = 7.5%; fedclerk = 11.7%
Virginia: PI = 8.6%; fedclerk = 12.8%
Chicago: PI = 5.1%; fedclerk = 20.3%
Cornell: PI = 4%; fedclerk = 3.5%

(Caveat that just a snapshot 9 mos post-grad, doesn't account for people who go to PI or clerkships later)

This raises a question I've been wondering recently - are Chicago/UVA as helpful for clerkships if you're liberal? Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression was that those schools' faculty/clerkship offices are more tapped into the conservative/Fed Soc network - that seems less helpful for PI students or others with obviously progressive resumes who are looking to clerk.

[Anonymous User]

On your point regarding Berkeley's PI pipeline, don't have any hard stats on this, but I'd be surprised if Berkeley didn't have the highest percentage of students go into PI or government out of all the T-14s, with the exception of maybe Yale if you include academia.

Recognizing that I'm a dweeb for typing this out, but I got curious re correlation (if any) between PI and clerkships. So per Law School Transparency:

Yale: PI = 28.2% (this doesn't include academia); fedclerk = 23.9%
Berkeley: PI = 20.1%; fedclerk = 5.6%
NYU: PI = 19.2%; fedclerk = 6.3%
Stanford: PI = 17.5%; fedclerk = 24.9%
Michigan: PI = 17.2%; fedclerk = 9.8%
Georgetown: PI = 17.1%; fedclerk = 6.8%
Harvard: PI = 11.6%; fedclerk = 12.6%
Northwestern: PI = 10.6%; fedclerk = 7.5%
Penn: PI = 9.9%; fedclerk = 10.3%
Columbia: PI = 9.5%; fedclerk = 4.1%
Duke: PI = 7.5%; fedclerk = 11.7%
Virginia: PI = 8.6%; fedclerk = 12.8%
Chicago: PI = 5.1%; fedclerk = 20.3%
Cornell: PI = 4%; fedclerk = 3.5%

(Caveat that just a snapshot 9 mos post-grad, doesn't account for people who go to PI or clerkships later)

This raises a question I've been wondering recently - are Chicago/UVA as helpful for clerkships if you're liberal? Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression was that those schools' faculty/clerkship offices are more tapped into the conservative/Fed Soc network - that seems less helpful for PI students or others with obviously progressive resumes who are looking to clerk.

Chicago absolutely is solid for liberals too. The faculty is fantastic and more invested than most in the clerkship game.

[Anonymous User]

Berkeley: Not at all, usually.

CDO is actively unhelpful, except rumor has it that Anna/Eric pick some students to push hard at judges in their network. In Berkeley fashion, those students don't seem to be chosen based on grades or law school success or likelihood of getting clerkships or anything, apparently just how much the CDO personally likes them (and maybe also whether they want to do PI after clerkship, as the dean cares about that a lot). Allegedly CDO also has professors (who may or may not know the student in question) call on behalf of students. Again, from what I've heard it's totally a CDO-controlled thing where the student doesn't know the CDO is doing it for them, and it's not based on whether this particular student wants this particular clerkship. Kind of weird, IMO, since I know sometimes this means they will literally have a professor who is close with a judge call on behalf of Student 1 (who has a *worse* application) than Student 2 (with a *stronger* application) even though Student 1 doesn't care about the judge and the judge is Student 2's top choice, purely because the CDO would rather Student 1 get a clerkship.

Berkeley here too. How confident are you on this CDO stuff? I can sort of see it, but my understanding is that Berkeley can't give everyone that extra push because, as a public school that eschews elitism and is PI focused, clerkships just aren't a high priority compared to other schools.

“We don’t want clerkships anyway” seems like a bad excuse—few Berkeley students go into PI and clerkships are helpful for PI (take a look at FPD hiring)

Yeah it's a priority I disagree with as well. But the school is clearly trying to double down as the premier place for progressive activists in the law. Look at the Chesa Boudin hiring. Look at the junior faculty piece that came out recently. 7-8 of them out of 10 are all progressive activists and none were SCOTUS clerks. And of course, there weren't any conservative hires in there either.

On your point regarding Berkeley's PI pipeline, don't have any hard stats on this, but I'd be surprised if Berkeley didn't have the highest percentage of students go into PI or government out of all the T-14s, with the exception of maybe Yale if you include academia.

Totally true on the premier place for progressive activists in the law and the "eschews elitism" things, and I don't think either of those things are bad, but it's still such a weird policy. Whether Berkeley cares about clerkships or not, they open doors and matter to students. Maybe CDO does only have capacity to help X number of students in a big way, but given how black-boxy the clerkship process is, the fact that the Berkeley CDO plays "we decide who wins" is ironic, coming from a school that claims to detest gate-keeping. It's like having a policy that only the bottom half of the class get OCI counseling because CDO has to conserve resources for the students who want fellowships. WTF.

FWIW, I'm fairly confident the CDO picks students to push for clerkships based on the messages Berkeley likes sending about who gets clerkships. This probably goes back to the "eschews elitism," but Berkeley loves to preach that you don't need grades/law review/moot court/etc to get a clerkship. I imagine they focus on several candidates who lack those credentials each year to ensure they have a critical mass for panels the next year. I mean, if you've ever attended one of those CDO clerkship info panels, it's not like you'll hear from the student in the class who did law review, had top X% grades, was on the moot court team, and got two clerkships Day 1 of the plan. Instead, it'll be a student going "I was so afraid I wouldn't get a clerkship because I didn't make law review, but then I got one anyway! Literally don't even worry about write-on, it's a waste of time" followed by a student going "Yeah, to echo that, I thought I couldn't clerk because I'm a first gen who straight P'd 1L year, but look at me! Clerking for a federal judge! literally don't even bother trying in civ pro, who needs that anyway? You'll be fine." Berkeley's weird that way. Same for PI -- I think they need at least a couple PI-focused students to get clerkships each year so they can parade them around and get the benefit of talking about how great clerkships are while also talking about how PI-focused Berkeley is. If that means they push a PI applicant with straight Ps to a judge 10 times instead of even once mentioning the top 15% 2L with a Skadden offer, I bet Berkeley takes that trade every day of the week.

It's not wrong that Berkeley wants to help students who don't have perfect grades or law review or whatever get clerkships--they should do that! Grades and law review can be extremely arbitrary (esp at Berkeley) and don't mean someone will or won't be a great clerk. But it feels to me often like Berkeley puts their desired messaging (or maybe just the way they want the world to be?) above what's actually best for students.

[Anonymous User]

Berkeley: Not at all, usually.

CDO is actively unhelpful, except rumor has it that Anna/Eric pick some students to push hard at judges in their network. In Berkeley fashion, those students don't seem to be chosen based on grades or law school success or likelihood of getting clerkships or anything, apparently just how much the CDO personally likes them (and maybe also whether they want to do PI after clerkship, as the dean cares about that a lot). Allegedly CDO also has professors (who may or may not know the student in question) call on behalf of students. Again, from what I've heard it's totally a CDO-controlled thing where the student doesn't know the CDO is doing it for them, and it's not based on whether this particular student wants this particular clerkship. Kind of weird, IMO, since I know sometimes this means they will literally have a professor who is close with a judge call on behalf of Student 1 (who has a *worse* application) than Student 2 (with a *stronger* application) even though Student 1 doesn't care about the judge and the judge is Student 2's top choice, purely because the CDO would rather Student 1 get a clerkship.

Berkeley here too. How confident are you on this CDO stuff? I can sort of see it, but my understanding is that Berkeley can't give everyone that extra push because, as a public school that eschews elitism and is PI focused, clerkships just aren't a high priority compared to other schools.

“We don’t want clerkships anyway” seems like a bad excuse—few Berkeley students go into PI and clerkships are helpful for PI (take a look at FPD hiring)

Yeah it's a priority I disagree with as well. But the school is clearly trying to double down as the premier place for progressive activists in the law. Look at the Chesa Boudin hiring. Look at the junior faculty piece that came out recently. 7-8 of them out of 10 are all progressive activists and none were SCOTUS clerks. And of course, there weren't any conservative hires in there either.

On your point regarding Berkeley's PI pipeline, don't have any hard stats on this, but I'd be surprised if Berkeley didn't have the highest percentage of students go into PI or government out of all the T-14s, with the exception of maybe Yale if you include academia.

Totally true on the premier place for progressive activists in the law and the "eschews elitism" things, and I don't think either of those things are bad, but it's still such a weird policy. Whether Berkeley cares about clerkships or not, they open doors and matter to students. Maybe CDO does only have capacity to help X number of students in a big way, but given how black-boxy the clerkship process is, the fact that the Berkeley CDO plays "we decide who wins" is ironic, coming from a school that claims to detest gate-keeping. It's like having a policy that only the bottom half of the class get OCI counseling because CDO has to conserve resources for the students who want fellowships. WTF.

FWIW, I'm fairly confident the CDO picks students to push for clerkships based on the messages Berkeley likes sending about who gets clerkships. This probably goes back to the "eschews elitism," but Berkeley loves to preach that you don't need grades/law review/moot court/etc to get a clerkship. I imagine they focus on several candidates who lack those credentials each year to ensure they have a critical mass for panels the next year. I mean, if you've ever attended one of those CDO clerkship info panels, it's not like you'll hear from the student in the class who did law review, had top X% grades, was on the moot court team, and got two clerkships Day 1 of the plan. Instead, it'll be a student going "I was so afraid I wouldn't get a clerkship because I didn't make law review, but then I got one anyway! Literally don't even worry about write-on, it's a waste of time" followed by a student going "Yeah, to echo that, I thought I couldn't clerk because I'm a first gen who straight P'd 1L year, but look at me! Clerking for a federal judge! literally don't even bother trying in civ pro, who needs that anyway? You'll be fine." Berkeley's weird that way. Same for PI -- I think they need at least a couple PI-focused students to get clerkships each year so they can parade them around and get the benefit of talking about how great clerkships are while also talking about how PI-focused Berkeley is. If that means they push a PI applicant with straight Ps to a judge 10 times instead of even once mentioning the top 15% 2L with a Skadden offer, I bet Berkeley takes that trade every day of the week.

It's not wrong that Berkeley wants to help students who don't have perfect grades or law review or whatever get clerkships--they should do that! Grades and law review can be extremely arbitrary (esp at Berkeley) and don't mean someone will or won't be a great clerk. But it feels to me often like Berkeley puts their desired messaging (or maybe just the way they want the world to be?) above what's actually best for students.

This sounds absolutely horrible.

[Anonymous User]

Berkeley: Not at all, usually.

CDO is actively unhelpful, except rumor has it that Anna/Eric pick some students to push hard at judges in their network. In Berkeley fashion, those students don't seem to be chosen based on grades or law school success or likelihood of getting clerkships or anything, apparently just how much the CDO personally likes them (and maybe also whether they want to do PI after clerkship, as the dean cares about that a lot). Allegedly CDO also has professors (who may or may not know the student in question) call on behalf of students. Again, from what I've heard it's totally a CDO-controlled thing where the student doesn't know the CDO is doing it for them, and it's not based on whether this particular student wants this particular clerkship. Kind of weird, IMO, since I know sometimes this means they will literally have a professor who is close with a judge call on behalf of Student 1 (who has a *worse* application) than Student 2 (with a *stronger* application) even though Student 1 doesn't care about the judge and the judge is Student 2's top choice, purely because the CDO would rather Student 1 get a clerkship.

Berkeley here too. How confident are you on this CDO stuff? I can sort of see it, but my understanding is that Berkeley can't give everyone that extra push because, as a public school that eschews elitism and is PI focused, clerkships just aren't a high priority compared to other schools.

“We don’t want clerkships anyway” seems like a bad excuse—few Berkeley students go into PI and clerkships are helpful for PI (take a look at FPD hiring)

Yeah it's a priority I disagree with as well. But the school is clearly trying to double down as the premier place for progressive activists in the law. Look at the Chesa Boudin hiring. Look at the junior faculty piece that came out recently. 7-8 of them out of 10 are all progressive activists and none were SCOTUS clerks. And of course, there weren't any conservative hires in there either.

On your point regarding Berkeley's PI pipeline, don't have any hard stats on this, but I'd be surprised if Berkeley didn't have the highest percentage of students go into PI or government out of all the T-14s, with the exception of maybe Yale if you include academia.

Totally true on the premier place for progressive activists in the law and the "eschews elitism" things, and I don't think either of those things are bad, but it's still such a weird policy. Whether Berkeley cares about clerkships or not, they open doors and matter to students. Maybe CDO does only have capacity to help X number of students in a big way, but given how black-boxy the clerkship process is, the fact that the Berkeley CDO plays "we decide who wins" is ironic, coming from a school that claims to detest gate-keeping. It's like having a policy that only the bottom half of the class get OCI counseling because CDO has to conserve resources for the students who want fellowships. WTF.

FWIW, I'm fairly confident the CDO picks students to push for clerkships based on the messages Berkeley likes sending about who gets clerkships. This probably goes back to the "eschews elitism," but Berkeley loves to preach that you don't need grades/law review/moot court/etc to get a clerkship. I imagine they focus on several candidates who lack those credentials each year to ensure they have a critical mass for panels the next year. I mean, if you've ever attended one of those CDO clerkship info panels, it's not like you'll hear from the student in the class who did law review, had top X% grades, was on the moot court team, and got two clerkships Day 1 of the plan. Instead, it'll be a student going "I was so afraid I wouldn't get a clerkship because I didn't make law review, but then I got one anyway! Literally don't even worry about write-on, it's a waste of time" followed by a student going "Yeah, to echo that, I thought I couldn't clerk because I'm a first gen who straight P'd 1L year, but look at me! Clerking for a federal judge! literally don't even bother trying in civ pro, who needs that anyway? You'll be fine." Berkeley's weird that way. Same for PI -- I think they need at least a couple PI-focused students to get clerkships each year so they can parade them around and get the benefit of talking about how great clerkships are while also talking about how PI-focused Berkeley is. If that means they push a PI applicant with straight Ps to a judge 10 times instead of even once mentioning the top 15% 2L with a Skadden offer, I bet Berkeley takes that trade every day of the week.

It's not wrong that Berkeley wants to help students who don't have perfect grades or law review or whatever get clerkships--they should do that! Grades and law review can be extremely arbitrary (esp at Berkeley) and don't mean someone will or won't be a great clerk. But it feels to me often like Berkeley puts their desired messaging (or maybe just the way they want the world to be?) above what's actually best for students.

Not sure I agree with everything here (eg pushing something with straights Ps to a judge over someone in the top 15%), but I agree with the overall spirit of the post. A few things:

1) From what I've heard, Eric/Anna do a reasonably good job. Even if the elite outcomes like feeder or semi-feeder judges aren't great, the school still places a impressively large number of clerks at lower levels. If you're in the top 15%-40% student at the school, they'll still help you get a clerkship. Might not be COA, but it's still a great experience. I don't think every school could say that.

2) In regards to elite outcomes, it's unreasonable to expect any school's career office to have much sway in that. That's the job of feeder professors and the dean. And most of the feeder professors have been slowly leaving over the years to private schools who pay them 2x what Berkeley as a public school could reasonably pay.

3) Yeah totally agree with you on those useless panels. But keep in mind, people with "law review, had top X% grades, was on the moot court team, and got two clerkships Day 1 of the plan" do exist. They're just never going to do those panels or be fully transparent because the school has a weird culture of shaming achievement. At Yale, a student like that earns respect. At Berkeley, they'll earn jealously and open mockery. If you're an incoming student or 1L reading this post right now, my advice would be to identify those top students, and try to form a mentor/mentee relationship with them where they can be candid in private settings.

[Anonymous User]

NDLS Clerkship support is truly great. Career Services helps more with the administrative end of things (you fill out a form and they'll put together and mail out any physical applications you need to judges you want to apply to). They fully cover the cost of sending paper apps - this might be typical at other schools too but I'm not sure about that. But the clerkship stuff is run by one of our professors who is insanely well connected and always available to advise. You also can more or less always do a mock interview with the clerkship committee prior to your interview (many of whom are former SCOTUS clerks).

There are definitely many issues with NDLS but clerkships are not one of them.

[Anonymous User]

Tulane was eh. It was much more about the professors you had doing your LORs and their connections.
CDO wasn't actively unhelpful though. They would identify the top few students for funnels into 5th circuit. That was about it.

[Anonymous User]

NU makes you buy envelopes and print your paper apps and you pretty much need to grind to get one, even people in LR have been told that they aren't competitive (and everyone on LR guns for top grades). There's a weird pattern though where they seem to pick people to support for competitive clerkships, but it doesn't seem to happen every year