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There haven't been any posts about the Court of International Trade in a while, so I thought I'd start one. Wondering what others have thought about CIT clerkships and what the exit opportunities look like?

CIT is an Article 3 court. As a public service, I will just note that Reif and Gordon sit by designation on SDNY and DNJ, respectively, though I think they only handle civil cases on those benches.

Former CIT clerk. Really enjoyable experience, but almost no one knows it exists. It is a NYC clerkship that is much less grade sensitive than the other NYC federal clerkships. I think the biggest problem with exit opportunities is just that most lawyers have never heard of it. The work is fairly sophisticated (almost every case involves Big Law or boutique v. DoJ), you aren't very busy because of smaller case load, and it is a pretty collegial place to be.

I think there can be a lot of variance based on the specific judge you are clerking for. A few of the judges do a lot of work sitting by designation on other district and circuit courts where that ends up being a majority of your time. Some judges only hire trade background, some do not hire trade background.

A lot of CIT clerks seem like people looking for 1-2 year breaks from big law, and they often go back to their NYC firm after with their clerkship bonus. These tend to be the people not very interested in trade. It seems pretty straightforward to get hired by the federal trade agencies (DoJ, Commerce, CBP) right after too. And, because of the designation work, I think more and more are using the CIT clerkship to feed into a circuit clerkship.

The CIT clerks are also pretty respected in the international trade remedies bar too. If you like international trade, it is a great opening to do more of that work.