SD Fla. Competetiveness Forum

[Anonymous User]

How competitive is it to secure a clerkship spot in the Southern District of Florida? And how does a clerkship there rank against district clerkships in ND./CD. Cal, EDVA, EDNY in terms of perception?

[Anonymous User]

How competitive is it to secure a clerkship spot in the Southern District of Florida? And how does a clerkship there rank against district clerkships in ND./CD. Cal, EDVA, EDNY in terms of perception?

It varies by judge. And the perception of whom?

[Anonymous User]

How competitive is it to secure a clerkship spot in the Southern District of Florida? And how does a clerkship there rank against district clerkships in ND./CD. Cal, EDVA, EDNY in terms of perception?

SD Fla is about the same as CD Cal. Same for EDVA. Probably not as prestigious as ND. Definitely not as prestigious as EDNY, which is on par with SDNY

[Anonymous User]

How competitive is it to secure a clerkship spot in the Southern District of Florida? And how does a clerkship there rank against district clerkships in ND./CD. Cal, EDVA, EDNY in terms of perception?

SD Fla is about the same as CD Cal. Same for EDVA. Probably not as prestigious as ND. Definitely not as prestigious as EDNY, which is on par with SDNY

Lol ignore this take. Ranking districts is difficult because the judge matters more than the district, but generally:

SDNY/DDC
*slight gap*
ND Cal
*gap, difficult to weigh, varies on context*
EDNY/CD Cal/ND Ill/ED Va/SD Tex (maybe a few others)
*large gap*
Most other large metro areas like SD Fla, WD Wash, etc.

[Anonymous User]

Seconding this take; both that it’s difficult to rank between metro districts and that this is a solid very generalized tier ranking.

[Anonymous User]

How competitive is it to secure a clerkship spot in the Southern District of Florida? And how does a clerkship there rank against district clerkships in ND./CD. Cal, EDVA, EDNY in terms of perception?

SD Fla is about the same as CD Cal. Same for EDVA. Probably not as prestigious as ND. Definitely not as prestigious as EDNY, which is on par with SDNY

Lol ignore this take. Ranking districts is difficult because the judge matters more than the district, but generally:

SDNY/DDC
*slight gap*
ND Cal
*gap, difficult to weigh, varies on context*
EDNY/CD Cal/ND Ill/ED Va/SD Tex (maybe a few others)
*large gap*
Most other large metro areas like SD Fla, WD Wash, etc.

Lol ignore this take. Generally, the correct tier is as follows:

SDNY/DDC
EDNY/ND Cal
The other ones the other post mentioned

[Anonymous User]

How competitive is it to secure a clerkship spot in the Southern District of Florida? And how does a clerkship there rank against district clerkships in ND./CD. Cal, EDVA, EDNY in terms of perception?

SD Fla is about the same as CD Cal. Same for EDVA. Probably not as prestigious as ND. Definitely not as prestigious as EDNY, which is on par with SDNY

Lol ignore this take. Ranking districts is difficult because the judge matters more than the district, but generally:

SDNY/DDC
*slight gap*
ND Cal
*gap, difficult to weigh, varies on context*
EDNY/CD Cal/ND Ill/ED Va/SD Tex (maybe a few others)
*large gap*
Most other large metro areas like SD Fla, WD Wash, etc.

In all seriousness, EDNY applicants tend to be much better credentialed. It's a more desirable, selective, and competitive clerkship than the other ones you listed, and is generally viewed as such. That's why it's higher. Happy to explain more if it's still unclear

[Anonymous User]

How competitive is it to secure a clerkship spot in the Southern District of Florida? And how does a clerkship there rank against district clerkships in ND./CD. Cal, EDVA, EDNY in terms of perception?

SD Fla is about the same as CD Cal. Same for EDVA. Probably not as prestigious as ND. Definitely not as prestigious as EDNY, which is on par with SDNY

Lol ignore this take. Ranking districts is difficult because the judge matters more than the district, but generally:

SDNY/DDC
*slight gap*
ND Cal
*gap, difficult to weigh, varies on context*
EDNY/CD Cal/ND Ill/ED Va/SD Tex (maybe a few others)
*large gap*
Most other large metro areas like SD Fla, WD Wash, etc.

In all seriousness, EDNY applicants tend to be much better credentialed. It's a more desirable, selective, and competitive clerkship than the other ones you listed, and is generally viewed as such. That's why it's higher. Happy to explain more if it's still unclear

I get that you clerked on EDNY, but I don’t agree. NDIL and EDVA clerks are similarly credentialed across the board as EDNY clerks.

And sure, EDNY has Komittee and Kovner, but for example, SD Tex has Rosenthal.

In any case, the gap between SDNY/DDC/ND Cal and EDNY is much larger than the gap, if any, between EDNY and NDIL/CD Cal/EDVA.

[Anonymous User]

Ranking of clerkships is kind of silly. Who you clerk for often matters more. And since it’s a matter of perception, the question is who’s perceiving it: what are your goals for after the clerkship? If you want to be in Miami, SDFL is going to be more valuable than SDNY/EDNY even if the latter is somehow more “prestigious.”

Generally, what you do in your clerkship, who your judge is, and what they’re willing to say about you matters more than the clerkship location in a vacuum.

Also, clerkships in “desirable” cities (NYC, LA, SF) are more competitive than clerkships in less “desirable” cities (defining “desirable” as places the majority of T14 grads probably want to end up, so less desirable = Sioux Falls, Omaha, Kansas City) just because more people apply for them, so your average SDNY clerk probably is objectively “better” credentialed than your average DSD or DNeb clerk. But that’s kind of a weird, self-selecting way to define prestige, because those candidates had those credentials whether they clerked or not.

You can obviously draw some generalizations based on districts. Probably if you want to go into tech, a NDCA clerkship looks shiny given that it covers Silicon Valley. SDNY is likely to have more complex financial cases than DSD. (New Yorkers also think they’re the center of the universe, so…) DC sees all kinds of complex and significant cases involving the government. Generally, clerking in a bigger, more major metro (say, Houston) will be assumed to involve more work and more complex work than clerking in smaller places (say, Helena), which is probably fair overall, but trying to break down NYC/DC/LA/SF/Chicago etc. in this regard has quickly diminishing returns.

But in the end, worrying about rankings is kind of pointless. You are unlikely to be in a position to pick and choose between clerkships based on these random measures of prestige, unless you are such an elite candidate that you can literally go wherever you like (and if you are, you’re still going to be an elite candidate even if you get a wild hair to spend a year in Bismarck). Conversely, if you’re worrying if you’re competitive for a particular district, whether that district is as prestigious as others probably isn’t that relevant - unless you are the kind of person who believes that unless you clerk in a top 5 district, it’s not worth clerking at all (which frankly I find kind of sad).

[Anonymous User]

Ranking of clerkships is kind of silly. Who you clerk for often matters more. And since it’s a matter of perception, the question is who’s perceiving it: what are your goals for after the clerkship? If you want to be in Miami, SDFL is going to be more valuable than SDNY/EDNY even if the latter is somehow more “prestigious.”

Generally, what you do in your clerkship, who your judge is, and what they’re willing to say about you matters more than the clerkship location in a vacuum.

Also, clerkships in “desirable” cities (NYC, LA, SF) are more competitive than clerkships in less “desirable” cities (defining “desirable” as places the majority of T14 grads probably want to end up, so less desirable = Sioux Falls, Omaha, Kansas City) just because more people apply for them, so your average SDNY clerk probably is objectively “better” credentialed than your average DSD or DNeb clerk. But that’s kind of a weird, self-selecting way to define prestige, because those candidates had those credentials whether they clerked or not.

You can obviously draw some generalizations based on districts. Probably if you want to go into tech, a NDCA clerkship looks shiny given that it covers Silicon Valley. SDNY is likely to have more complex financial cases than DSD. (New Yorkers also think they’re the center of the universe, so…) DC sees all kinds of complex and significant cases involving the government. Generally, clerking in a bigger, more major metro (say, Houston) will be assumed to involve more work and more complex work than clerking in smaller places (say, Helena), which is probably fair overall, but trying to break down NYC/DC/LA/SF/Chicago etc. in this regard has quickly diminishing returns.

But in the end, worrying about rankings is kind of pointless. You are unlikely to be in a position to pick and choose between clerkships based on these random measures of prestige, unless you are such an elite candidate that you can literally go wherever you like (and if you are, you’re still going to be an elite candidate even if you get a wild hair to spend a year in Bismarck). Conversely, if you’re worrying if you’re competitive for a particular district, whether that district is as prestigious as others probably isn’t that relevant - unless you are the kind of person who believes that unless you clerk in a top 5 district, it’s not worth clerking at all (which frankly I find kind of sad).

Agree with all this. But sometimes, it can be helpful to use generalized clerkship prestige as a marker. For example, someone who is moving to Miami and looking to join a smaller litigation firm might find it helpful to see that a 8-person firm has 3 SDNY and 2 DDC clerks. In our profession, that means something. Especially so if one has an awareness of the individual judges’ reputations.

[Anonymous User]

Ranking of clerkships is kind of silly. Who you clerk for often matters more. And since it’s a matter of perception, the question is who’s perceiving it: what are your goals for after the clerkship? If you want to be in Miami, SDFL is going to be more valuable than SDNY/EDNY even if the latter is somehow more “prestigious.”

Generally, what you do in your clerkship, who your judge is, and what they’re willing to say about you matters more than the clerkship location in a vacuum.

Also, clerkships in “desirable” cities (NYC, LA, SF) are more competitive than clerkships in less “desirable” cities (defining “desirable” as places the majority of T14 grads probably want to end up, so less desirable = Sioux Falls, Omaha, Kansas City) just because more people apply for them, so your average SDNY clerk probably is objectively “better” credentialed than your average DSD or DNeb clerk. But that’s kind of a weird, self-selecting way to define prestige, because those candidates had those credentials whether they clerked or not.

You can obviously draw some generalizations based on districts. Probably if you want to go into tech, a NDCA clerkship looks shiny given that it covers Silicon Valley. SDNY is likely to have more complex financial cases than DSD. (New Yorkers also think they’re the center of the universe, so…) DC sees all kinds of complex and significant cases involving the government. Generally, clerking in a bigger, more major metro (say, Houston) will be assumed to involve more work and more complex work than clerking in smaller places (say, Helena), which is probably fair overall, but trying to break down NYC/DC/LA/SF/Chicago etc. in this regard has quickly diminishing returns.

But in the end, worrying about rankings is kind of pointless. You are unlikely to be in a position to pick and choose between clerkships based on these random measures of prestige, unless you are such an elite candidate that you can literally go wherever you like (and if you are, you’re still going to be an elite candidate even if you get a wild hair to spend a year in Bismarck). Conversely, if you’re worrying if you’re competitive for a particular district, whether that district is as prestigious as others probably isn’t that relevant - unless you are the kind of person who believes that unless you clerk in a top 5 district, it’s not worth clerking at all (which frankly I find kind of sad).

Agree with all this. But sometimes, it can be helpful to use generalized clerkship prestige as a marker. For example, someone who is moving to Miami and looking to join a smaller litigation firm might find it helpful to see that a 8-person firm has 3 SDNY and 2 DDC clerks. In our profession, that means something. Especially so if one has an awareness of the individual judges’ reputations.

Yeah, that’s fair enough. Certainly, given the competition to clerk on SDNY and DDC, those clerks are likely to have top credentials, and seeing that a particular firm has a lot of those clerks will tell you something about their hiring practices, and what you need to be competitive. Conversely, if you want to break into a smaller/insular market like Denver or Portland, and the firms there are filled almost exclusively with local clerks, that’s a useful piece of information as well.

(I clerked in a “non-prestigious” district, and wouldn’t apply to a firm filled with SDNY and DDC clerks b/c I know they wouldn’t hire me, but mostly that’s because I don’t have the other elite credentials that those clerks doubtless have. Some of the previous clerks from that district ended up in top firms, but they came into the clerkship with the traditional top qualifications.)