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Doorkeeper wrote:Very, very difficult.

catholicgirl wrote:

Doorkeeper wrote:Very, very difficult.

enidwexler wrote:

catholicgirl wrote:

Doorkeeper wrote:Very, very difficult.

Is there any reason in particular why ACLU fellowships are so highly coveted? (As opposed to other civil rights organizations like Lambda Legal. Or are fellowships with Lambda Legal also very, very difficult to get?)

Doorkeeper wrote:I've heard from friends who have worked there that you normally need a CoA clerkship to be competitive for their litigation offices.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:Not dumb at all - sorry if I sounded snotty. You certainly could clerk before doing a fellowship. Many fellowships I've seen require you to develop a project that you'd undertake during 2 years of work with an organization, which is one of the things that makes the applications so difficult - it's more involved than throwing a resume and cover letter into the pool. Clerking would give people more time to work up a project. (Though it's also/even more that clerking is a stellar credential all on its own, of course.)

enidwexler wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:Not dumb at all - sorry if I sounded snotty. You certainly could clerk before doing a fellowship. Many fellowships I've seen require you to develop a project that you'd undertake during 2 years of work with an organization, which is one of the things that makes the applications so difficult - it's more involved than throwing a resume and cover letter into the pool. Clerking would give people more time to work up a project. (Though it's also/even more that clerking is a stellar credential all on its own, of course.)

Gotcha. So, a typical PI career trajectory might look something like: clerk to fellow to staff attorney to senior staff attorney to general counsel?

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

enidwexler wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:Not dumb at all - sorry if I sounded snotty. You certainly could clerk before doing a fellowship. Many fellowships I've seen require you to develop a project that you'd undertake during 2 years of work with an organization, which is one of the things that makes the applications so difficult - it's more involved than throwing a resume and cover letter into the pool. Clerking would give people more time to work up a project. (Though it's also/even more that clerking is a stellar credential all on its own, of course.)

Gotcha. So, a typical PI career trajectory might look something like: clerk to fellow to staff attorney to senior staff attorney to general counsel?

That would be one path - I don't really know enough to know if it's typical. I think it varies, too - I know of PI orgs who take people out of law school or out of a clerkship, but others that don't seem to. Sorry not to be more helpful.

enidwexler wrote:No! This is all very helpful - thank you. I'm also curious how much more difficult it is to get a clerkship on a Court of Appeals versus a District Court.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

enidwexler wrote:No! This is all very helpful - thank you. I'm also curious how much more difficult it is to get a clerkship on a Court of Appeals versus a District Court.

Search on the legal employment forum for clerkship threads, because there's a lot out there about this, but FWIW: a COA clerkship is, generally speaking, quite a bit more difficult than a district court - what stats exactly you need to get a COA clerkship varies according to your school, but very very good ones, usually. I went to a T1 and the only person from my class who got a (local) COA clerkship was the #1 student (and brilliant. and nice). In the couple of classes ahead of me, there's been maybe 1 person per class, if that, and they are generally going to be in the top 5-10 students. District court is still difficult, but not as difficult (we usually send maybe 5 max per class to local district courts? maybe less). These are pretty much all with local judges (in the same circuit at the least, usually the same district) - it's very unusual for our students to get clerkships outside of our market (some of that's self-selection - people generally want to stay here - but a lot of is is that law schools generally have regional pull, not national. At a bottom T1/top t2, your clerkship chances will be best in the area you're attending).

That said, because the hiring is so personal/idiosyncratic, it's not always entirely about numbers. I'm clerking for a district court and I was not in the top 5-10 students (nor in the top 5-10% of the class), but I clerked for a state court judge first, and had various pre-LS WE that happened to catch my judge's eye. I know someone else who got a district court clerkship because they interned with a state judge who loved them, who then got appointed to the federal bench and was happy to hire a known quantity (this person's grades/rank were probably similar to mine). I've seen other people here talk about getting clerkships beyond what their numbers would suggest - again, usually because they had some experience that caught the judge's eye, or they had connections. It's hard to bank on this if you don't have great stats, of course, because you don't know what might catch a particular judge's eye (although connections are a bit easier to rely on. ). And some people with excellent numbers don't get anything, for whatever reason. (Another student in my class who was at one point also ranked #1 got no federal clerkship interviews.)

It also seems possible to sort of "work your way up" - if you start off with a lower-level clerkship, you can sometimes trade up. I don't remotely have COA grades (see above), but I have had a bunch of people (clerks/judges) tell me I should apply for a COA for after the district court, because at that point, it would be about my experience (state appellate & federal district) rather than my stats per se. Now, I didn't apply, so I'm not sure how true this is, and you have to trade off how many years you're willing to put off a permanent job for clerking - but the connections you get through clerking at one level can help bump you up to the next (I know I wouldn't have got this clerkship without the state one).

(also, I'm not sure actually doing a COA clerkship is always an absolute prereq - sometimes it's just having that level stats. If you chose do to a district court clerkship, for example, but had COA-level stats, I doubt not actually having done the COA would make a big difference.)

Hope that makes sense...

enidwexler wrote:Is there any reason in particular why ACLU fellowships are so highly coveted?

enidwexler wrote:(As opposed to other civil rights organizations like Lambda Legal. Or are fellowships with Lambda Legal also very, very difficult to get?)