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I'm a 0L curious about the timeline for federal clerkship hiring. I saw a post about the start of the 2018-2019 clerkship application season which surprised me. If you want to go straight from law school to clerking, does this mean you have to start applying for clerkships right after your 1L year? For 2018-2019, how long does the total hiring usually last? Do most judges hire this early, and if not, is there a specific time when the bulk of postings go up on Oscar? For judges that do hire early, would they tend to focus on clerks that are out of school or 2Ls planning on working for year before clerking? What is the latest a judge might hire for the 2018-2019 season?

Many appellate judges have already begun hiring for 2018-2019, and yes, the top people at some T14 schools do often start applying the summer after 1L, although the majority of judges, to my knowledge, don't hire quite that early; actually, it's not a universal trend, but many judges are increasingly interested in only hiring people with a year of work experience, and so won't generally look at applications from rising 2Ls. The process is idiosyncratic in general, and postings go up sporadically (or often not at all) on OSCAR.

For a variety of reasons, it's nothing you should be worrying about until you have at least one semester of 1L done.

LetsGoMets wrote:Many appellate judges have already begun hiring for 2018-2019, and yes, the top people at some T14 schools do often start applying the summer after 1L, although the majority of judges, to my knowledge, don't hire quite that early; actually, it's not a universal trend, but many judges are increasingly interested in only hiring people with a year of work experience, and so won't generally look at applications from rising 2Ls. The process is idiosyncratic in general, and postings go up sporadically (or often not at all) on OSCAR.

For a variety of reasons, it's nothing you should be worrying about until you have at least one semester of 1L done.

Thanks I appreciate the info. I'm not worrying about it, and I realize I won't even know if I could be competitive for this type of clerkship until after first semester grades come out. I'm spending my time between now and 1L outside of work networking with lawyers, learning about their careers and their approach to success in law school, so I was curious about this. I want to know what my options could be should I land in the top 5% or the bottom third. I might as well go into 1L with the drive and know how to land that feeder clerkship, regardless of how unbelievably remote that possibility is, right?

You can go in with that attitude, but it's just going to stress you out. When you get to school, you should be focused on learning how to read cases, take good notes, and work through hypos, and not how your eventual grades will or won't impact your chances of landing a high-prestige job 3 years from now. Right now, you should be focused on enjoying the summer before 1L sets in. On that note actually, talking to practicing attorneys is useful, but keep in mind that anyone older than 35 or so is likely to give relatively poor advice about study skills and the job market.