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0L hoping to get more information on clerkships

Assuming you are in a T20 school, how hard is it to get a federal judicial clerkship?
Is everyone who is gunning for BigLaw interested in clerking?

For example, the 26% of students that obtain clerkships at Stanford, are they the top 1/4 of the class? Or are they the only ones at Stanford that wanted to clerk so they could be a mix of above median, median, below median?

And why is it that schools seem to differ on clerkship numbers? Columbia and NYU are higher ranked than UVA and Michigan but the former get less than half the percentage of clerkships than the latter.

I know clerkships numbers should not be a significant factor in choosing a school, but it is something I'm interested in and haven't found much information about.

Clerkship hiring is similar to biglaw or fed gov hiring in the same that judges are looking for students from top schools who are in the top 10%-50% of their class. The higher the school ranking, the closer to top 50 the student can be. The lower school ranking, the student would need to be higher ranked among peers.

Not all biglaw people go to clerkships. Similarly, not all clerks are gunning for biglaw. However, it is safe to assume that a good percentage of clerks are going to biglaw afterwards either because they already had an offer or because they got one after.

Some students who miss the biglaw boat during OCI, gun for clerkships to get another bite of the apple. You could say the same of fed gov gunners.

There is a ranking somewhere of schools that place the most clerks per class. I can't remember the name right this second.

Clerkship is fine as an interest, but don't pick a law school or go to it because of clerking plans. I know you already said you weren't, but I'm just leaving this for future applicants.

Clerkship is also fairly self-selecting. Not everyone goes for it, so that's one of the reasons why you see such wide variations in numbers across schools.

One of the other reasons for variation (as well as self-selction as mentioned) is that connections matter a great deal in clerkship hiring, so some schools have stronger pipelines to judges than others.

Someone at a T20 is generally going to have to have higher grades than someone at a higher-ranked school, but it depends on the school and the candidate. I'd say in vacuum you probably want to be top 10% (but hiring is idiosyncratic so there are many people with varying stats out there clerking, if they have connections or other qualifications that make them stand out, and many people with excellent stats don't get anything).

I should probably also make clear that for clerking, connections usually means "profs willing to go to bat for you and call judges on your behalf" (which is why schools' numbers vary - some schools have a ton of profs that will/can do this, some don't). But if you yourself have a personal connection like a close family friend that works too of course. Probably the other way to make connections is to work somewhere during LS with lots of former clerks who can write letters for you.

exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

Another thing to keep in mind in addition to all the above is that "Federal Clerkships" as a class are hugely variable, expectations will vary not only by judge, but obviously an appellate clerkship is going to differ in "statistical" requirements from a District Court clerkship in flyover country (with some exceptions, of course).

The reported clerkship numbers from ABA/LST don't reflect the percentage of the class at a school that clerks. Those figures will soon become obsolete: that number only supplies those who started their clerkships within the first 9 months after graduation, and the trend is moving away from doing so. Students of schools like NYU and Columbia are much more likely to clerk a year or two after graduating: you can ask for records from the clerkship offices at various schools if you're interested in the percentage of persons from a given class that have actually clerked.

Regarding competitiveness and self selection, it's true that almost no corporate attorneys will clerk, and schools like Harvard and Columbia have a very high number of students that enter as corporate associates. Even at somewhere like Stanford that has a very pro-clerkship culture, not everyone applies or has that interest so you can't assume that the % reflects how well you have to do to be competitive. Median at SLS with decent professor backing is sufficient for many district courts.

jbagelboy wrote:The reported clerkship numbers from ABA/LST don't reflect the percentage of the class at a school that clerks. Those figures will soon become obsolete: that number only supplies those who started their clerkships within the first 9 months after graduation, and the trend is moving away from doing so. Students of schools like NYU and Columbia are much more likely to clerk a year or two after graduating: you can ask for records from the clerkship offices at various schools if you're interested in the percentage of persons from a given class that have actually clerked.

how does this work? do grads come back to the job they had after clerking?

dietcoke1 wrote:
how does this work? do grads come back to the job they had after clerking?

Clerking is a good way to transition from, say, a big firm job you hate into something else. A lot of firms are fine with you coming back as well, but the people I know who decided to apply for a clerkship after a year or two at a big firm are doing so to get the hell out.

Boltsfan wrote:

dietcoke1 wrote:
how does this work? do grads come back to the job they had after clerking?

Clerking is a good way to transition from, say, a big firm job you hate into something else. A lot of firms are fine with you coming back as well, but the people I know who decided to apply for a clerkship after a year or two at a big firm are doing so to get the hell out.

Both scenarios -- leaving to transition to something else, or leaving and then returning to your firm -- are fairly common.