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Recent admit to CLS. How is CLS's Fed Soc? I've heard great things about UChicago, UVA, HLS, and YLS.

Anything about CLS? Are they also a feeder for 1L clerkships? What's their reputation on the street? Thanks.

I also heard mixed reviews about CLS's clerkship office. Would CLS's Fed Soc be able to offset that?

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Kinda unrelated, but given that NYC is the easiest market to bid (the common advice for ppl with low grades in T13 is to just bid NYC b/c it has the most openings), what advantage does CLS have in being the "easiest/largest" legal market? Anything specifically unique about CLS?

I've heard top law firms go "deeper" into CLS as opposed to other T13. But I've also heard law firms want representation from all the T13, so if they see a "rare Chicago" student, they don't get those as often, and so they may be more attractive.

anything else I should know about CLS? Thanks.

I can only address a small piece of this, that the biglaw firm I was at had about 20 summers from Columbia. Next most was maybe max 10 from another school

rc8 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 10, 2022 10:03 pm

Recent admit to CLS. How is CLS's Fed Soc? I've heard great things about UChicago, UVA, HLS, and YLS.

Anything about CLS? Are they also a feeder for 1L clerkships? What's their reputation on the street? Thanks.

I also heard mixed reviews about CLS's clerkship office. Would CLS's Fed Soc be able to offset that?

--
Kinda unrelated, but given that NYC is the easiest market to bid (the common advice for ppl with low grades in T13 is to just bid NYC b/c it has the most openings), what advantage does CLS have in being the "easiest/largest" legal market? Anything specifically unique about CLS?

I've heard top law firms go "deeper" into CLS as opposed to other T13. But I've also heard law firms want representation from all the T13, so if they see a "rare Chicago" student, they don't get those as often, and so they may be more attractive.

anything else I should know about CLS? Thanks.

CLS is bad at clerkship placement relative to other schools of its caliber. CLS students manage to get prestigious clerkships in spite of the support they get from the school, not because of it.

The claim that Chicago students have an easier time getting hired at New York firms relative to CLS (and NYU) students is absurd and false. If you want to end up at an NYC firm, then go to Columbia (or NYU) unless you get into Harvard or Yale, in which case go there (unless Columbia or NYU gives you financial aid, in which case go to the school that gave you more aid).

As someone who did two clerkships (district and circuit), I advise you to not let clerkship placement play a dispositive role in your choice of which law school to attend. To be competitive for district or circuit curt clerkships in even remotely desirable geographic locations, you need to be in the top 25% of a school in the top half of the T14, or the top 10% of the lower half of the T14, or literally the top person at a non-T14 school. So, if you choose a school just because of clerkship placement, you could get your 1L grades back and find out you aren't competitive in any event. They're also just one year long (typically) and are not an actual career end goal for the vast majority of people. They're good learning experiences for people who want to do litigation but they way that 0Ls and law students discuss them makes it seem like they are some sort of gold-star lottery ticket, which they aren't.

A clerkship can absolutely be a "gold star lottery ticket" both for high-market prestigious career tracks and more local markets. But the other poster is right that you shouldn't make school-selection decisions based on them. Again, it IS like a lottery ticket: would you plan your life/career around winning a lottery ticket?

Sure, once or if you win it, it sets you on a path that is almost impossible to get on without it (especially for government or litigation-side careers), but you don't want to plan around that.

At least when I was there, CLS fed soc was a great resource for outlines, oci and clerkships. So yes—it’s a good counterweight to an infamously inept clerkship office, as long as one isn’t ideologically opposed.