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About to start a COA clerkship after 3+ years of BigLaw. Can BigLaw litigation --> COA --> in-house be done? I think there may be a fairly well-established path at particular corporations like Boeing that really value litigation experience in counsel hires, but more broadly, what's the lay of the land?

The clerkship makes things tougher rather than easier. Insofar as they want litigators in the first place, companies want litigation experience, not clerkship experience. And there's an annoying timing issue because your clerkship will end at a set date, whereas if you were at a firm right now you could leave on short notice whenever the right opp came up.

Firms want clerks primarily because they have ties to the court/judge, which can be helpful in litigation. Corporations don’t really try/litigate their own cases (despite what you see on tv), so the appeal to clerks isn’t really there. They need experienced litigators to manage outside litigation counsel.