Back in May, I blogged about the coming judicicial clerkship application crush. I predicted that there would be a surge of applications from those many highly qualified students facing deferred offers from top shelf firms. This analysis wasn't rocket science, but I hadn't heard anyone else make this claim...and I was a bit worried I'd later be proved an idiot.
Alas, it now appears my prediction was right. According to BLT, there was a 42% increase in the number of people applying online for Federal clerkships this year. We don't have any data about the effects of this shift. I'm wondering which schools absorbed the biggest impact of this brutally competitive market: the super elite law schools - and particularly those students who aren't at the top of the class - or the strong regional schools that normally snag local clerkships, but might now be losing these slots to super elite schools.
Does anybody have a sense of this - even anecdotally?
I'm a 3L at a top-tier school whose top 5% graduates consistently land district court clerkships. Three of my classmates of that caliber (two of them ranked first and second in our class, respectively) were turned down despite applying widely and aggressively and despite heavy faculty support.
Posted by: Africanus | November 24, 2009 at 04:01 AM
I'm a 3L at one of the "super elite," as you call them. It was definitely harder this year, but I didn't notice that it hit students in the middle worse than students at the top. I have friends with strong faculty support and superb grades who struck out despite applying broadly. I was frankly shocked by who did not get anything. I'm not privvy to everyone's grades and lists of judges, but from what I do know, there didn't seem to be a stronger correlation this year between academic success and success in the clerkship market. If anything, it seemed slightly the reverse, with some very top students--students who in years past would have been shoe-ins--getting absolutely nothing.
Posted by: Anon | November 24, 2009 at 05:46 AM
Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more.
Posted by: jordan retro 4 | July 05, 2010 at 03:34 AM