Derek Muller has created an interesting ranking of law schools - top to bottom - based on the percentage of the class landing federal clerkships (2011-13). What's most intriguing about this list isn't that there is small cadre of schools that vastly overplace in these positions, vis-a-vis the rest of the competition (yes, I'm talking about you Yale, Stanford and...UC Irvine?). Rather, it's the stories that go on further down the ranks that are more intriguing.
Dominant regional schools - irrespective of US News ranking or peer surveys - can place decently when it comes to Federal clerkships. For example, Montana, Arkansas, Richmond, LSU, Mississippi, and Memphis, among others, all put a good number of people in these jobs.
On the other hand, schools that are well ranked but non-dominant regionally (think BU or Wash U) didn't excel in this list. And schools that got a big boost from their mergers with prestigious state universities (think Penn State and Michigan State) performed more in line with their historical identities.
As you hear prospective students debating whether to go to Columbia or NYU to maximize chances for a Federal clerkship, you might tell them to Alabama or Georgia - they'll have just as a good a shot.
H/T Paul Caron
As more and more judges only hire alums with two-plus years of experience, I'd be very hesitant to rely on these figures. Most of these alum-only judges preference attorneys with biglaw experience, which in turn favors the top schools. My guess is that if you looked five years out or so, you'd see a much greater break between the top 10-15 schools and everyone else than you see on here.
Posted by: Former Alum Clerk | May 13, 2014 at 11:58 AM
Former Alum Clerk, the data don't actually bear out your theory on the first sentence. I did another post where I analyzed the ABA employment data among graduates over the last four years and found that the number of graduates hired as full-time, long-term federal clerks has remained essentially unchanged in the last four years: http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2014/5/the-market-for-federal-clerks-among-graduates-remains-unchanged
Now, there are probably nuances in the data--some schools probably include magistrate judges in Article III clerks; maybe there are more senior judges overall; maybe more newly-appointed appellate judges are hiring 4 clerks + 1 administrative assistant instead of 3 clerks + 2 administrative assistants like some of the older judges are inclined to have; and so on. There might be some changes in the data.
But I do think the last sentence is interesting--would the hiring patterns for judges who hire alumni clerks differ? That's something I don't have the data for!
Posted by: Derek Muller | May 13, 2014 at 12:20 PM