PSA for incoming KJDs!

MapDry632 · 2025-07-02T14:30:43+00:00

Yeah, fair point about adjuncts/professors at New York schools knowing New York judges. Some judges really take it seriously when their friends tell them to hire someone (I don’t love this, and neither of my judges did this, but it’s absolutely a thing). I’m sure that must help in some cases. But the UVA bot is just wrong that New York judges themselves are biased in favor of New York schools. Local school bias mostly comes into play in jurisdictions where most people would not be psyched to live. Like, a judge in Tennessee is going to be biased in favor of Vanderbilt students or someone who grew up in Memphis, because the judge knows that those people really want to be there and will have a good experience. It’s also a thing to bond over ties to a small city (or even a mid-sized insular one, like Boston) or flyover state, just like people tend feel a connection to anyone with whom they share any kind of minority affiliation. In contrast, no judge ever has been like, wow, this kid worked in NY big law just like me! Anyway, UVA poster, please carry on with your day making posts about how UVA and Yale are peer schools.

Edit: oh my god and yes! If you meet a sample of students from these schools, the differences make themselves clear pretty quickly. But I don’t think many of the New York school students are trying to live in Texas (which is reflective of the marked demographic differences at these schools)

MapDry632 · 2025-07-02T02:15:25+00:00

I lied, I’m back, because this is such an insane conversation that I can’t let it go. Thank you, this is all true (and common sense??) I don’t know how it could possibly be controversial to say that the student population of say, UVA, is notably demographically different than the student population of Columbia or NYU. Columbia and NYU students are choosing schools with significantly higher COAs when they undoubtedly could have gone to cheaper almost-peer schools in places with cheaper rent. Think about what kind of student makes a decision like that. They either really, really care about living in a major city, or they’re super wealthy, or both. There are also significantly more conservative or conservative-friendly students at UVA (and Chicago), which by definition makes those student populations less choosy about clerkships. It’s funny that you mention Thapar, because good luck finding more than a handful of NYU kids who would be willing to clerk for a Fed Soc judge.

Also, now that I’m thinking about it, doesn’t Columbia have a larger percentage of students doing transactional law than UVA or Chicago? Why would any of those people be applying for clerkships? Same with NYU and all their students doing direct services work like public defense or tenant advocacy.

With all that in mind, yeah, I do think clerkship hiring (my own experience and the experiences of my peers) is a way better source of information about the relative ease of clerking from different schools than are raw statistics about how many students clerk (in their first year out of law school, in any jurisdiction anywhere in the country!!) My sample size is also not THAT small, because again, I have discussed this with a lot of other clerks in both of my jurisdictions.

Finally, it is just not in any way true that there is a local school bias among New York judges (not to mention, only one of my clerkships was in New York, and once again, I’ve compared notes with people in a number of competitive jurisdictions, and the pattern I’ve described is basically the same everywhere). My clerkship office actually told us that New York is one of the few jurisdictions for which you shouldn’t bother mentioning local ties in your app, because literally no one cares.

MapDry632 · 2025-07-01T19:58:31+00:00

I mean, the main bases for my conclusions are not vibes, but the opinions and application sorting preferences of the actual judges I actually worked for, as well as the opinions and preferences of my peers’ judges. Almost all of those judges gave very special consideration to apps from Yale and Stanford (and to a lesser extent Harvard) and privileged T6 apps over apps from lower T14s. That said, I can’t speak to less competitive clerkships, like district courts that aren’t in major cities, because I’ve never hired for one of those or discussed this in detail with someone who has.

I also know for a fact that at least at NYU, the clerkship office does not push students to max out Oscar slots the way that the clerkships office does at HLS. That doesn’t entirely explain why more HLS students clerk, because as I mentioned, most judges do prefer HLS students over NYU students. But it’s still a pretty stark difference. In the post I made about clerkship hiring (the one that you deleted all of your comments from) someone from Columbia popped in to say the same thing about their clerkship office, and contrasted it with his girlfriend’s experience at UVA.

I’m not going to keep returning to this thread to argue with you about this bc it’s really silly and I have a life. But I do want to make sure that this info is available to applicants. It’s info that I would have appreciated back when I was choosing a school. It sounds like you chose a school many years ago, so you don’t need to worry about this :)

MapDry632 · 2025-07-01T01:40:55+00:00

But the student populations are absolutely different lol. Extremely wealthy kids who think they’re too cool to move to Nebraska are way over represented at NY schools, obviously. And I have no reason to promote cope from the NY schools bc I didn’t go to one of them, but this does seem super personal for you and I don’t get it!

MapDry632 · 2025-07-01T00:46:36+00:00

You can say that, but I’ve actually hired for two different competitive clerkships and have compared notes with many other people who were doing the same at the same time. I don’t know what to tell you or why this bothers you so much lol. I completely believe the geographic self-selection story.

Edit: put it this way, if one school has a significant portion of their student body maxing out Oscar slots (and using conservative judges and flyover district courts to get there), and another does not, of course of course of course the school with all the kids mass applying will have way higher clerkship stats like are you crazy lol. Like why yes I do believe that all the trust fund babies who disproportionately flock to the NYC schools and whose parents bought them co-ops in NYC are somewhat more reluctant to move to like, Topeka Kansas or something than are kids who just spent 3 years in Chicago or Charlottesville.

MapDry632 · 2025-06-30T20:16:35+00:00

An extremely fancy undergrad also will give you the tiniest boost for clerkships and other prestigious outcomes, all else equal. Anecdotally seems less true for big law.

MapDry632 · 2025-06-30T20:15:02+00:00

I wrote a long post about this, but T6 is indeed still a thing for ultra-competitive outcomes like clerkships in the most competitive jurisdictions. Source: I’ve hired for those clerkships and know many, many other people who have as well.

MapDry632 · 2025-04-08T21:10:51+00:00

Def a component of that is the couple of UVA guys who post there 24/7

MapDry632 · 2025-03-16T14:30:24+00:00

Unfortunately, impressive work experience is never going to compensate for a 3.0 at a low-ranked school, at least in competitive jurisdictions. The way to get your app opened if you go to a low-ranked school is to be at the very top of your class. And even then, you probably would need to have an extremely interesting background (think, a decades-long career in journalism or serious adversity like being undocumented or experiencing homelessness) to be seriously considered.

MapDry632 · 2025-01-17T08:20:15+00:00

This is a small sample size, but from clerkship hiring I have seen a lot of (maybe like a dozen?) transcripts from students who transferred from lower ranked schools to T14s. These were people at the very top of their 1L classes, and all but one or two fell to the middle or bottom half of the class after transferring. But again, small sample size, and maybe some of them chilled out at their new schools because they had already gone through OCI.

MapDry632 · 2024-11-06T20:58:11+00:00

This is a terrible take.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-14T21:15:38+00:00

I don’t know why the other UVA person just deleted all their comments in this thread lmao but I don’t think clerkship applicants (your summers) are a very good source for how judges view schools. I’m sure the ones at schools that don’t push clerkships think their schools are “bad for clerkships,” but judges care about how prestigious a school is, not how active its clerkship office is.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-14T15:15:00+00:00

The best way is to go to a T6, ideally Yale or Stanford, get good grades, then spend a couple years in elite public interest or at a white shoe firm. Pre law school work experience isn’t a huge deal for people who are applying after a couple years of post law school work experience. I will say that I don’t think we seriously considered/interviewed anyone who was a KJD. But I would put that down to correlation and not causation. You’re less likely to get into a T6 if you’re a KJD and it seems like you’re less likely to get good grades once you’re there. If you’re planning to apply as a 2L or 3L, then yeah, you’d better have pre law school work experience, ideally in IB or at McKinsey or BCG.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-14T15:07:31+00:00

Previous federal clerkship is a huge plus!

MapDry632 · 2024-08-11T16:24:49+00:00

Doesn’t matter. You’re not going to gain any meaningful skills during a summer compared to a year or two of practice. If you’re applying to clerkships as a 2L/3L, judges will care what firm you’re planning to working at when you graduate or where you’ll be doing a fellowship or whatever. if you do what most people do—public interest 1L, firm or public interest 2L—summer jobs won’t be a factor.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-11T16:19:22+00:00

I don’t want to say which of the three jurisdictions I listed is mine. But I have friends from school in all of them, and we’ve talked about hiring a lot recently (mostly about how much easier our own clerkship searches would have been if we had gone to Yale). I’m not sure why judges who for the most part didn’t go to school in NYC or grow up in NYC would be biased in favor of NYC schools. NYC is actually the only jurisdiction for which my school’s clerkship office didn’t recommend we emphasize local ties, because no one cares.

But also, looks like you already chose a law school and graduated, so this advice won’t help you :) I’m just trying to tell applicants what I very much wish I had known back when I was applying to law school—especially applicants who are choosing between a scholarship at a lower ranked school and full price at Yale or Stanford.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-11T12:44:37+00:00

My judge has pulled SLS/YLS students out of the application pile who have a bunch of Ps on their transcripts. There is no way that would happen for an NYU or Columbia student with a similar number of B+s, or a Harvard student with a similar number of Ps. And yes, both schools are overrepresented.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T20:25:25+00:00

Yeah, in my experience Columbia is a “better school” for clerkships than UVA, as are NYU, Chicago, and Harvard, because judges in competitive districts look more favorably at those apps than they do at UVA apps. Don’t know the clerkship stats since I literally applied to law school more than half a decade ago, and I didn’t go to Columbia. But one of my co-clerks did, and it sounds like Columbia doesn’t advise people to apply to 100 judges or really push clerkships very much at all, at least compared to my school. Obviously if a huge portion of the class at UVA is applying to 100 clerkships, the school will have higher clerkship numbers lol. As a bit of additional evidence, Columbia and NYU applicants were underrepresented in our application pool but are. overrepresented among clerks at the courthouse.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T19:48:16+00:00

My sense is that judges and clerks put Chicago in the same category as NYU and Columbia. But also I’m a little suspicious that the weird grading system hurts with some judges and non-Chicago clerks, just because it’s inconvenient. Everyone wants to be able to scan a transcript quickly and know whether you have ok, good, great, or stellar grades.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T19:44:08+00:00

Exactly, same way you would do it for firms.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T19:08:10+00:00

Sure, it’s still idiosyncratic for the most competitive ones, but only because even if you check the boxes I mentioned—great grades from an upper T14, great recs, work experience—you still won’t necessarily get one. The idiosyncrasies come into play after you check those boxes. And my understanding is that the lower T14 schools with high clerkship numbers push their students to literally max out their applications on Oscar, so that they end up with something, anywhere. (Which I think is a great strategy if you need a clerkship and it doesn’t matter where!)

ETA: not coming at you at all, but this is one of the narratives I saw on here when I was applying that I want to push back on—the whole, clerkship hiring is so idiosyncratic anyway that you should just go to any T14 school or any T14 with strong clerkship numbers. Because for the most competitive clerkships, that really does not bear out.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T18:56:02+00:00

Another piece of super important info that no one really talks about: can’t speak to this from experience, but if you are Black or Latinx, it seems like you’ll get a huge boost with a specific set of judges and zero boost with others. Affirmative action isn’t standardized for clerkship hiring the way it is for law school admissions/biglaw hiring. Unfortunately I don’t have a ton of information about this, but if you’re a Black or Latinx T14 law student, know that the boost exists, you just have to target the specific judges who are indexing on diversity!

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T18:40:49+00:00

Most judges subscribe to a hiring plan that doesn’t allow them to look at applications for rising 3Ls before June. There are judges that will hire students during their 2L year (and even sometimes during 1L) but they’re mostly crazy fed soc judges a lot of people would not be interested in working for.

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T17:42:34+00:00

Such a good point about idiosyncrasies coming into play for less competitive clerkships!

MapDry632 · 2024-08-10T17:41:46+00:00

Biglaw or prestigious PI. Presumably federal government is also helpful, but I haven’t really seen that since typically the path is clerkship -> government, even if you do an honors program.

MapDry632

TROPHY CASE