A question I can't really answer yet

Joy had an interesting question on my last post:

If the applications you refer to are for clerkships, I would LOVE a post on your thoughts about non-traditional students pursuing clerkships.

And Butterflyfish had one answer:

Nontrads are looked at pretty favorably for clerkships in my state anyway.

Myself, though I find Joy's question really interesting, I don't have any great answers yet. Because yes, the applications I was talking about are for clerkships, but being the midst of the process, I can't really say anything yet about how the non-trad thing will play out.

My sense is the same as Butterflyfish's, though, that non-trad-ness is not especially a problem for clerkships, not in the way I sense it is for big firms (my sense being that big firms like Bright Young Things who are shiny, new, and trainable, as well as energetic enough to pull the long hours required without burning out too fast, and usually lacking in complicated family lives. Needless to say, the firm I'm working for this summer, though not a small firm in my legal market, is not a big firm). 

My school has a clerkship committee, and I've had my resume reviewed and been told that I have a great resume, especially since the stuff I did before law school is the kind of stuff that would be attractive to judges (seeing as it's all about research and writing). I was told (and completely agree) that my biggest weakness is my grades - which are good, don't get me wrong, but may not be federal clerkship good. At least, not from my school; if I had my grades from a top-14 school, I'd probably be fine, but since I go to a regional school, I should probably be in the, say, top 5 students or something (which is unlikely to happen unless a number of people in my class feel like dropping out before we graduate!). 

(Mind you, I'm applying to federal clerkships anyway. Not in the ridiculously competitive places, but in the less prestigious and therefore less competitive markets [to the extent there are any less competitive markets any more]. Because, you know, what the hell. But I'm also applying to state clerkships. Which I'm not knocking at all - I'd be THRILLED to do a state clerkship.)

Anyway, the main point is that I was also told that non-trads can be really appealing to judges, since, unlike a firm, judges only have you for one or two years, and therefore don't have a lot of time to get clerks up to speed on the whole working full-time and being a professional thing. Plus, judges spend quite a lot of time with their clerks (though it varies, of course). So my impression is that judges quite like having real grown-ups as clerks.^[1] (Of course, many traditional students are perfectly grown-up. And I'm sure there are judges, too, who prefer the Bright Young Things and like molding young minds. But you get the idea.)

 I think perhaps the biggest issue for clerking and non-trads is more the logistics than any hostility to non-trads. Clerking is a little bit like academia in that you have to go where the judges are, and while many judges are in major cities, quite a few are not (Aberdeen, SD and Aberdeen, MS come to mind). And given the competition, you're encouraged to apply as widely as possible - so again, like academia, your chances of landing something you want are better if you're not placebound. Certainly, not all non-trads are placebound, but I'd wager on the average, non-trads have more complicated family lives than traditional students do. So moving to wherever for a year may be harder for non-trads, if you have a spouse and/or kids, who don't necessarily want to move to Aberdeen, SD for a year.^[2]

And there's a perception among some people, I think, that clerking just puts off starting your "real" career, and delays moving onwards and upwards. I kind of think that more traditional students think this than non-trads do, actually, but the later you are in starting a new career, the more you might want to get settled in to a permanent job. 

Then, of course, there's the money. Myself, I'd be perfectly happy to make a clerk's salary (especially over no salary!), but if you're worried about money, clerking is not especially lucrative. A lot of firms give clerkship bonuses, and you'd come in as a second-year associate after clerking for a year (so you wouldn't lose time on the partnership track), but if you're aiming for the stratospheric salaries of BigLaw, you might not want to head for a clerkship. This is the case for anyone, of course, but again, non-trads often have more complicated lives and more responsibilities than traditional students, so might find a conflict between family responsibilities and clerking. (Though again, I don't think non-trads are always very attractive to BigLaw, so...)

So there are some reasons why non-trads might not find that clerking fits easily into their lives. But I don't think judges, as a class, necessarily have anything against us.^[4]

^[1]Of course, the person who told me that being a non-trad was a good thing was hirself a non-trad^[3] when they clerked, so may have a bit of a bias in my favor that not all judges share.

^[2] If you have great grades and resume from one of the top schools, this may be less true. though I still don't think it's easy to waltz into a clerkship with, say, the 2nd Circuit. But I certainly wouldn't know!

^[3] And by non-trad, I mean they did something else between undergrad and law school, but they were still a lot younger then than I am now. Of course, I have a really bad habit of not really counting anyone as a non-trad if they're under 30.

^[4] Personally, I'm currently feeling very pessimistic about the whole thing; in theory judges aren't allowed to look at applications until the fall, except that I live in a region where a lot of the judges say "Eff that" and hire over the summer, some have begun interviewing, and none of them are interviewing me. It's way early to panic about this, but being well-trained by the employment nightmare that is academia, I'm very good at assuming the worst.

Comments

[joy]

Thanks so much. Your (educated) sense of the clerkship market pretty much corresponds with my (not educated) sense, but I haven't seriously started researching it yet the way you have, so it's really helpful to me to read about your process.

I think you're right in that for me, geography and wanting to start my "real" career are the two factors that are most likely to keep me from clerking. I'm pretty sure I want to stay in New York after law school, but so do a lot of other people! And my logical brain says that clerking for a good judge could be an amazing intellectual experience that opens so many professional doors, but my emotional brain just wants to practice law already.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

See, my emotional brain REALLY wants to clerk. Way more than it wanted to get the firm job that I have right now (I wanted to get the job, because rejection sucks and I liked the firm and all, but I want to clerk way more). So much so, in fact, that I think being a career clerk would be a pretty fun job. (Except for kinda wanting to be a judge someday, because it wouldn't get me there. But if I couldn't be a judge, being a career clerk would be a kind of neat substitute.)

I mean, I think practicing law would be fun, too, except it's scarier, because I'm way more comfortable doing legal research/writing than getting up in a courtroom. (I'd LIKE to do the latter, I just don't know how yet - so, scary.)

Geography-wise, I have a sort of similar problem on a smaller scale. There are only two law schools in my state, but people who go to law school out here usually want to stick around, so those of us interested in clerking all end up competing for the same few positions - and also competing with the T-14 school people who grew up here and want to come back, or just think it sounds like a cool place to be for a year.

It sounds kind of like you're getting the message you're expected to clerk and you're not sure you want to. Here it feels slightly the opposite - they're thrilled when people want to clerk, and encourage it, but they seem to expect us not to want to! (They always sound like they're trying to convince us to want to do this. We had the local Circuit judges do oral arguments here once, and they did a brown bag all on the wonders of clerking and why it's a great job, and I attended, thinking the whole time, "Okay, it's a great gig, I get that - how do I GET one??")

I guess I think there are a lot of ways to end up where we want to be, and clerking is only one of them.

[joy]

Yes, there's definitely a message that those who can, clerk. Of course, there's also an even stronger message that those who can, go to Biglaw after clerking. I'm not sure why I find it easy to ignore the message about Biglaw but harder to question the expectation that I should clerk.