Interesting article in today’s Legal Times: Law Students Navigate Interviews and Cross-Country Travel to Get a Clerkship, by Joe Palazzolo:
For many third-year law students seeking a federal appellate clerkship — an unequaled resume builder and must-have for those seeking entree into the chambers of the Supreme Court — the process is chaos, a 36-hour binge of interviews, dropped calls, letdowns and, with any luck, a job offer or two. The federal judiciary’s effort to introduce some sanity into the hiring scheme has faltered, not least because judges, absent their robes, are fiercely competitive when it comes to selecting clerks.
And as such, they are not above gaming one another for the top Ivy League talent, even if it means ignoring the deadlines set forth in the federal judiciary’s hiring guidelines. Some judges schedule students to come in at 12:01 a.m. on the first day of interviews in September to get the jump on their colleagues. Others extend "exploding offers," where students are forced to make a decision on the spot, even though they likely have sent out dozens of applications and have several interviews scheduled with other judges later that day. …
The Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary’s policy-making body, has tried unsuccessfully over the years to make judges play fair but, so far, has been unwilling to codify a set of rules for the game. As it is, there are "guidelines," which politely ask the judges to adhere to a uniform set of hiring dates and refrain from interviewing students who have not completed their second year of law school. A similar framework was assembled in the 1980s but abandoned after a year for lack of participation. This year, judges were asked to delay review of clerk applications until Sept. 4, call-backs until Sept. 11 and interviews until Sept. 19. Some judges acquiesced, particularly in the 1st, D.C. and 2nd circuits; a considerably larger faction did not. "We’re certainly in a period of declining participation," says Judge Michael McConnell of the 10th Circuit, who is co-chairman of the Judicial Conference’s committee on clerk hiring. A study — conducted by Jolls, Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit and Harvard professors Christopher Avery and Alvin Roth — released in January found that in both 2004 and 2005, more than half of the judges surveyed said that either a "substantial number of appellate judges did not adhere" or "few appellate judges adhered" to the start dates for scheduling interviews and making offers.
While judges widely agree, the study indicates, that hiring should be put off until after the students’ second year of law school, the deadlines strike many, such as Niemeyer, as unfair. They advantage the big-city circuits, he says, where several judges sit in the same courthouse, allowing students to knock out several interviews at once. Considering much of the hiring takes place in the first hours of the first day, it’s harder for judges in remote locations to draw out the best students, says Niemeyer, who sits in Baltimore with one other 4th Circuit judge, Diana Gribbon Motz. Motz says she began interviewing ahead of the scheduled date this year. "How in the world would a judge in, say, Charleston, W. Va., or Pittsburgh secure interviews on the first day, when the clerks are rushing to the courthouses with a lot of judges?" Niemeyer says. In fact, nearly all the judges on the 4th Circuit have agreed to disagree with the guidelines. So have most of the judges in the 5th, 10th and 11th circuits, according to McConnell. The 9th Circuit, too, is spotty, he says, but showed an increase this year in voluntary compliance. …
As in most family feuds, it’s the kids who suffer most. In interviews, newly hired law clerks rated this year’s hiring frenzy on a scale from "unfortunate" to "an utter mess."
