New York Times, Judges Compete for Law Clerks on a Lawless Terrain, by Catherine Rampell:
Federal judges are entrusted with interpreting and applying rules fairly and consistently. Except, it seems, when it comes to hiring their own staff.
The judges compete aggressively each year to recruit the best law students to work for them as clerks, prestigious positions that involve research, counsel and ghostwriting. But the process has become a frenzied free-for-all, with the arbiters of justice undermining each other at every turn to snatch up the best talent.
Based on rules that were intended to curtail shenanigans, judges hiring for the 2012 season were supposed to begin interviewing third-year law students no earlier than Thursday, Sept. 15 at 10 a.m. But somehow, at the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan, most of the interviews — and job offers— had already concluded by 9:45 a.m.
Indeed, hoping to leapfrog their peers, most judges actually began interviewing hours (if not days or months) earlier. Many made so-called exploding offers, forcing candidates to accept or decline a job offer on the spot (and it’s a “Godfather”-style offer: one they can’t really refuse). …
“I’m not into cartels or collective action or things like that,” says Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, who has vocally criticized efforts to regulate the recruiting process. So when does he start recruiting? “At birth,” he says. …
Last year 382,828 applications were filed electronically for clerkships with 874 presidentially appointed federal judges, each of whom typically hires one to three clerks each year….
Increasingly, judges are choosing to ignore the plan and just recruit on their own schedule. After all, there are no sanctions for breaking the rules; federal judges have lifetime tenure unless they commit an impeachable offense, and recruiting clearly is not a crime. On the other hand, there are negative consequences for those who play by the rules.
“I tried to follow the system, waiting until Labor Day or whenever it was to accept applications,” said Richard Posner, a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago who said he now hires “off-plan.” “I made appointments to interview several people. Then one by one they called up and canceled their interviews because they had accepted offers before we were even supposed to start interviewing.”
