Judicial clerkships are incredible learning and career advancement opportunities for law graduates. Law firms encourage former clerks to apply attorney jobs. One law firm on its website says the following: “From the US Supreme Court to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a number of our lawyers have clerked for US judges. We value the experience judicial clerks gain working with judges and encourage lawyers who are considering or completing clerkships to apply.” Kirkland & Ellis’s website states that “We value the training, experience and insights lawyers gain while working as judicial clerks. We actively seek to hire former clerks and offer immediate responsibility on exciting matters and transactions, allowing them to utilize the knowledge learned while clerking.”
As a law dean, I worked to encourage students to consider clerkship opportunities and other employment opportunities. Our students in my estimation needed information about the value and opportunity of clerkships. Here is the UC Davis website page on judicial clerkships. I learned incredibly from working for a federal appellate judge and gained career-wise from the experience.
As with any employer, some judges provide better experiences for clerks than others. Some experiences may in fact be terrible. Recent years have seen attention paid to problems of abuse and harassment of federal judicial clerks and the few checks on judicial misconduct.
Law schools have been criticized for not providing full and fair information about clerkships. See this recent Above the Law post. I am not sure that the criticism is justified. Clerkships are an amazing experience that students should consider. Some judges provide better experiences than others. The same can be said of law firm experiences. Many, perhaps most, clerks have enjoyable and productive experiences.
Full and fair information, of course, should be made available to law students. However, I am not sure what else law schools should do beyond that. If one is concerned about abuse, it would seem that providing greater checks on abuse are warranted.
