How and Why I Went the Clerkship Route (and Life Beyond)

       

                    Alison Monahan is the founder of The Girl's Guide to Law School, which helps law students and prospective law students get in to law school, get through, and stay true to themselves. Alison is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was a member of the Columbia Law Review and served as a Civil Procedure teaching assistant. You can find her on Twitter at @GirlsGuideToLS.

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 When Philip asked me to write about my clerkship, and the impact it had on my career path, I was delighted. Clerking is great, and I encourage anyone who’s interested to try to do it!

That being said, the process of obtaining a clerkship can be incredibly stressful, so it’s worth considering what you’re getting into beforehand.

Why Did I Decide to Clerk?

I knew early on that I wanted to clerk, because I was planning to be a litigator, and it seemed like a useful and interesting way to start down that career path. Like many wanna-be litigators, I hadn’t spent a great deal of time in court, so I was curious to see what it was really like and to take a peak behind the curtain to better understand how things worked.

As it turned out, I had more incentive to clerk than I’d expected, after getting a cold offer from my 2L summer associate position. Granted I had another option (from a 1L summer associate position), but finding a clerkship definitely took on renewed urgency after my 2L summer!

How Did I Decide Where to Apply?

I was fairly certain I wanted to clerk in a federal district court, because I thought it would be more hands-on than an appellate position, and more practical. I also thought it would be more of a change from law school – which was appealing, since I was tired of reading appellate cases and wanted to be closer to the action (or, at least, to real people and their stories).

Not surprisingly, I encountered some resistance to my plan from certain professors and mentors. In their minds, clerking on a district court was a step down and they encouraged me to reconsider and apply for federal appellate clerkships – which they perceived as “more prestigious.” I have no doubt they were basically correct (although some of the competitive districts I applied in were probably harder to land than a lot of appellate clerkships), but I ignored their advice and applied only for district court positions.

As for location, I applied three places: New York City (where I went to law school), San Francisco (where I’d lived before law school), and Boston (where I had a romantic interest). Applying in multiple locations definitely complicated matters, particularly because judges in the Southern District of New York move very quickly – many of them fill their rosters within hours of the “official” interview window opening (or sooner, if they hire off plan). Given that NYC wasn’t actually my first choice location, this made for some sticky situations when I had to tell judges I couldn’t accept their offer on the spot because I’d agreed to interview in a different city the next morning.

(As an aside, people tell you that you can’t turn down a clerkship offer. Ignore this advice. If it makes sense for you to hold off on accepting an offer, do so. Just realize that the position might be given to someone else before you get around to accepting.)

What’s Clerking Like?

Clerking is a great job. I can’t really speak to how other chambers were organized, but my Judge was fantastic, and he’d been on the bench a while so he had his system down.

Every two weeks, I would get a new substantive assignment for an upcoming hearing or trial. Usually, it was something like a summary judgment motion or a motion to suppress. I’d gather all the papers, read everything, and try to figure out what we should do. Obviously the Judge made his own decisions, but he’d rarely tell us in advance which way he was leaning. He wanted another pair of eyes on the case, and he encouraged us to argue for our position, if it ended up being different from what he thought.

In addition to the main project, we might have smaller research assignments, or we might be asked to come to trial and weigh in on evidentiary questions. (If you want to be a district court clerk, definitely take Evidence, and pay attention! Analyzing whether something is admissible is one of the rare times when you’ll be called upon to make a snap determination and defend it.)

Some clerks are required to be in court whenever the Judge is there, but we generally had the option whether to go or not. I went to most trial days and hearings, but not all of them. The third day in a row of testimony about whether a particular white powder has a certain chemical composition is less exciting than you might imagine!

Working as a district court clerk is useful for a number of reasons. One of the less obvious ones is that it makes you feel better about your own skills. After law school, most people feel pretty beaten down, but – once you see some of the colossal screw-ups actual lawyers make on a daily basis – you’ll realize you can do at least as well as many of the people who appear in court regularly. (For example, I had a case where it became apparent there was no subject matter jurisdiction. The Judge pointed this out to the two lawyers in court, they looked at each other, and one said, “Well, Your Honor, I think we’d be willing to waive that requirement.” Suffice it to say that didn’t happen, and the case was tossed out to be re-filed in state court where it belonged.)

What Did I Do Next?

Midway through my clerkship, it was time to think about getting a job. Lacking imagination, I only really considered large firm jobs. I’d decided I hated Boston and didn’t want to work there, so initially I applied to firms in New York. I almost took an offer there, but then had a moment of clarity and realized I’d be miserable working as a lawyer in NYC. (And I was really tired of the cold East Coast winters.)

So I set about getting a job in San Francisco. This was complicated by the fact that a) I’d never worked as a lawyer in San Francisco, b) I wanted to do litigation, and c) I wanted to be in San Francisco, not in Silicon Valley (where most BigLaw litigation practices are based). In my favor, however, was a tech background (I worked as a web developer before law school) and a willingness to do patent litigation, which was booming. I interviewed a couple of places, got an offer, and took it.

There’s no doubt that my clerkship was a big plus in landing my BigLaw position. The firm I worked for loves to hire clerks, and I got much more substantive work because of the experience. Sure, I did a bit of document review when I started, but not very much. Pretty quickly, it became apparent that my skills were better used elsewhere, and I was pulled off the doc review projects and assigned weightier tasks. 

That’s one of the great advantages of clerking in a district court – you have a much better understanding of how things really work, so you tend to get more responsibility in your next job, sooner. And, because you’ve spent lots of time in court and reading court documents, you actually feel confident that you can handle more responsibility! It’s a win-win, as long as you ignore the immediate financial ramifications (which are partly offset by firm clerkship bonuses, in many cases).

In short, clerking is a great experience, and – in the end – it’s worth the hassle of securing one.

Best of luck! If you’d like more of my thoughts on the matter, check out Judicial Clerkships 101.