Getting a Federal judicial clerkship, and then clerking

 If all has gone according to plan, law students who will graduate next June have just matched with a federal clerkship, if they are going to have one.  That plan, meant to bring some order to what has at times been recruiting that unraveled into the first year of law school, is the

FEDERAL LAW CLERK HIRING PLAN, Updated April 1, 2024

"Participation in the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan pertains to the hiring of law school students with two full years of grades in accordance with the timeline set forth below. Students who attend law school part-time or who seek a dual degree may have a later law school graduation date but meet the requirement of having two full years of grades. The dates set forth below do not apply to law school graduates; judges can accept applications, interview, and hire graduates on their own schedule.

"Graduating Class of 2025  For students who entered law school in 2022:

"Judges will not accept formal or informal clerkship applications, or seek or accept formal or informal recommendations, before 12:00 pm EDT on June 10, 2024. Judges also will not directly or indirectly contact applicants, or schedule or conduct formal or informal interviews, or make formal or informal offers, before 12:00 pm EDT on June 11, 2024.

"A judge who makes a clerkship offer will keep it open for at least 24 hours, during which time the applicant will be free to interview with other judges."

########

The plan goes on to schedule clerkship applications and offers for subsequent years in the same way: everyone should wait for the end of students' second year, and then things will move fast (but fast as in 24 hours as opposed to instantly).

If history is any guide, some judges will cheat, but maybe there won't be too much cheating too soon.

But what happens during the clerkship? Will judges who were bad apples during recruiting turn into supportive mentors?

There's a growing movement among former clerks to recognize that not every clerkship is a cakewalk, and to offer support for clerks who face varying degrees of abuse.

The blog Above the Law takes note of this with a recent post:

Judicial Clerkships Are Not An Unadulterated Good. Clerkships are not all unicorns and fairy dust.  bBy ALIZA SHATZMAN

She notes " A judge who will not afford you time to consider the offer — before you commit several years down the road for a particularly consequential year or two of your life — is probably not someone you want to work for."

And she is the founder of The Legal Accountability Project, which proposes to provide a platform for sharing information about clerkships:

"The Legal Accountability Project’s mission is to ensure that law clerks have positive clerkship experiences, while extending support and resources to those who do not. " 

The Path to a Match for Interventional Cardiology Fellowships

The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions has started a fellowship match, and here's an article describing the familiar marketplace failure that led to that decision, involving unraveling of application, interview and appointment dates, with the resulting congestion and exploding offers, and the process of reaching sufficient consensus to move to a centralized match ( to be run by the NRMP).

The Path to a Match for Interventional Cardiology Fellowship: A Major SCAI Initiative  by Douglas E. Drachman MD, FSCAI (Chair) a, Tayo Addo MD b, Robert J. Applegate MD, MSCAI c, Robert C. Bartel MSc, CAE d, Anna E. Bortnick MD, PhD, MSc, FSCAI e, Francesca M. Dea d, Tarek Helmy MD, MSCAI f, Timothy D. Henry MD, MSCAI g, Adnan Khalif MD, FSCAI h, Ajay J. Kirtane MD, SM, FSCAI i, Michael Levy MD, MPH, FSCAI j, Michael J. Lim MD, MSCAI k, Ehtisham Mahmud MD, MSCAI l, Nino Mihatov MD, FSCAI m, Sahil A. Parikh MD, FSCAI i, Laura Porter CMP d, Abhiram Prasad MD n, Sunil V. Rao MD, FSCAI o, Louai Razzouk MD, MPH, FSCAI o, Samit Shah MD, PhD, FSCAI p, Adhir Shroff MD, MPH, FSCAI q, Jacqueline E. Tamis-Holland MD, FSCAI r, Poonam Velagapudi MD, FSCAI s, Fredrick G. Welt MD, FSCAI t, J. Dawn Abbott MD, FSCAI (Co-Chair), Journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions, in press.

"Abstract: The field of interventional cardiology (IC) has evolved dramatically over the past 40 years. Training and certification in IC have kept pace, with the development of accredited IC fellowship training programs, training statements, and subspecialty board certification. The application process, however, remained fragmented with lack of a universal process or time frame. In recent years, growing competition among training programs for the strongest candidates resulted in time-limited offers and high-pressure situations that disadvantaged candidates. A grassroots effort was recently undertaken by a Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions task force, to create equity in the system by establishing a national Match for IC fellowship. This manuscript explores the rationale, process, and implications of this endeavor."

"over the past several years program directors and candidates found that the process has devolved, with wide variation in application timelines and on-the-spot offers, which disadvantage candidates and programs looking to interview a range of applicants.

"The pressures and unfair features of the existing system were further fueled by the transition to virtual interviews related to the COVID-19 pandemic. With logistics of travel no longer a consideration, programs could commence interviews nearly immediately after the applications became available. This led to more candidates being interviewed in rapid succession, and a system evolved in which programs quickly assessed candidates, offered positions, and applied pressure for candidates to accept offers or be passed over for other candidates.

"In response to the shortcomings of the current system, members of Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) were inspired to lead a grassroots educational campaign to organize IC program directors and the broader interventional community to commit to a regulated “Match” process under the established National Resident Match Program (NRMP). This manuscript provides an account of how this process unfolded and how a Match for IC fellowship was ultimately created.

...

"From the applicant’s perspective, the lack of a structured timeline for the application process required candidates to make career decisions early in the first year of cardiovascular disease training and to compose their application materials 2 years in advance of starting IC training. With ERAS open to application submission in the fall of the second year for the December release to programs, fellows had limited time on clinical rotations to determine their interest and aptitude for IC. Additionally, letters of recommendation, written at this early stage, risked not being fully reflective of each candidate’s capacity to improve and develop the technical skills and clinical knowledge important for success in the field. There were other disadvantages to candidates in the existing system. Fellows at programs with an IC fellowship had an advantage of securing an internal spot but were often pressured to limit their exploration of the opportunities at other programs, potentially disadvantaging them in the long term.

"Another problem with the existing system was that the pressure to recruit candidates on a tight timeline limited the opportunity to interview applicants from a wide variety and diversity of programs, potentially reducing the ability to recruit underrepresented candidates from varied programs. Despite an overall increase in the diversity of physicians entering the workforce,11 there has been little change in the applicant pool for IC over the years, with fewer than 5% of applicants self-reporting as Black race or Hispanic ethnicity and only 10% identifying as women.12

"Competition among the programs, each vying for the seemingly strongest candidates, degenerated into a system that favored quick decision-making on the part of programs to offer positions as early as possible. The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 negatively impacted an already high-pressure application process, compounding its many weaknesses.13 Fellowship interviews were hosted virtually rather than in person, which enabled candidates to interview at a greater number of programs without the need to travel. In addition, the virtual format accelerated the tempo of an application process that was already felt to be too fast, resulting in an increase in so-called “exploding offers”—offers that required the accepted candidate to respond within a very short timeframe or risk losing the offer. This practice placed significant pressure on candidates to make quick decisions, often forcing them to determine whether to accept the offer from 1 institution before having the opportunity to participate in interviews with—let alone see and evaluate—other programs or fully understand the ramifications of accepting an offer on their personal lives. At the same time, the accelerated timetable left many programs scrambling to identify applicants, as the number of available candidates diminished rapidly due to applicants accepting time-sensitive, exploding offers.

...

"As with other national efforts of this magnitude, the path to develop consensus in favor of a Match was not without challenges. There were several program directors around the country who strongly opposed the institution of a Match. These were well-regarded academicians and clinician educators who expressed very sincere concerns about the impact on fellows in their programs. The members of the SCAI Match Task Force addressed as many concerns as possible, providing the information necessary for each program director to make the best decision for their institution. A minority of program directors remained opposed to the initiative or did not engage with Task Force members despite multiple attempts to be contacted.

"The Match campaign proved highly effective, and by November 2022, the 75% threshold of programs and positions to implement the Match was met

...

"As the sponsor of the Match, SCAI considered the pros and cons of the “All In Policy,” where registered programs must attempt to fill all ACGME positions at the program through the Match.15,16 SCAI opted out of the “All In Policy” to allow programs to have flexibility for unique situations that require commitment to a candidate outside of the Match. 

...

"As a result of the successful implementation of the Match in IC, the first Match cycle for incoming IC fellows will open in the summer of 2024. Individuals eligible to apply include cardiovascular disease fellows in their third or final year of training and graduates who have completed fellowship and are in clinical practice. This class will start IC training in July 2025"

AEA committee on the job market considers early and exploding offers

 John Cawley chairs the AEA committee on the job market, and recently tweeted the request for information below.  Feel free to communicate with him on twitter or directly, as I'll be glad to rely on him to compile and forward all the responses. (I'm one of the few economists not on most social media...but I really will try to read all responses:) (Click to enlarge...)

Advice on dealing with exploding offers in the Economics job market

 The market for new Economics Ph.D.s is in flux, with interviews this year being conducted remotely by Zoom rather than in person at the annual January conference. (Zoom interviews were a Covid innovation that seems likely to stay--mostly because remote interviews seemed to work well.)  But issues of timing can be delicate, and there's some concern that, now that initial interviews aren't being synchonized with the annual meetings, we're seeing more early interviews, flyouts (subsequent in-person, on campus interviews) and offers than in previous years, including more offers that require replies very quickly--exploding offers.  Exploding offers cause difficulties to those who receive them, and they contribute to market-wide difficulties, as they can cause the market to move earlier from year to year, i.e. to unravel into very early offers at diffuse times, so that the market loses thickness.

So...I wasn't too surprised to get an email this week from a colleague who has a student on the market who presently has two exploding offers, each with a one-week deadline.  My colleague writes that his student  presently has flyouts scheduled with other schools through February, and so won't even have visited them by the time his exploding offers expire. "He would much prefer an offer from several of them to these 2 current offers--but I have no idea what is the likelihood of getting offers from them."

He asks me "Does any entity such as the ASSA, Stanford, etc. have a policy that I can mention to these schools? "  And he asks for my advice.  I don't have great advice, but here's my slightly redacted reply:

"The AEA doesn’t have a good policy on this, but the AFA does: see my blog post here

Tuesday, August 2, 2022 American Finance Association guidelines to prevent unravelling of the job market  (it says) “the AFA promotes the following professional norm: If a job candidate receives and accepts a coercive exploding offer (i.e., one that expires before February 20), the AFA does not consider such an acceptance to be binding.”

 "That said, talking to the schools that have issued coercive exploding offers is a good idea, and it may or may not help.  I think there are three main reasons they might make exploding offers.

• 1.       Pure evil: they think your student might get a better offer if they wait, and want to capture him before that.
• 2.       Fear that their other candidates will disappear: they may have a second choice candidate who already has an exploding offer, in which case they may be able to tell you when that offer explodes.  But maybe their fear is less focused than that, in which case you might get them to extend the offer on the understanding that they can make it explode later.
• 3.       Boilerplate: they may have just copy-pasted from some template that had a short fuse offer. In this case there’s a good chance they’ll relax the drop dead date.

 "I’ve encountered other reasons as well. In the 2008 financial crisis some of our students got exploding offers, and when I called one school to inquire, was told that their dean wouldn’t allow them to schedule any more flyouts until/unless they’d been rejected by our student.

 "There are labor markets that suffer a great deal from exploding offers (e.g. private equity right now, among others).  But it’s still not the norm in economics, so I think you have a good chance of getting some more time by asking for it."

"It Is Time for Interventional Cardiology Fellowship to Join the National Resident Matching Program," say its leaders

 The current appointment process for interventional cardiology fellows is early and congested, and programs feel obliged to make exploding offers, often to internal candidates, without much opportunity for external candidates and programs to become acquainted. In short, they are facing the problems with decentralized hiring that have led many medical specialties to use a centralized match to organize the labor market for residencies and fellowships.  Here's a proposal that this fellowship program should join the Match in order to have a more orderly, better informed process.

Vallabhajosyula, Saraschandra, Sabeeda Kadavath, Alexander G. Truesdell, Michael N. Young, Wayne B. Batchelor, Frederick G. Welt, Ajay J. Kirtane, Anna E. Bortnick, and ACC Interventional Section Leadership Council. "It Is Time for Interventional Cardiology Fellowship to Join the National Resident Matching Program." Cardiovascular Interventions 15, no. 17 (2022): 1762-1767.

"In this perspective article, which is a summation of the deliberations of the American College of Cardiology Interventional Section Leadership Council, we describe the current process of interventional cardiology fellowship candidate selection and opportunities for improvement by joining the Match.

...

"Current Application Process

...

"the date for program review of applications starts on December 1st (1½ years before the start of the interventional cardiology training program to which applicants are applying), although programs are free to offer spots earlier. At the time applications are submitted, cardiovascular medicine fellows in traditional 3-year programs have variable exposure to the cardiac catheterization laboratory. In our experience, for many applicants, the timing of the application process precludes an adequate diagnostic catheterization laboratory experience in order to inform decision-making. ... program leadership is heavily reliant on candidate performance in the interview and on subjective evaluation through letters of recommendation from faculty mentors who have typically had a single year of exposure to applicants.

Wilderness Medicine starts a fellowship Match

 "Wilderness medicine" sounds like the sort of medicine you hope you never need as a patient.  But there is a medical fellowship program that draws on a cross-disciplinary group of docs, and their decentralized labor market has run into the usual difficulties. Here's a report on a new centralized clearinghouse, run in-house and partly manually, following a simulated run.

Davis, Christopher A., Stephanie Lareau, Taylor Haston, Arun Ganti, and Susanne J. Spano. "Implementation of a Specialty Society‒Sponsored Wilderness Medicine Fellowship Match." Wilderness & Environmental Medicine (2022, in press).

"Previously, wilderness medicine (WM) fellowships offered spots to applicants using an offer date. Due in part to increases in the number of WM fellowships and applicants, in 2021, the WM program directors (PDs) agreed to conduct the first WM fellowship match through the Wilderness Medical Society graduate medical education committee. This article outlines the process used and demonstrates its feasibility.

...

"Wilderness Medicine (WM) fellowships previously filled positions using an offer-date set by fellowship directors each fall.1 Applicant(s) were called in the order of preference by each director until all available positions were filled. Once called, applicants would have 30 min to accept or decline the offer. Limitations included the potential for verbal, nonbinding offers to influence candidates’ and directors’ actions on the offer day, as well as pressure on candidates to accept initial offers owing to the lack of knowledge regarding potential forthcoming offers. These concerns cast uncertainty on whether participants were placed in a disadvantageous position by the offer-date system.

...

"Formal fellowship matching services are not exclusively managed by the NRMP; other businesses, the military, and professional societies host matching services. The San Francisco match currently provides fellowship matching services to 22 subspecialties.6 The military does not use a computer-generated match list; the selection committee arranges negotiated pairings between programs and applicants, with the ability to place an applicant in a program they did not rank.7 The American Urological Association, in conjunction with the Society of Academic Urologists, has overseen the urology residency match program for >35 y, which includes fellowship matches.

...

"After completion of the simulated trial/test match, all PDs and WMS GME committee members agreed to participate in the proposed inaugural WM match via email or telephone verification. The deadline of October 25, 2021 was set for the submission of all rank lists to the WMS staff member by all participating applicants and programs. Individual emails were sent to both the programs and applicants to encourage timely completion of the process. On October 28, 2021, at 0900 PST/1200 EST, initial emails were sent simultaneously to each applicant and each PD to inform them of either a successful match or eligibility for the secondary match.

...

"A total of 13 programs and 15 applicants completed the match process. After the first round, 11 of 15 applicants had matched, and 2 programs and 4 candidates had the opportunity to complete the secondary match. During the secondary match period, the unfilled programs2 withdrew, obviating the need for the secondary match.

...

"Many PDs noted in 2021 that they had a significant increase in the number of applicants in 2020 and cited this as motivation for moving away from the previous telephone-based offer system and pursuing a match for the subsequent year."

Unraveling of the market for new law professors

 Kim Krawiec, a law professor who is among the most penetrating analysts of controversial markets and market practices, emails me about unraveling in the market for new law professors:

"prior to Covid, the AALS (American Association of Law Schools) ran a hiring process with a central meeting in Washington DC and nearly every law professor was hired through this process. During Covid, this of course stopped and has now been dropped (I think) permanently, so now schools are sort of making up their own schedules. Some schools are starting early and making exploding offers before other schools have even begun the process. The idea of exploding offers is not new — it happened before. Though some (mostly higher ranked schools) considered it bad form, other schools argued that they had to do it or would wind up hiring no one year after year as favored candidates accepted other jobs near the end of the season. But the physical meeting and control over the timing by the AALS at least posed a basic schedule. That now appears to be gone and people (both candidates and hiring committees) are up in arms. ... My guess (completely speculating) is that the interests of higher ranked and lower ranked schools are not aligned on this and that makes it harder to find a new equilibrium, but I don’t know."

*******

Law already 'enjoys' a number of unraveled markets, for law clerks, for associates (and summer associates) in law firms, and for articles in law reviews.  So I have to admit the prospects for preventing wholesale unraveling of the law professor market looks bleak, unless law schools can start to think outside of the box, perhaps e.g. by preparing to give offers to students who have already accepted exploding offers, if necessary to start in the following academic year...  

Maybe in that way the academic law community can start to come to some agreement on some  time, midway between early and late, in which offers should be made and during which they should be left open.

American Finance Association guidelines to prevent unravelling of the job market

 Zoom is changing interview practices, and there's concern that academic markets for new Ph.D grads could unravel. The AFA is on the case for the finance market with these guidelines:

Guidelines for the AFA Rookie Recruiting Cycle

The AFA rookie job market cycle of 2021-2022 created uncertainty, confusion, and unneeded stress for job market candidates and for recruiters. In the interest of developing a more coordinated job market that benefits all involved, the AFA Board has the following suggested guidelines.

Timing of interviews:

Initial interviews can be virtual or in person, but the AFA recommends that the initial interviews should not begin before December 15, 2022, and that the timing of the “campus visit” should occur after the AFA meeting.

Timing of job offers:

In order to facilitate the best matching between candidates and positions, the AFA Board believes strongly that job offers should remain open until at least February 20. The AFA Board also encourages employers to abstain from giving exploding offers with too short of a time frame, since they are unfair to the candidates. Consequently, the AFA promotes the following professional norm: If a job candidate receives and accepts a coercive exploding offer (i.e., one that expires before February 20), the AFA does not consider such an acceptance to be binding.

These guidelines are designed for the AFA rookie recruiting cycle and do not pertain to recruiting cycles for other job markets such as the FMA or European job markets.

HT: Alex Chan

Unraveling of Forensic Psychiatry fellowships makes participants paranoid on both sides of the market

 Where lawyers speak naturally about rules, psychiatrists don't shy away from talking about feelings, and the current disorder in the market for forensic psychiatry fellowships is making many participants miserable.

The Fellowship Application Process Must Be Reformed  by Octavio Choi, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online September 2021, 49 (3) 300-310; DOI: https://doi.org/10.29158/JAAPL.210088-21

"These are unhappy days in the world of forensic psychiatry fellowship programs. Here is the crux of the problem: too much product, not enough customers. Agapoff and colleagues report that for the 2016–2017 academic year, forensic psychiatry fellowships achieved a 56 percent fill rate, with 65 residents spread over 44 programs offering a total of 116 positions.1 Since then, the number of forensic programs has continued to grow, up to 48 ACGME-accredited programs offering 127 positions in 2018–2019. Seventy-three of those positions were filled, equating to a 57.5 percent fill rate.2 Things were better in the older days. According to ACGME records, in 2012–2013 there were about the same number of active residents (70) in just 36 programs.3

"The implications are clear: forensic fellowship programs are increasingly desperate to recruit a small number of applicants. From the perspective of program directors such as me, the rational strategy to pursue in this situation is to identify promising applicants early and try to sign them up before anyone else can get to them. Indeed, in recent years, fierce competition has led programs to make earlier and earlier offers that are time-limited (also known as the “exploding offer”). Paranoia is high. Given the nontransparent nature of most transactions in the applications process (no one really knows what anyone else is up to), and lack of objective referees, it only takes the slightest hint of malfeasance for outrage and fear of missing out to amplify.

"The overriding fear of many program directors is that they will not fill their available positions. In addition to bruised egos, being left with open positions means contracts will be left unfilled, possibly leading to cancellation and, ultimately, reduction or elimination of programs. Literally, to not fill risks death (of the program). The imperative, then, is to avoid not filling at all costs.

"On the other side is a paradox. For applicants, low fill rates should translate into a buyer's market, yet because the market is unregulated, the current system inflicts much suffering on them. As one recent applicant succinctly described the process: “it's a hot mess.” Competition by programs for the limited number of applicants has led to earlier and earlier offers being made with shorter and shorter times to decide; too short to adequately assess and receive offers from other programs. Indeed, the whole point of an exploding offer, from the program's point of view, is to curtail assessment of other programs by forcing applicants to make decisions before they might otherwise be ready. In marketing parlance, the idea is to pick up a bargain by taking a good off the market before it can be fairly priced.

...

"The failure of the current system is not about program directors being bad people. It is about the fragile nature of voluntary agreements during difficult times. The math is simple. If each program director has a 95 percent chance of behaving ethically over the course of the applications cycle, and there are 48 programs, there is only a .95 to the forty-eighth power probability (=8.5% chance) that all 48 directors will behave ethically in any given year. A single program director acting less-than-fully ethically is enough to kickstart a paranoid feedback loop that devolves into chaos: “If program X isn't playing by the rules, I don't see why I need to keep playing by the rules, especially if it's going to hurt me.”

"But note that system failure does not even require any actual unethical behavior; all that is required is the perception that others are behaving unethically, a perception that is encouraged to flourish in the context of desperation and lack of transparency"

Exploding offers of admission to Notre Dame Law School

Notre Dame Law School has apparently sent out more acceptance letters than it has positions, and the offers will expire automatically once sufficiently many students have accepted them by making a binding deposit.  Read on and see that there was also a threat to students who had been offered financial aid.  (I wonder if this will work out the way Notre Dame wants, or if enough law students are rich enough to make more than one deposit...)

 The blog "Above the Law' has the story:

Chaos Reigns: Notre Dame Law School Tells Non-Wealthy Students ‘Thanks, But No Thanks’ By Kyle McEntee and Sydney Montgomery

"Notre Dame makes application decisions on a rolling basis instead of a pre-selected date. Once an applicant is admitted, the school requires two deposits to confirm enrollment. Law schools have used this process (more or less) without incident for decades.

"Most law schools ask applicants to deposit by a certain date, traditionally mid-April to early May. Notre Dame’s first deadline was April 15 and required a $600 non-refundable deposit. Notre Dame’s offer letter, however, increased the pressure with an unusual warning. The school informed applicants that they had until the deadline or “when we reach our maximum number of deposits.”

...

"For the applicants who received a scholarship offer, pressure mounted with a second warning.

"While most law schools frown on double-depositing (holding seats at more than one law school), Notre Dame warned scholarship recipients that they may lose their scholarship offer if the applicant also deposits at another school.

...

"In other words, if you want to come to our school at the price we’re offering, you’d better send us a non-refundable deposit now."

HT: Paul Kominers, Parag Pathak

********

I recall that decades ago, a certain midwestern Economics department (just) once made more offers of graduate fellowships than it had, with the fellowship offer expiring when enough acceptances had been received. No binding deposits were involved in that episode, however.

Judicial clerkships in the time of coronavirus--uneven compliance with the pilot hiring plan, and post-clerkship connections

 An article in the UC Davis Law Review Online discusses the hiring of law clerks by U.S. judges, during the current pandemic,  with reference to the  Federal Law Clerk Hiring (Pilot) Plan which is in its second year this year. (The plan calls for judges to delay hiring second year law students until June, and to leave offers open for at least 48 hours.)

The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Pilot and the Coronavirus Pandemic  by Carl Tobias, UC Davis Law Review Online, 2020,54, 1-20.

The article says that compliance with the plan is uneven, but that "numerous jurists who support the nascent pilot are Democratic Presidents' confirmees ... while copious judges who seem to oppose the pilot  in turn are GOP chief executives' appointees..." (p9).

**********

An article in the NY Times talks about why clerkships are so valuable to clerks:

Law Firms Pay Supreme Court Clerks $400,000 Bonuses. What Are They Buying?   Inside information and influence with the clerks’ former bosses may figure in the transactions, a new study suggests     by Adam Liptak

"Supreme Court justices make $265,600 a year. The chief justice gets $277,700.

"Their law clerks do a lot better. After a year of service at the court, they are routinely offered signing bonuses of $400,000 from law firms, on top of healthy salaries of more than $200,000."

The article goes on to talk about the influence that clerks have later in their careers, when arguing cases before their former bosses. It's based on this article

The Influence of Personalized Knowledge at the Supreme Court: How (Some) Former Law Clerks Have the Inside Track by Ryan C. Black1 and Ryan J. Owens, Political Research Quarterly, 2020.

Abstract: When arguing at the U.S. Supreme Court, former High Court law clerks enjoy significant influence over their former justices. Our analysis of forty years of judicial votes reveals that an attorney who formerly clerked for a justice is 16 percent more likely to capture that justice’s vote than an otherwise identical attorney who never clerked. What is more, an attorney who formerly clerked for a justice is 14 to 16 percent more likely to capture that justice’s vote than an otherwise identical attorney who previously clerked for a different justice. Former clerk influence is substantial, targeted, and appears to come from clerks’ personalized information about their justices. These results answer an important empirical question about the role of attorneys while raising normative concerns over  fairness in litigation.

Unraveling of finance internships, and a black market for courses

Mallesh Pai points me to this story in Philadelphia Magazine, from the University of Pennsylvania:

Desperate for High-Paying Wall Street Jobs, Penn Students Try Buying Their Way Into the Right Classes--Out-of-control corporate recruiting — and a new black market  by DAVID MURRELL

"...students had been posting in Penn student group chats saying they’d be willing to pay their way into courses they hadn’t been able to get into. There was a simple workaround: These students would offer money to entice another student to drop the class, then swoop in through the online registration portal to take the newly free seat. The going rate looked to be about $50 to $60 for a class.
...
"Five years ago, sophomores like Current might not have been so desperate. Back then, finance companies hired for their all-important junior-year summer internships just a few months ahead of time. But recently, in an attempt to scoop up the best students before anyone else, companies have moved up the timeline. It’s now standard practice for finance firms to recruit sophomores like Current — who has only completed three semesters of college and hasn’t even declared a major — for those same junior-year summer internships a full 18 months in advance.
...
"As it happened, Current’s scheme to buy his way into Corporate Valuation didn’t quite work as planned. He was foiled by the course registration system. His co-conspirator did indeed drop the class, but a spot never opened up. (Current now thinks he failed to account for a wait-list.) But while he came up empty, other students say they know people who have succeeded.

“This is very common,” says junior Valentina Losada, another vet of the corporate recruiting wars. “It’s not even seen as something bad.”
...
"firms have realized they don’t need the university anymore; they can conduct phone and Skype interviews, then bring candidates to New York City for the final round. When deciding whether to recruit on campus at Penn or bypass the school and face no institutional regulation, guess which option the banks have chosen?

"Having granted themselves free rein, many companies are now acting like monopolistic bullies. They move the recruiting cycles ever earlier in a race to reach job applicants first. (Shout-out to the free market!) They don’t give students time to consider other internships, sometimes requiring job commitments just one or two days after the initial offer. Escudero says she’s had friends who received offers only to be told they had to give their answer on the spot — take it or leave it.
...
"The pressure also produces some peculiar unintended consequences, like the underground course-swap marketplace. Both Losada and Bomba say they have friends who have successfully bought or sold classes. "
************

Here's a related story in the Daily Pennsylvanian:

Ilyse Reisman | Penn students, please don’t sell your classes | Classes should not be treated like stocks

The job market(s) for professional psychologists: history and current issues

Various parts of the psychology job market resolved problems of thickness, congestion and incentives by adopting centralized clearinghouses. For other parts of the job market, those issues persist. Here's a recent article, and some snippets from it regarding this history.

Recruitment and selection in health service psychology postdoctoral training: A review of the history and current issues. 
Bodin, Doug; Schmidt, Joel P.; Lemle, Russell B.; Roper, Brad L.; Goldberg, Robert W.; Hill, Kimberly R.; Perry-Parrish, Carisa; Williams, Sharon E.; Kuemmel, Angela; Siegel, Wayne.
Training and Education in Professional Psychology © 2017 American Psychological Association

2018, Vol. 12, No. 2, 74 – 81

"Pursuing a career in health service psychology involves navigating three broad stages of training: graduate school, doctoral internship, and postdoctoral training. Each stage involves distinct procedures for recruitment and selection. The purpose of this article is to review the history of and current issues involved in the recruitment and selection process for postdoctoral training in health service psychology. In this review, we will discuss the specialty of clinical neuropsychology separately as that specialty has a formal computerized match and therefore faces subsequent challenges that are distinct from, but in some ways mirror, the  faced broadly by health service psychology postdoctoral training programs.
...
"The current computerized matching psychology internship selection process began in 1998–1999, 10 years after an earlier trial, rejection, and reintroduction (Keilin, 2000). Prior to the introduction of computerized matching, the internship selection process relied on the “uniform notification day” (UND) system for more than 25 years. This process of internship offers and acceptances shortened from an initial offer and acceptance period of 9 days to 4 hours (Keilin, 1998). In 1988–1989, there was a trial period to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer-based algorithm match process. Although the outcomes showed a significant improvement over the UND, there was a lack of full participation by internship sites that appeared to have a detrimental impact on the outcomes observed (Keilin, 1998). Recurrent discussion within the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC) reflected gradually shifting approval, from a vote of 55% to 45% to retain the UND in 1990, to 77% approval to move to a computer-based match system by May 1998 for immediate implementation for the 1998–1999 recruitment year.
...
"There were wide-spread reports of both applicants and programs accepting less preferred choices due to the fear of not securing or filling a position within the UND window. APPIC responded by clarifying the rules with a prohibition against sites soliciting rank information (Constantine & Keilin, 1996). APPIC voted to proceed with a computer-based match process in 1998 using a match algorithm similar to the National Residency Match Program (Roth & Peranson, 1999). The computer-match system transcends difficulties on both sides by providing an equitable solution designed to provide the best possible match for all parties involved (Keilin, 1998). This solution reduces the pressure associated with short decision-making times and has the benefit of reducing the gridlock associated with UND (Roth & Xing, 1997).
...
"The computerized match has been used every year since, and it is now widely considered the optimal process for doctoral internship selection.

"The recruitment and selection process at the postdoctoral level remains in an evolutionary stage at the present time. Coordination of the psychology postdoctoral selection market is complicated by the fact that it is actually made up of multiple submarkets. Psychology interns may consider several options for their next professional experience, including an entry-level job, a research fellowship, a general clinical psychology fellowship, or a postdoctoral fellowship in a specialty practice area (e.g., neuropsychology, health psychology, clinical child psychology, or forensic psychology). Several of these submarkets have different timelines. For example, entry-level jobs and research fellowships are dependent on idiosyncratic funding streams and employment needs and, as such, may not realistically be expected to adhere to a coordinated timeline. 
...
"In 2003, there was renewed effort to establish more systemization to protect applicants from being forced into making decisions about early offers that did not reflect their true preferences. 
...
"As part of a 2009 APPIC biennial conference presentation, Lemle proposed a modified selection process with an additional feature intended to make participation more attractive to programs. The additional feature would allow applicants who received an early offer from a nonparticipating site to contact a preferred program to pledge they would accept a “reciprocal offer” should one be extended. A UND with reciprocal offer option (UNDr) assured programs that their top applicants who also wished to come to their site would not be lost to competing offers.
...
" Beginning in Fall, 2016, the APPIC postdoctoral workgroup took strides to address several proximal recommendations borne in the summit. First, the workgroup further refined the Postdoctoral Selection Guidelines (PSG) for positions starting in 2017–2018 as a step toward developing a clear and transparent system that would allow applicants sufficient time to consider offers (applicants were allowed 24 hr to consider offers) and allow programs the time needed to interview applicants. A primary aim of the PSG is to decrease the significant stress on both applicants and training directors. The PSG address multiple stages of the selection process impacting trainees including reasonable interview notification timing, consideration of remote interview formats, postponing offers until the UND, and proper use of the reciprocal offer option (UNDr).
...
"The APPIC postdoctoral workgroup also followed the summit recommendation to spearhead the development of a centralized listing of postdoctoral positions, the Universal Psychology Postdoctoral Directory (UPPD), that is free for both APPIC and non-APPIC member programs. 
...
"Clinical neuropsychology has a distinct history that is informative when considering the issues discussed in this article. Most notably, there is currently a formal computerized match for postdoctoral selection in clinical neuropsychology (Belanger et al., 2013; Bodin, Roper, O’Toole, & Haines, 2016). Prior to 1994, there was no organized process for recruitment and selection in clinical neuropsychology. 
...
"In 2001, APPCN partnered with NMS to conduct a computerized match for postdoctoral selection in clinical neuropsychology that has continued to the present day. The APPCN match employs the same algorithm used for the psychology internship match, but dissimilarities across the two recruiting environments have contributed to differences in the success of the two systems over the years. Since its inception, the internship match has enjoyed virtually universal participation by programs. Importantly, the APPCN match was introduced without a clear understanding of the total universe of positions being offered by neuropsychology postdoctoral programs, and those outside of APPCN were not a part of an organized group interested in centralized recruitment. Years later, Belanger et al. (2013) estimated that roughly two thirds of available positions were offered in the APPCN match. Withdrawal rates for applicants initially registering for the APPCN match have ranged from 26% to 37% over the past 10 years and have been stable from 34 and 36% for the last five years. Although some applicants withdraw for personal reasons, the most common reason has been to accept offers from independent programs prior to the rank-order list (ROL) deadline for the APPCN match.

Uniform notification date for postdoctoral positions in professional psychology

APPIC, the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers, runs a centralized match for (pre-doctoral) internships that uses the Roth-Peranson algorithm, which replaced the prior telephone market, which suffered from congestion.
As their name suggests, they also are involved with postdoctoral positions. The field of clinical neuropsychology also operates a postdoctoral match, but the other postdoctoral areas do not. Recently APPIC has taken steps to try to organize that market in a decentralized way.

In May of 2011 APPIC polled its member postdoctoral programs about whether they would prefer a system that operated with a uniform offer notification date versus a uniform acceptance date. Under a uniform acceptance date, programs could make offers whenever they liked, but all offers would be supposed to remain open until the designated acceptance date. Under the uniform notification date, all offers would be made at the same time, with applicants having a short time to reply.

My understanding is that the organization has decided to go ahead with a uniform notification date, which would however allow programs to make early offers if one of their non-complying competitors makes an early exploding offer to a candidate to whom they are planning to make an offer themselves. Here's an outline of the proposed rules. I worry that some of the same problems that afflicted the old telephone market for internships may quickly resurface...(and that this proposed organization of the market will not work as well as the reorganization of the market for gastroenterologists, which instead of dealing with reciprocal offers by employers, empowered applicants to change their minds on early acceptances...)

Uniform Notification Date with Option for Reciprocal Offer (UNDr)

March 14, 2012

UNDr Procedure

All APPIC non-neuropsychology postdoctoral programs (those that do not offer the specialty of clinical neuropsychology) will make offers to applicants only on the APPIC selected date for offers. Programs may make an exception if an applicant is made another earlier bone fide offer, which must follow the guidelines below. On March 14, 2012,  at Noon EST, the program will call their top candidate. Once an offer is made to an applicant, the applicant may proceed with one of the following actions: accept the offer, decline the offer, or hold the offer for four hours. If the position is held, it is considered to be frozen and cannot be offered to any other candidate during that time period. (At the four hour mark, the candidate must either accept or decline, otherwise the offer is no longer valid). Candidates may not hold more than one offer at a time. Once a candidate accepts an offer they should call the remaining programs that are lower on their  preference list and inform them that they no longer wish to be considered at those facilities. Postdoctoral Training Directors (or their designee) will contact all applicants by phone or e-mail on the day of the UND to inform them of the status of the position. After a site and an applicant come to an agreement, a formal offer letter will be mailed to the applicant who will then formally accept the offer in writing.

Reciprocal Offers Process
Candidates who have been made an offer from a non-APPIC site (whether clinical or research postdoc or job offer) requiring a decision prior to UND date may contact an APPIC site request a reciprocal offer. The candidate would indicate the name of the program making the competing offer and how long they have been allowed to hold their offer. Before making a reciprocal offer to the candidate, the APPIC site should call the candidate's Internship Training Director and verify the offer or ask the applicant for written verification of the competing offer (e.g., a faxed or scanned letter or a forwarded e-mail).

When an APPIC program makes a reciprocal offer, the candidate is expected to accept immediately. The acceptance is binding. If a program declines to make a reciprocal offer, only then is the candidate permitted to contact another site indicating it is (now) their #1 choice.

Application Deadlines
Application deadlines are permitted at any point prior to UND as determined by each program.

Notification of Applicants Who are No Longer Being Considered
APPIC programs should notify applicants at the point that they are out of consideration for the position for which they have applied.

UNDr Posting by APPIC Postdoctoral Members
By September 24, 2011, APPIC postdoctoral programs are expected to update their brochures, website, and directory information to explain their use of the UNDr process.

Programs who Wish to Make Offers after UND
Programs are permitted to make offers after UND if they are uncertain of funding at time of UND.

Clearinghouse
No clearinghouse will be set up during this initial year. Programs that do not fill positions on UND may fill their empty positions on any future date.
 

UNDr Frequently Asked Questions

Does the UNDr process apply to non-APPIC postdoctoral programs?
APPIC is currently marketing this process to non-APPIC postdoctoral programs as a mechanism of providing increased collaboration among all training programs. Many non-APPIC postdoctoral programs previously participated in an informal UND process. These programs in particular have all been contacted personally to request their continued participation as in years past. Any program who would like to participate is most welcome to do so and we strongly encourage every program to follow this procedure. We ask any non-APPIC program who wishes to participate to contact Dr. Lisa Kearney at Lisa.Kearney3@va.gov so that they can be kept informed of any updated processes as they occur.

Does APPIC plan to move forward to a formal match system for postdoctoral programs as it previously did with the internship?
There is no current plan to move forward to a formal match system. However, the APPIC Board will continue to survey members regarding their interest and commitment to a formal match system, and implement as voted on by the membership.

If I do not obtain funding for a new postdoctoral position until AFTER the UNDr date, may I proceed with filling the position after the UNDr date?
Yes! If you receive funding after the UNDr date, you may proceed with recruitment for the fall. This is also the same for new internship programs who receive funding after the Match date.

I have a Neuropsychology Postdoctoral program which does not participate in the formal neuropsychology match system. Must I participate in the UNDr process?
No, Neuropsychology Postdoctoral programs are not included in this process as they already have a process for organizing offers available to them through the APPCN match system.
 

The job market in gastrointestinal endoscopy

After completing a 3 year subspecialty match in gastroenterology, doctors wishing to specialize further can do a fellowship in advanced endoscopy. The American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy is trying to organize that job market, and, at least for this year, they are doing something quite different from a standard medical match. Aside from a system of prescribed dates (First date to offer an interview: 4/1/2011; First date to offer a position 7/15/2011: Fellowship start date: 7/1/2012), the process is described to applicants (in a letter) as follows:

******
"At 12pm EDT on July 15th, all program directors will send out an email to their top
choice. The fellow will then have 1 hour to decide if they wish to take that position or
wait for other offers. Please send a return email confirming that you got the offer.
You may respond at any time during that hour, ideally as soon as you make your
decision. If you do not respond within that hour, the program director may move on to
their second choice, so please respond within the hour.


"One of 2 things will then happen once you respond:


1. If you have chosen the offer, and send an affirmative email, the program
director will then send an email ASAP to all of its other applicants to
alert them that the spot has been filled, so that other applicants will be
aware that that position at that particular institution is no longer
available.


2. If you chose to reject the offer, please alert the program director via email
ASAP, so that the program director can then make an offer to the next
applicant on the list.


"If after the 15th (and the weekend of the 16th-17th) you do not have a position, please
go to the ASGE AEF website, and a list of programs with open positions will be
posted so that you may contact any of them if you like.


"I know that this non-electronic “match” is not ideal, but until we adopt an electronic
match (hopefully next year) we hope this format works without too many glitches."
******


Note that this is a system of "exploding offers", so one can expect some communication between participants before the appointed hour... (See also the discussion of similar problems I anticipate in the proposed new rules for the residency scramble (SOAP)).

Gastroenterology fellowships enjoy a successful match, so it seems reasonable to speculate that the fellowship in advanced endoscopy will turn to one after trying this.

Exploding offers and the market culture of law reviews

Here's an April 19 open letter To the legal community from a number of student-edited law journals.

"In recent years, many law journals have adopted the practice of issuing “exploding offers”—giving scholars only a couple of days, hours, or even minutes to accept an offer of publication. The reasoning behind these offers was simple: we each hoped to secure the best articles for our own journal before others could identify them and make competing offers. But experience has made clear that the costs of this practice—to the quality of our deliberations, to the faculty with whom we work, and, ultimately, to the scholarship we publish—dramatically outweigh the benefits. We therefore commit, effective immediately, to give every author at least seven days to decide whether to accept any offer of publication.

"This decision stems from the recognition that what once seemed an effective strategy for any one of us has in fact had a highly corrosive effect on all of us. Journals have responded to the prospect of exploding offers elsewhere by speeding up their own processes: rapidly winnowing down submissions, quickly holding articles committee votes, and, in the case of many journals, only occasionally consulting scholars in the field regarding an article’s novelty or contribution. This expedited review has inevitably favored established authors, popular topics, and broad claims at the expense of originality and merit. It has led many law journals to establish a twotrack process for article review: a fast track for widely recognized authors, whose submissions are more likely to elicit exploding offers; a slower track for younger authors and authors who teach at lower-ranked institutions. Many deserving pieces in the latter category never get to the front of the line.

"Moreover, expedited review has unduly compelled authors to undertake complicated workarounds and endure strong-arming and stress. Nor have exploding offers accomplished their purpose of improving our standing: for as often as we’ve taken good articles from others, we’ve had good articles taken from us. The dominant experience has merely been an ever-expanding push toward quick review and quick decision.

"Opening a seven-day offer window will substantially eliminate these defects. Student editors, lacking the incentive to expedite selection decisions, will be able to engage more deeply with the articles we review. We will have the time to consult scholars regularly regarding an article’s significance and novelty. As a result, all of us will be able to publish more of the stellar pieces that, under the current system, slip through the cracks.

"No doubt giving up a practice to which we’ve grown accustomed entails some risk. But we are confident that the risks of continuing the present race to the bottom are substantially greater. We invite all other student-edited law journals to join this letter, and we welcome an ongoing discussion with both journals and authors about how best to work together effectively."

HT: Clayton Featherstone, who writes "I wonder who the first defector will be?"

I notice that none of the journals signing the letter have made the more difficult promise not to respond to exploding offers from less prestigious journals. So there will still be incentives for authors to try to move up the prestige ranking of law journals by first soliciting offers from lower ranked journals, and then trying to turn these into hasty acceptances from higher ranked journals.

for more on exploding offers and market culture,
Niederle, Muriel, and Alvin E. Roth, "Market Culture: How Rules Governing Exploding Offers Affect Market Performance," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 1, 2, August 2009, 199-219.

And here are some (law review) articles on exploding offers in the market for law clerks:

Avery, Christopher, Christine Jolls, Richard A. Posner, and Alvin E. Roth, "The Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks" University of Chicago Law Review, 68, 3, Summer, 2001, 793-902.(online at SSRN)

Avery, Christopher, Jolls, Christine, Posner, Richard A. and Roth, Alvin E., "The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks" . University of Chicago Law Review, 74, Spring 2007, 447-486.

Report from the front on the war for talent

From a recent NY Times article on recruiting in Silicon Valley:

"Two executives at a small start-up who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it recently lost an intern when one of the biggest start-ups offered the candidate a 40 percent bump in stock options, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — but only if the candidate accepted the job before hanging up the phone.

“The atmosphere is brutally competitive,” said Keith Rabois, a Silicon Valley veteran and chief operating officer at Square, where Mr. Firestone works. “Recruiting in Silicon Valley is more competitive and intense and furious than college football recruiting of high school athletes.”
...
"Tech recruiters have also expanded their searches. They still scout college campuses, particularly Stanford’s computer science department, where this year it was common for seniors to receive half a dozen offers by the end of first semester. But since college degrees are not mandatory, recruiters are also going to computer coding competitions and parties, in search of talent that is reminiscent of the dot-com mania."

Does anyone know some talented high school PHP, Ruby and Python programmers? (Or maybe they are already teaching those things in kindergarten?)

THE LAW CLERK HIRING PLAN FOR 2010

Here it is, with today (Sept 7, 2010), being the "First date when applications may be received" for federal judicial clerkships.

Similarly, the "First date and time when judges may contact applicants to schedule interviews" is 10:00 a.m. (EDT), Monday, September 13, 2010, and the
"First date and time when interviews may be held and offers made" is 8:00 a.m. (EDT) Thursday, September 16, 2010.

When we last surveyed the market, there was a lot of cheating in connection with these dates, see
Avery, Christopher, Jolls, Christine, Posner, Richard A. and Roth, Alvin E., "The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks" . University of Chicago Law Review, 74, Spring 2007, 447-486.


That doesn't mean that the new "system" might not be an improvement on the old unravelling/exploding offer regimes of previous years, see
Avery, Christopher, Christine Jolls, Richard A. Posner, and Alvin E. Roth, "The Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks" University of Chicago Law Review, 68, 3, Summer, 2001, 793-902.
But it will be interesting to see if the level of "non-compliance" will hold steady, or if it will increase until unraveling resumes.

Note that I am not counting exploding offers as non-compliance; they are explicitly allowed, as long as they aren't made before 10am on Sept. 13. The plan states
"Offers may be made as soon as interviews are permitted under the Plan. Generally, it is for the judge to determine the terms upon which an offer is extended. However, judges are encouraged not to require an applicant to accept an offer immediately without reasonable time to weigh it against other viable options that remain open to the applicant. This would not prohibit an applicant from accepting an offer on the spot.


"When setting up an interview with a clerkship applicant, a judge should make clear to the applicant his or her interview and offer policies or practices. For example, a judge may have a policy or practice of making offers and entirely filling his or her clerkship slots, even if more interviews are scheduled for that day. The applicant should be told this in a timely fashion, so that the applicant's decision to accept or decline the interview is appropriately informed. Applicants should also be informed if the judge will ask them to make a decision on the spot.

The market for fireworks, July 4th 2010

“Happy Fourth of July—made in China.”
"“there are virtually no fireworks being manufactured in the U.S.,” says John Rogers, who travels to China three to four times a year with the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, a Bethesda, Md.–based nonprofit focused on consumer safety. Rogers says 90 percent of the world’s fireworks originate in China"
...
"As for the other 10 percent, James Widmann, president of Connecticut Pyrotechnic Manufacturing, says some originate in India, Spain and other parts of Europe. Mexico, he says, could eventually become a major supplier to the U.S. because of its ability to send fireworks here by truck rather than shipping them overseas—a process fraught with obstacles. “Most shipping companies don’t want to risk sacrificing 99 percent of their cargo” for the sake of the “1 percent that can blow it all up”

Law clerks at the Supreme Court

Some guest Volokh Conspirators have an interesting post on the history of law clerks at the Supreme Court: Disenclerking the Supreme Court.

"During this period [1940's], some Justices seem to have forged closer bonds with their clerks than with their colleagues on the Court. A Frankfurter comment is noteworthy in this regard: “They are, as it were, my junior partners—junior only in years. In the realm of the mind there is no hierarchy. I take them fully into my confidence so that the relation is free and easy.” Law clerks made perfect colleagues, it seems, or at least better colleagues than the other Justices.
In the 1960s, Associate Justices still had only two clerks each, but a rising flood of petitions and appeals soon led most Justices to hire a third. In 1972, Justice Powell requested an additional clerk, pleading his own lack of background in criminal and constitutional law. Soon, they were all entitled to have four clerks.
The importance of the clerks over the past few decades is highlighted by J. Harvie Wilkinson’s comment that “Justice Powell often said that the selection of his clerks was among the most important decisions he made during a term.” It is nowadays taken for granted that clerks play a large role in the opinion-writing process. One Justice reportedly told a clerk who asked for elaborate guidance in drafting an opinion, “If I had wanted someone to write down my thoughts, I would have hired a scrivener.”


They cite their sources: "...we rely heavily on Todd C. Peppers, Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Clerks (2006), and Artemus Ward & David Weiden, Sorcerers’ Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the Unite States Supreme Court (2006)."


Here are some papers on the market for law clerks, which is one of the best places to observe exploding offers.

In this recession year, there are unusually many applicants for appellate clerkships, and the ABA Journal reports Deluged with Clerkship Apps, Some Federal Judges Don’t Look at All of Them
" Although the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review allows judges to sort applications by characteristics such as law school and law journal experience, a number of judges prefer to look only at applications from individuals who come recommended by others they know or review mailed applications only..."
"Slightly more than 400,000 applications were made for 1,244 clerkships, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. However, many applicants submitted dozens of applications."