Careers
More Fed’l Judges Seek Law Clerks With Practice Experience
Posted Sep 11, 2008, 11:49 am CST
By Martha Neil
Traditionally, federal judges have hired law clerks straight out of law school or sometimes, in the case of appeals court judges, after they have completed a clerkship in a lower court.
But now many are seeking law clerks with actual experience practicing law, often looking to big firms for prospects, reports the Philadelphia Business Journal. "Increasingly, young lawyers are putting their path to partner on hold to clerk for a year for an appellate of federal trial judge."
Law schools at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania are among those seeing this trend: For 2009 clerkships, 28 percent of applicants are alumni at Temple, and 35 to 40 percent are alumni at Penn. Last year, only 13 percent of Temple's applicants were alumni, and the situation at Penn also reportedly represents a major increase from prior years.
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Posted by Marilyn - 2 months, 1 week, 4 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes ago
Ironically, in spite of the demand for law clerks with a few years’ experience, in the fall of 2007 the federal judiciary curtailed hiring of “career law clerks” (the title conferred upon a clerk with several years’ experience) as a means of cost containment. Judges were generally limited to one career law clerk per chamber and the committee imposed a 3-year limit on “term clerks,“ i.e., typically the clerks who come straight out of law school.