Law Clerk Addict's Blog
I apologize for all the spam that has accumulated. I have neither the administrative permission nor the technical ability to improve the site's spam filtering software. So I am manually removing all of the spam comments. This will take me a while. I spent the morning removing the spam from the appellate court listings (the spammers took a particular liking to the 8th Circuit). I'll start working on the district court listings next; that will probably take longer.
Sorry for the prolonged absence. Life and work got in the way (as did losing my login password). I'd like to update the site, but I have limited administrative capabilities (I'm not sure whether I can add new judges). So please bear with me - I am doing this as a volunteer and my day job continues to be quite busy. I hope to begin updating this week. Feel free to send any tips to clerking.info.guy@gmail.com.
Many clerkships will be ending in the next few months. I thought it would be helpful to start an open thread about the job market for lawyers after their clerkships. I'd imagine that it isn't as strong as it was in 2007, but has clerk hiring picked up from this time last year? Are many firms or government agencies recruiting clerks specifically? Have your judges been helpful in finding you jobs? Any tips for people looking for post-clerkship jobs?
Thanks for e-mailing hiring me with hiring news. I've been attempting to add all the new tips, and I'm slowly going through the comments from the past six months to add that news as well. Please e-mail me with any hiring news at clerking.info.guy@gmail.com.
I'm slowly but surely going through the comments of the past six months and updating the site. Unfortunately, there are more than 100 courts and just one of me. If you see gaps in the 2011-12 or 2010-11 clerkship listings, feel free to post a new comment in the thread or e-mail me at clerking.info.guy@gmail.com. My primary goal is to update information for the 2011-12 hiring season, since there will be a lot of activity in the next few months, and I want to provide updated and accurate information for clerkship seekers. Also feel free to suggest blog posts the could contain helpful information about clerkship searches.
Greetings. I'm Clerking Info Guy, and I'll be updating Law Clerk Addict for the 2011-12 hiring season. Please send me any tips about recent hires. My e-mail address is clerking.info.guy@gmail.com. I'll also attempt to blog somewhat regularly with clerkship news and tips.
I'm going to be updating the new hire listings over the next week or two, and I will attempt to include any information that has been posted in the comments over the past few months. I'll also add newly confirmed judges. Please let me know if any information is missing or incorrect. And good luck on your clerkship searches!
After a longer than expected delay, we hope to get the 2011-12 cycle upgrades up and running in the near future.
Some of you may have noticed that certain comments on the judge and court comment pages were being posted multiple times. This bug was caused by one of the changes from the updates the other day and has been fixed.
As promised, the pages for appellate judges have been drastically redesigned. For an example, check out our page for Alex Kozinski.
Below is a summary of what changed:
As mentioned earlier this month and again in the comments to Friday's post, Law Clerk Addict will be getting an update for the 2011-12 cycle, which will likely launch within the next month or two. Things are still fluid and subject to change, but here is what we're considering, in descinding likelihood:
It looks like we have finally managed to code a spam filter that automatically eliminates virtually all spam before with little or no inconvenience to users. To make sure your comment isn't caught in our filter, don't try to link to another website through HTML or other means (the filter is a tad more sophisticated than that, but since virtually no legitimate user has posted links in a comment this cycle we recommend that users err on the side of caution).
Well, as most of you know, this is a very big week in the hiring season: 3Ls can finally apply for 2010-11 clerkships beginning tomorrow morning, and on Friday judges will be able to contact those 3Ls to set up interviews. Here is what you can expect on Law Clerk Addict in the near future:
* Because of the sheer volume of expected activity this week and next, expect updates to be relatively sporadic. As promised, the 2010-11 early hiring list will become semi-retired, though some updates will still be made. The best source of breaking news will likely be the individual court pages, which you can access through both the left and right sidebars.
* Although early hiring for 2010-11 is officially over, early hiring has now begun for 2011-12. If last year is any indication, some judges who are interviewing for 2010-11 may extend offers for 2011-12 as well. Accordingly, the 2011-12 early hiring list has now launched, and will be updated until next Labor Day. So, if you are aware of a judge interviewing or otherwise extending offers for 2011-12, please email us or let us know on the court pages.
* While this site launched relatively late this year, we intend to operate year-round. At some point after the 2010-11 season grinds to a halt--probably sometime in October, November, or December--the site will update cycles and primarily cover 2011-12 hiring. We are still not sure about the logistics of this, but it will likely involve resetting the comments and color codes (but all 2010-11 content will be archived and continue to be accessible). More details about this will be posted as the time draws nearer.
In order to try to reduce the amount of spam attacks, the Supreme Court and Court of Federal Claims pages, which have been the subject of daily automated spam attacks for the past couple of months, have had their URLs slightly changed.
UPDATE #1: It seems this might have done the trick for the SCOTUS spam, but not for Federal Claims. But don't worry, we have another idea to stop the Federal Claims spam that we'll try out in a bit.
UPDATE #2: It looks like the second idea worked and the spam runs have stopped (for now at least).
NOTE: This was originally posted on April 27, 2009 but has been bumped to the main page to inform new readers that this site is still looking for bloggers.
As explained in this morning's post, the Law Clerk Addict has moved beyond his initial mission of providing federal appellate clerkship stats. As part of this expanded mission, I hope to eventually transition the LCA blog into a group blog. A small number of these new bloggers will start posting relatively soon, but I hope to hear from others who would like to help contribute to this site.
If you think you might have an interest in blogging here, please email lawfirmaddict@gmail.com with some information about yourself or your interests. Of course suggestions and comments are always welcome!
Obviously, spam has become a major problem on Law Clerk Addict. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working hard to fix the situation. We likely will not be able to address the problem for a week or two but, in the mean time, we will work hard to keep the site as spam free as possible.
Thank you for understanding.
By request, the most recently commented courts sidebar and section, as well as its accompanying RSS feed, now list the total number of posts/comments for that particular court.
UPDATE: The court links in the right sidebar have been changed to jump to the most recent comment instead of the top of the comments section. If you don't like this change please post in the comments to this blog post.
Thanks to an extremely generous tipster, Law Clerk Addict now has complete term law clerk information for the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
* To reduce clutter and confusion, career clerks have been removed from the demographics listings on court pages, but remain on individual judge pages.
* Judge links on court pages are now color coded based on how far along they are in the 2010-11 hiring process. Judges who are interviewing are listed in green, those who have hired are purple, those who are done are in red, those who are not hiring are in gray, and those who have not done anything or whose status is unknown are in blue.
These changes were based on user suggestions, but we understand that users who comment might not always be representative of users in general. So, if you dislike the changes, please let us know and if there is enough demand we will change things back to how they were before (or try something different).
* Should career clerks be removed from the demographics listings on the court pages (but still appear on individual judge listings)?
* Should bankruptcy courts receive their own section and court pages, or should bankruptcy judges be listed on district court pages (like magistrate judges)?
Please post your thoughts in the comments or send an email to lawfirmaddict@gmail.com.
By popular demand, we have added a chart keeping track of federal judges who hire law students before Labor Day. Unlike the early hiring list, this list 1) is limited to interviews and offers extended to law student applicants and 2) judges are listed regardless of cycle, whereas the early hiring list only lists activity from the current cycle. As usual, please send any additional tips or corrections to lawfirmaddict@gmail.com.
Unfortunately it appears that the comment spam bot has made a return visit. Although the spam is a lot less excessive than last time, it is still annoying. While not ideal, we are working on installing a CAPTCHA system to try to keep the bots out.
It's been a few weeks since we have updated our district court clerk database, but we've made up for it with a pretty big update. District court clerk data for courts in Illinois through Michigan have been uploaded. As usual, if you have any additional information that can fill in the gaps in LCA's data please post a comment or email Law Clerk Addict at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com.
We have received a very small number of emails about individuals trying to post comments on court pages but not being able to for unknown reasons. If you have experienced this bug please send an email to lawfirmaddict@gmail.com or clurker.lca@gmail.com so that we can try to figure out what went wrong and replicate the bug on our end so we can fix it. If you have never been able to post on a court comments section because of this bug we are particularly interested in hearing from you.
Although to date we've managed to filter out 99% of the comment spam, it seems one spam bot has found a way around it and been extensively targeting the D.C. Circuit comment page today. While we are working on updating our code to keep this bot out, and have manually deleted the spam that has already been posted, it is likely that the bot will come back for another spam run before the code is changed, so please bear with us for the time being.
UPDATE: Well, that was fast. Four minutes after posting this, it seems that the problem has been fixed, at least for the time being.
Ever since I started my first law clerk blog, I have made it a priority to gather the most comprehensive statistics on federal law clerk placement possible. Now, with the benefits of this new website, it will be easier than ever to bring you the latest aggregate data, updated in real time through the new data section!
The data section of the website is still heavily under construction, so expect new rankings and other statistics to be added semi-regularly over the next few months. In the meantime, you can check out the following statistics:
* Supreme Court Feeder Judges
* J.D. Institutions of Supreme Court Law Clerks
* Where Judges Went to Law School
As usual, please email me at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com or post a comment if you have any suggestions for new features.
District court clerk data for courts in Florida through Idaho have been uploaded. Again, if you have any additional information that can fill in the gaps in LCA's data please post a comment or email Law Clerk Addict at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com.
One of the most popular requests so far has been for an RSS feed for the new blog. Well, not only have we added an RSS feed for the blog posts, but we have done one better and also made an RSS feed for the court discussions. Links to the RSS feeds are available on the sidebar. If there is interest, more RSS feeds could be added in the future.
None of us has coded an RSS feed before, so if there are any bugs, please let me know.
On court pages you can now designate your comment as pertaining to a speific judge. Likewise, if you post a comment on a judge page, your comment will be mirrored on the judge's corresponding court page, and the court page will identify the judge your comment is about even if you forget to mention his or her name in your post.
To see how this looks in practice, check out the comments section on the Third Circuit page.
District court clerk data for courts in California through the District of Columbia have been uploaded. As usual, there are still lots of gaps, so if you have any information please post a comment or email Law Clerk Addict at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com.
District court clerk data (well, what we have) has been uploaded for the Court of Federal Claims and the Tax Court. We uploaded Court of International Trade data a few weeks ago, so with this update all of the miscellaneous trial courts are covered (though as you can see, there are still significant gaps, so please keep those emails and comments coming!).
Because I have received a lot of emails asking for more detailed law clerk demographics--particularly, whether the clerks listed are term, or career clerks, and whether they were hired as law students or alumni--the judge pages have been redesigned to provide all of this information. For example, check out the profile pages for Judge Charles Smith (N.D. Ala.) and Judge Sonia Sotomayor (2d Cir.).
The law clerk demographics tables for the full court remain unchanged.
By popular demand, the main page now contains a sidebar that lists the ten most recently-discussed courts. This should make it a bit easier to tell if a new comment has been posted on a particular court's page. I hope to add other features to make the court discussion pages easier to follow once user registration is enabled.
UPDATE: You can view all courts by date of last user comment by clicking here.
I made a similar point in a comment earlier today, but it's worth repeating on the main page, particularly given the large number of new visitors this week:
All district court clerk data we have has been uploaded for courts in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas, with partial data added for Maryland. The bulk of of this data (except Maryland) reflects career clerks. As always, please email us your tips to lawfirmaddict@gmail.com or post the information in the comments to this post or on the individual court pages.
The new appellate judge and court layout that Law Clerk Addict adopted last month has been implemented for district courts and judges as well. The promised district court clerk data dump will also follow sometime in the near future, though given the sheer number of judges it will likely take a while to be completed.
The following judges currently have five or more clerks listed for a particular term in the Law Clerk Addict database:
Fortunato Benavides (5th Cir.)
Absent some unusual circumstances, like Judge Gerald Tjoflat (11th Cir.), who gets to hire a fifth elbow clerk through staff attorney appropriations, a judge should not have more than four clerks for a given term. Accordingly, it is almost certain that Law Clerk Addict's listings for the above judges have at least one error (most likely a hire being reported for the wrong term). If anyone with insider knowledge can provide corrected information for any of these judges (or confirm that they actually will have five clerks for the listed terms) please email Law Clerk Addict at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com or post a comment.
Although the feedback on the new Law Clerk Addict website has been overwhelmingly positive, we encountered a very negative comment about it on the old blog. It goes without saying that no design is ever going to make everyone happy, but we intend to try to address these concerns--significantly, having the charts distinguish between 3Ls and Alumni is something that was already in the works. However this redesign is an ongoing process, so if there is something missing or if parts of the site are hard to navigate please post a comment about it or send an email to lawfirmaddict@gmail.com about it.
A large number of court and judge pages were updated today to reflect several judges who have assumed senior status over the past few weeks, including Judge Robert Gettleman (N.D. Ill.), who assumed senior status today. Note that as a matter of policy we will only update senior status after it has been formally assumed, so judges who have announced an intent to assume senior status in the future, like Judges Guido Calabresi (2d Cir.) (July 21, 2009) and Rhesa Barksdale (5th Cir.) (August 8, 2009), will not be updated until those dates have passed.
Two new features have been added to the site this afternoon:
* On the main page you can now do a quick jump to a specific court's page through a pull down menu on the left (provided you know the court's abbreviation!).
* You can now filter blog posts by a specific court through the new pull-down menus located on the blog section's sidebar.
I have input updated law clerk demographic data for every circuit court and several district courts, including (by popular demand) the Southern District of New York.
As always, if my data is incorrect, or (better yet) you would like to share new information that I missed, please email me at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com or post a comment on this blog post or with the respective court!
In conjunction with 4lawschool, AutoAdmit, and Law School Numbers, I'm pleased to roll out the brand new home for the Law Clerk Addict.
http://www.lawclerkaddict.com
What you'll find:
-Blog entries for LCA
-Mirror site for AutoAdmit clerk-related threads
-Notifications of recently-posted information on judges contacting or extending offers to applicants
-Full database of federal court of appeals judges, and expanded database of federal district court judges
-Law school demographics, archived annually, of the judges' clerks
-Career history, profile information, and anonymous commentary for each judge
-And more to come in the future!
Please, please, please visit, and help make the 2010-2011 clerkship season a rousing success for LCA!
I'm very happy to take any suggestions, comments, concerns, or thoughts you may have on the site.
Thank you!
Because of the format switch from Blogspot to this website, I have to manually re-input all the old blog posts from the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Law Clerk Addict blogs. Because of the sheer number of posts that have accumulated over the past three years, not all of my prior content has been imported yet. However, with any luck all of these old posts will be brought over to lawclerkaddict.com within the end of the month. In the meantime, you can visit the old blogs to access prior years' data.
As you can see, the Law Clerk Addict website has undergone some big changes. More details will be provided in a few days.
I've only included clerks hired this year. A two-year clerk in the second year of a clerkship for 2009-2010, for instance, would not be included [but a clerk working a second year would be bracketed]. A career clerk would not be listed.
Feel free to post anonymously. It's not the most readable format, but if you search using Ctrl+F, it makes it extremely easy to find the information you want, all on one page. It's also easy for me to edit, and I don't have to host a Web page.
Law Clerk Addict 2009 is now operating! Hard to believe that the hiring season has begun, but several judges hire two years in advance instead of just one year, and several others have begun searching this spring. Feel free to post any information you have (anonymously, of course) for the 2009-2010 clerkship year over there.
I've only included clerks hired this year. A two-year clerk in the second year of a clerkship for 2008-2009, for instance, would not be included [but a clerk working a second year would be bracketed]. Feel free to post anonymously. It's not the most readable format, but if you search using Ctrl+F, it makes it extremely easy to find the information you want, all on one page. It's also easy for me to edit, and I don't have to host a Web page.
Given the recent flurry of visitors, I want to restate a comment I made on the 2008 blog.
Do not tell me that I'm missing information or about how inaccurate my information is. If it's inaccurate and you can correct the errata, then tell me what to correct and I'll do so. If it's inaccurate but you have no factual information that can remedy the errata, save some anecdotal evidence of "at least a dozen" people who're clerking, or that "I can think of at least three that aren't listed," but you fail to name who they're clerking for, I'll ignore your comments. It's utterly unproductive. You must name the judge that a clerk from a given school is working for. I will not include generic tallies of reported clerks from a given school.
Check out http://lawclerkaddict2008.blogspot.com for this year's clerkship data.
Due to slow reporting, my own hectic schedule, and the inability to find a new primary source to aggregate information after the recent problems with AutoAdmit, updates will be rare. I'm putting the 2007 Summer Associate class statistics on hold until AutoAdmit cleans up its act, I find another source of information, or I find the time to contact recruiters directly. This page will be occasionally updated; see the comments if you'd like the uncollected data.
I wondered where the surge in posts came from, and I attribute it solely to the judicial diva (divo?) at Above the Law. A few comments.
First, this format is meant to be easy for me to do. Sorry, it's low-tech, but that's what you'll get from me. If you're capable of pressing Ctrl+F, you should find everything you need rather quickly and easily.
Comment: "How in the WORLD did you manage to get all of this inside information?!"
Answer: I've just been compiling it from this blog and comments posted, and from the Clerkship Notification Blog and comments posted there. That's it. Feel free to continue to share--many appreciate it.
Inactive judges and judges who did not hire any clerks this term (generally those with only career clerks) are so noted. A clerk serving a second or subsequent year in 2007-2008 is marked with [brackets].
I've only included clerks hired this year. A two-year clerk in the second year of a clerkship for 2007-2008, for instance, would not be included. I've been keeping some track of whether it's 3Ls or graduates, and I'll update that once we get some more data. Feel free to post anonymously. I'll add all the senior judges, and mark them as such, after I get more comfortable with the data and start getting wider results reported. Right now, I have absolutely zero data from any senior judge. Finally, I took most of my information from the Clerkship Notification Blog, linked in the sidebar, and for that I am truly grateful.