Law Clerk Addict's Blog
In all, there are 289 3Ls clerking, comprising about 56% of all clerks. About 35% of clerks are graduates, totaling 181 clerks. "Unknown" (47) comprises the remainder.
Two qualifications of this data.
First, "early" means pre-plan. Now, it's not technically "early" to hire graduates pre-plan, but it's a way of distinguishing when judges move and how quickly.
Second, a listing as "not early" may actually mean early. If a judge hires a clerk on August 1, but it is reported on this site on October 1, then it is recorded as "not early," even though it was an early hire. Note, however, that the converse cannot be true, which means that the "early" hiring statistics are a guaranteed minimum.
Here's a visual representation of the percentage of clerks from the Top 31 law schools. (I apologize for the abbreviations; however, they should be sufficiently readable.) Blue means the clerk will graduate in 2009; red means the clerk was a graduate with prior work experience; pale yellow means the clerk's graduate status is unknown.
Someone alerted me that at least one school's "class size" used for percentages is incorrect. I checked, and sure enough, a number of schools' denominators (i.e., class size) were incorrect. I'm in the process of updating them. My method takes the ABA 2008 report of matriculation, then subtracting transfers out and adding transfers in. While it isn't the precise Class of 2009 calculation, it approximates the class size post-transfers. I hope to finish that shortly.
I've created three lists out of whole cloth. The first are the dozen most prestigious judges, by my own estimation and a variety of factors (exclusivity, productivity, feedability, etc.).
The second and third lists are a bit more unique. They focus on the most ten prestigious appointees of the last two presidents, Bush and Clinton. These are generally younger judges who show signs of the factors of the most prestigious judges (or are on that list), have been mentioned as possible McCain or Obama Supreme Court nominees, and are the most "coveted" if you seek a "younger" judge (although not all are necessarily relatively "young," but might be, e.g., one who can serve as a mentor longer, one who still has significant connections in their prior field of work, etc.).
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.