<p>Simple question: what law schools focus on aspects of law suitable for and achieve the highest placements in academic positions and judicial clerkships? I know Yale and Chicago are serious players; are there others?</p>
<p>Perhaps surprisingly, Washington and Lee Law School does well in such placement. I know a former Supreme Court clerk who is an alumnus. Other grads go to various courts as clerks. And W&L's professors are well published and highly regarded in their specialties; the late Roger Groot in Criminal Law and Rick Kirgis in Conflict of Laws/ International Law.</p>
<p>Very true for clerkships.</p>
<p>If you want to be a professor, HYS are your best bets. </p>
<p>Pick up a copy of US News, grad school edition. In the back, they will tell you the percentage of grads who go on to do judicial clerkships. Wake Forest and W&L are in the 25-30% range. Northwestern is somewhere around 15%. </p>
<p>If you want to clerk, you should be on Law Review. Look at how each school determines how students get on (grades only, writing + grades, or if you can write on no matter what your grades are like). Also, figure out how many students are on the Law Review and how many are in the class - i.e. do 10% of the students get on or do 20% of the students get on?</p>
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<p>All clerkships are not created equal, and I'll eat my hat if 25% of Wake or W&L grads get federal clerkships (or state supreme court clerkships). I'd bet good money that Northwestern puts a higher percentage of its class in good clerkships than does Wake.</p>
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<p>If you want to clerk, you should be on Law Review. </p>
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<p>Unless you go to Harvard or Yale (and possibly Stanford and Chicago), where you can get a good federal district clerkship without law review.</p>
<p>Hanna, would you like salt and pepper with that hat?</p>
<p>Remember that W&L is a relatively small law school, and the fact that such a fine institution has a significant ratio of judicial clerks among its students and alumni is not that surprising. Moreover, W&L has a surpringly broad placement of judges among its alumni, not even to speak of courts in the state of Virginia.</p>
<p>It would be beyond surprising if W&L or Wake placed more federal and state-supreme-court clerks than Chicago or Columbia. It would be wrong. W&L itself claims that the rate is 20%, and they include all state court judges AND agency ALJ's in that figure:</p>
<p>Looking at the 2006 clerks, 13 grads have state-supreme-court or federal clerkships (including 2 federal clerkships with non-Article-III courts) for a rate of about 10%. So there won't be any hat-eating on this point.</p>
<p>I'm with Hanna. It's cute when people defend lesser schools, and there's nothing wrong with W&L or any other smaller or less prestigious law school, but schools like Yale or Columbia definitely have better . . . everything.</p>
<p>Depends on how you read the question.</p>
<p>The question asked was what schools are really good for clerking. If you can't get into Harvard, Yale, Chicago, or a top 10, then why not choose W&L over a similarly-ranked school that doesn't place nearly that percentage into clerkships? </p>
<p>While I fully agree that not all clerkships are created equal, the fact that a school ranked between 20 and 25 can put 10% of its grads into the most coveted of clerkships - federal or state supreme court - is pretty great. Those are numbers that you would see out of the bottom part of the T14 and might even beat out some of those schools. </p>
<p>I'm quoting 2003 data on the 30ish% - I do remember seeing those figures from back when I applied to law schools from US News. The numbers were a lot more precise than "about 20%." Both Wake and W&L had unusually high numbers. </p>
<p><a href="http://law.wlu.edu/career/Classof2003JudicialClerks.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://law.wlu.edu/career/Classof2003JudicialClerks.pdf</a>
I counted 16 federal district or circuit court judges or state supreme court judges there, plus a lot more state circuit courts. Roughly 15% of the class - which is just something that you don't see outside of HYS CCN very often.</p>
<p>Choosing W&L over similarly ranked schools on this basis? I might agree that makes sense. Over Northwestern? No way. That's the implication I got from post #3.</p>
<p>Hanna,</p>
<p>Sorry for the confusion. What I was trying (badly!) to communicate is that, if you want to be a professor, you should go to the best school possible - in fact, if you don't go to a top 5, many schools won't hire you. Straight-up rank/prestige for that one.</p>
<p>The situation for judicial clerks is a bit different. Obviously, if you look at the W&L stats, there is a very healthy number of students who take federal clerkships or state supreme court clerkships. Obviously, the numbers aren't those of Harvard. I know very little about west coast law schools, but I imagine you would be better off at W&L for a clerkship than at, say, USC or UCLA. Unlike with professorships, the clerkship opportunities are a little less tied (although still very strongly tied) to prestige. There are a few schools that do better than you would expect, based on their ranking. </p>
<p>As for Northwestern... if someone knows the breakdown of those 15% of students are, it would be nice to know - but notice that, even if those are all federal/state supreme, they tie. (Not an unlikely situation, though, and the clerkships are probably in more "desirable" areas.)</p>
<p>Of course, it's not like anyone goes to law school for three years, clerks for one or two, and then never has a job afterwards. Which is what we can really agree on - that you should ensure that your law school will be good for you, years down the line.</p>
<p>I see.</p>
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<p>if someone knows the breakdown of those 15% of students are, it would be nice to know</p>
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<p>There's an Excel breakdown on their website. Yes, most of the Article III clerkships for the NU class of 2006 are sought-after spots; multiple kids were placed in the 9th and 7th circuits (including one with Posner), big city district courts, and Alaska courts (which hire tons of kids from Harvard and Yale). The fact that virtually every clerkship on the list is a highly desirable one does suggest to me that W&L is being very aggressive about encouraging kids to clerk, period, and that Northwestern isn't pushing people to do it unless they can get a competitive one. That's an interesting cultural contrast, and it's a plus for W&L if you want to clerk for the experience. If you want to clerk for the resume boost or for academia, then the additional clerkships W&L kids enter aren't going to help much. Definitely something more to think about when you're picking a school.</p>
<p>Random question... but why are the Alaska clerkships so highly sought-after?</p>
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As for Northwestern... if someone knows the breakdown of those 15% of students are, it would be nice to know - but notice that, even if those are all federal/state supreme, they tie.
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<p>Don't know anything about law. But it seems to me you are comparing wrong numbers. If all of those 15% are all federal/state supreme, that means placement rate of 100% for Northwestern. You ignore the other 85% who aren't even interested in clerking. As for W&L, if 25% are clerking but only 15% get federal/state supreme, that translates to placement rate of 15/25 = 60%.</p>
<p>Um, yes and no. It's not like you apply all at the same time to federal and state.</p>
<p>I know people who just don't have the grades for federal clerkships but want to clerk anyway. For them, state circuit courts are a smart move. There are also people who want federal clerkships for something like tax or bankruptcy. Again, they would not have federal district or circuit court clerkships, but are doing something that they want to do.</p>
<p>If you are in the bottom 10% of your class at Northwestern, you aren't getting a federal district/circuit court clerkship. Ditto W&L. Ditto nearly any school save Yale. I personally think that the disparity is in the students that each school attracts. NW is known for being a very business-oriented school. They take pride in teh fact that nearly every student has spent a year before law school working. W&L is almost the opposite - very focused on providing a "liberal arts" legal education with heavy writing opportunities. Guess which students are going to clerk for whatever clerkship they can get?</p>
<p>Some judges have cut-offs in grades for clerkships - such as only the top 20%. Clearly, if more than 20% of your class clerks, some of them don't make the grade cut-off.</p>
<p>That's a long, long way of saying that your "placement rate" is a really, really irrelevant statistic.</p>