This year’s volatile legal job market resulted in a windfall for courts throughout the country, as a greater number of alumni applicants sought judicial clerkships.
“We’ve been reaching out to assist alumni interested in clerking for the past few years; however, this year we saw more applicants,” says Ilene Strauss, executive director of academic advising and judicial programming. “For some alumni applicants, securing a judicial clerkship in the coming term fulfills a desire held since they were students. For others, the idea of clerking to broaden their experience and gain valuable insight into the judicial process has new appeal. To their benefit, clerks with practice experience are being selected by judges in increasing numbers.”
Alumni applicants may have another advantage over student competitors. Student applicants are bound by the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, which stipulates that students may only submit clerkship applications to federal courts on a specified day in early September. As a result, student clerkship applications arrive at judges’ chambers en masse each fall. Alumni applicants, on the other hand, are free to submit their applications at any point during the year.
The Columbia Law School Clerkship Program consistently places students and alumni in a variety of federal and state court clerkships nationally, from the 9th Circuit to the 2nd, from the Northern District of California to the Southern District of Florida. This year was no exception, as both students and alumni secured highly competitive placements with judges at the 2nd Circuit, the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, the 10th Circuit, the Eastern District of Louisiana, and the Eastern District of Virginia, among others.
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, criminal, and environmental law.
For more on alumni events and news, visit the Alumni Relations website. For more on Columbia Law School in the news, visit our homepage.
