Saturday, September 5, 2009

Law schools and judicial clerkships

This handy chart from the always questionable US News shows the rankings for law schools placing students in judicial clerkships after they graduate. My law school is doing a poor job, placing less than 10% of students. Meanwhile, the University of North Dakota is kicking ass, placing right behind Yale with 28% of students in clerkships. Wow!

I wonder what they are doing that my school isn't? Oh yeah, probably providing decent mentorship of students, and assisting them beyond a one-hour "hey, clerkships are good, try and get one" class.

The interesting part of this is that my career services counselor said that only the top 10% or so of our students could get these positions. Yet, 28% of those at UND are doing it. And of those people, that can't be the top 28% of the class. (Some of those grads have to be taking jobs in law firms or public interest orgs) Therefore, it seems that, yet again, the view of our career counselors is skewed by their own experiences, rather than what actually happens.

3 comments:

KathleenKMM said...

I think part of North Dakota's success is that they're the only law school in the state and most of the judges there went there, plus almost all the graduates stay there, so it's kind of normal that they get that many clerkships.

Sarah Lee said...

I hope you saw that there was a mishap in the rankings. North Dakota does not place that many people, there were just numbers errors. Good ol, reliable rankings.

HippieLawyer said...

I just saw that. Interesting though that so many other schools not ranked in the top 20 are kicking butt at clerkships!