Serving as a law clerk for a judge is an enriching experience for newly minted lawyers. I know a number of attorneys, young and old alike, who look back on their time clerking fondly and consider it one of the best experiences — if not the best experience — of their legal career.

Having served as a law clerk for North Carolina judges for two years after finishing law school,
I hope that with this post I can provide some insight about positioning yourself to serve as an invaluable cog in the machine that is a judge’s chambers.

Why Clerk?

Whenever I speak with a law student or prospective law student, I always recommend that they consider clerking, and there are countless reasons why. It gives you the opportunity to engage in valuable public service and develop lasting personal and professional relationships with judges, fellow law clerks, and others. It exposes you to a wide array of areas of the law and allows you to learn about them firsthand, something that is particularly useful for individuals who, even upon graduating law school, are unsure as to exactly what field of law they want to (or do not want to) practice in.

A clerkship also improves various skills that are useful no matter what kind of lawyer you may end up being. Clerking allows you to develop and maintain staunch research and writing abilities and sharpens your analytical skills by encouraging you to look at cases holistically and understand all sides of an argument. Finally, clerking gives you the truly unique experience of working closely with a judge and understanding the judiciary firsthand. You spend countless hours reading hundreds upon hundreds of cases in law school, but to be able to “peek behind the curtain” and understand — and be an integral part of —the day-to-day process of how a court operates is both fascinating and educational. Although typically lasting only a year or two, clerkships will provide you with knowledge and experience that will pay dividends and continue to shape you as you develop into a practicing lawyer.

Now that I have (hopefully) convinced you that clerking is a great post-law school experience, I would like to offer some insight and tips about the process of applying, and preparing to apply, for a clerkship. The below information is based on not only my personal experience, but also the experiences of several colleagues who recently served as clerks. While much of this information is likely relevant to any clerkship, it is primarily based in the experience of serving as a law clerk in North Carolina state courts.

Preparation Begins In Law School

There are a number of steps you can take while in law school to help you develop the skills and relationships that will facilitate your clerkship application process. An internship or externship at a court during law school is one of the best activities for an aspiring clerk. A great experience in and of itself, an internship in a judge’s chambers allows you to “dip your toes into the water,” so to speak, of working at a court, to familiarize yourself with the daily tasks and responsibilities of a clerk, and ultimately to give you an idea of whether being a clerk is something that is for you. Interning or externing allows you to get to know judges and law clerks who can prove to be some of your greatest advocates when applying for a clerkship (or another job out of law school). If you do good work and make strong impressions, the judges and law clerks you work with will be more willing to give their recommendations — whether via a formal letter or informal phone call — to judges who you may apply to work for upon graduating. Indeed, some judges have a penchant for hiring their former interns and externs as clerks, as it is difficult to turn down an applicant who has proven themselves capable of handling the rigors of working in a judge’s chambers.

Although perhaps an obvious point, your law school’s career development center is a tremendous resource. Clerking is in many cases not a “career” in the traditional sense, but these departments within your law school are there to help you navigate the process of selecting and applying for not only jobs, but clerkships as well. Be sure to use them. Many, if not all, law schools have a designated clerkship advisor or counselor who will be able to aid you throughout your journey of becoming a clerk. Making connections and developing relationships with some of your professors is also worthwhile. This is important not only for your overall law school experience, but because professors generally seem more amenable to writing letters of recommendations for students who have shown an interest in or aptitude for a particular area of the law, helped the professor as a research assistant, or acted as a scholar/TA for the professor’s first-year classes.

Judges are looking for clerks who have great research and writing skills, so you should seize opportunities that will allow you to hone your writing skills. Taking your law school’s advanced legal research class may be one way to develop, and show, an acumen for the writing and research skills that clerks require. Although not technically a requirement for most clerkships, participation in law review, or another journal, seems to be an almost de facto requirement. It shows that you have undertaken efforts to sharpen your research, writing, and citation skills and are able to balance class work with what can be a challenging and time-consuming extracurricular activity. If your judge requests a writing sample, choose (or if need be, compose) your best possible work and make sure your writing is clear and concise.

The Application Process

The sooner you determine that you want to apply for a clerkship, the better, as clerkships are competitive positions. If you begin preparing for the application process after your first year of law school, this should give you plenty of time to craft a writing sample, acquire letters of recommendation, and complete your applications so as to line up a clerkship to begin after completing law school. While this timeline is ideal, it does not have to be adhered to. Clerkship opportunities will likely continue to be available to you throughout your second and even third years of law school, but being prepared early will give you a better chance of success with the particular positions you may strive for.

Once you have determined that you want to clerk, you will need to decide where, or with whom, you want to clerk. There are federal clerkships for the federal appeals and district courts as well as federal magistrate judges and bankruptcy courts all over the country. Many federal judges do their hiring through the federal online clerkship application system (called “OSCAR”). North Carolina offers many great clerkship opportunities. Most judges at the Supreme Court of North Carolina, the Court of Appeals, and the North Carolina Business Court have two law clerks, with the vast majority of these clerkships being two-year terms that typically begin in August or September.

One unique offering in our state is the North Carolina Judicial Fellowship Program. In 2017, the state Administrative Office of the Courts established the Raleigh-based fellowship, to enable fellows serve as clerks for trial court judges. Fellows help trial court judges across the state with legal research, drafting orders, taking notes during hearings and trials, and various other tasks when a judge requests help. While it is important to figure out what courts or judges you wish to clerk for, I recommend that you keep an open mind and cast a wide net during the application process to ensure that you have a better chance of a successful application. Although the various clerkships noted above can be quite different from each other in many respects, they are all great experiences and any one of them would serve as an excellent launching pad for your legal career.

Outside of the OSCAR system governing many federal clerkships, in which most applications are submitted after your 2L year, the actual process of applying for a clerkship position with a judge, at least in North Carolina, can be rather opaque. Upon figuring out what judges you may want to apply to clerk for, I found that the best way to determine the details of applying for the position is to pick up the phone and call the judge’s chambers. A law clerk or executive assistant of the judge will be able to give you information such as when to file your application and what materials need to be submitted with your application, something that varies greatly among courts and judges. These are things that you are hopefully able to do during your second year of law school. Also, remember to not be shy to ask for help from your law school’s career development office for application advice or a review and critique of your resume and application materials. One colleague I spoke with recommended that — if proximity allows — you hand deliver your application to the judge’s chambers. This not only shows that you have an acute interest in the position, but it gives you the opportunity to meet clerks or others working in the judge’s chambers, and perhaps the judge herself.

Finally, before filing your application make sure that it is free of errors. An otherwise immaculate application can be marred by tiny mistakes such as a typo or referring to a Supreme Court justice as “Judge” in your cover letter. Everyone makes mistakes, but even if they are small, the judges and clerks who review your applications will notice these errors and take note of them because they will be perceived as displaying a lack of attention to detail and precision, a critical skill for a law clerk. You should allow yourself plenty of time to make sure that your application contain no errors, and have classmates or others review your application and writing sample for mistakes.

Interviewing

As with any job, interviewing is an important part of the clerkship application process. If you are selected for an interview (or interviews) with a judge, there are some things that you will want to keep in mind. Of course, you will interview with the judge for whom you will work, but some judges have their law clerks and executive assistants interview applicants as well to see if they will be a good fit with the chambers.

Prior to your interview with a particular judge, make sure that you actually know something about the judge and their background — where they are from, where they went to law school, what field of law they practiced in before becoming a judge, or any other information you can find. At election time, North Carolina appellate court judges often fill out questionnaires for newspapers or speak at events that may be reported on, and this information can help you learn about the judge you want to apply to work for. In doing so, you may discover that you and your prospective boss have a similar background or share a common interest, which can be topics of conversation in the interview that help you make a memorable connection with your interviewer.

Also, while you don’t want to go to your interview and cite the names of cases that the judge authored, you’ll want to take a bit of time to understand the judge’s judicial philosophy and writing style by reading some of their opinions. Relatedly, you will want to be generally aware if the judge you interview with, or the court they sit on, has a pending case or recent decision that garnered public interest because you do not want to seem completely out of the loop if the subject is raised.

Furthermore, be on the lookout for alumni of your school who clerk, or have clerked, for a judge you may want to apply to work for and reach out to them. They will likely be willing to speak with you about what working for that judge is like, what the application process entails, and other tidbits that may be helpful to you as you continue your applications. Your law school’s career development office probably has a running list of graduates who went on to clerk, along with the judges they clerked for, or will otherwise have the means to help connect you with alumni who may be willing to help you during the process of applying.

A clerkship will be a bright spot on your application and may help you get to where you want to be in your legal career, but as a colleague I spoke with heard one North Carolina appellate court judge say in a presentation about clerkships — make sure that you do not make your interview about you or what you will get out of clerking. Because it is only a couple of years, some applicants may be tempted to see a clerkship merely as a stopgap or a steppingstone to a desired job, but the judges you interview with will not see it that way. Getting to the interview stage means that the judge believes that you possess the skills and qualifications necessary to be a clerk, and the interview is a chance for you to prove how you can use those skills and qualifications to help them reach the right decisions — do so.

I hope that I have been able to convince you of the benefits of clerking and impart some information that is insightful and will prove to be useful during your clerkship application process. Good luck!

March 30, 2022/by NCBA YLD