
Well, now you’re all grown up and still letting OSCAR determine what sort of day you’ll have. Will you be successful? Will you get the opportunity to clerk for a Federal Judge? OSCAR (the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review) has been busy changing the rules of its system. No longer will you be able to send your application to every federal judge in the land. You’ll be limited to 100. Choose carefully and keep your fingers crossed that one of those judges is wise enough to choose you back. Also, mark your calendar for June 28th and plan nothing! That is the single date (up from August 19th) set for judges to “to receive applications, schedule and conduct interviews, and make clerkship offers” according to the OSCAR Law Blog. This date allows for an early release of the applications at a time when most 2L grades will have already been received. Persons already holding a J.D. are not addressed under these rules. Federal judges can accept applications, interview, and hire them at any time. (Don’t fool yourselves by thinking some of the federal clerkships aren't already decided early because rumor has it, they are; even if they aren’t formalized until the official release date.)
And while we’re all wondering how OSCAR continues to hold influence over our lives, you should probably take a peek at which law schools are most successful at getting J.D. grads placed in federal clerkships as per U.S. News. If you are one of those prospective law students thinking about which law school to send your money to to reserve your place, you might want to consider this in your equation:
Law School US News Rank % Federal Clerkship Placement
Yale 1 34.5%
Stanford 2 24.1%
Harvard 2 17.1%
Duke 11 12.7%
NYU 6 11.4%
U of Michigan – Ann Arbor 9 11.1%
Vanderbilt 15 11.1%
University of Virginia 7 10.8%
Berkeley 9 10.3%
U. of Pennsylvania 7 9.9%