Legal News

SoYouWantToBeALawClerk? A New Web Site Claims to Lead the Way

By Dan Slater

Loyal LB readers know that the Law Blog is always on the look-out for new Web sites we think might be of interest to our readers. So when we were tipped off to a new site, www.soyouwanttobealawclerk.com , offering advice to students seeking judicial clerkships, we called on Ellen Carey, the creator of the site, to get the low-down. Carey (Umass, Suffolk law, and NOT pictured — that’s just a shot from her Web site), a 32-year-old clerking veteran, spoke to the Law Blog about the clerkship application process, the importance of keeping an open mind and her new site.

Hi Ellen. Thanks for chatting. You started a Web site that offers advice to people applying for clerkships, so everyone’s going to want to know, what’s your legal background?

Well, after I graduated from law school in 2003 I accepted a position with a magistrate judge in Puerto Rico, Gustavo Gelpi, and I did that for one year.

How’d you get that gig?

The judge was a graduate of Suffolk law school and had asked the school for a law clerk. After that, I went back to Connecticut and accepted a job with Day Pitney, where I was an associate for 18 months. I got to argue three or four motions, which isn’t typical of a big firm.

So you liked working at a firm?

Yeah, the reason I left had to do more with what I hoped to do with the future. I’d like to teach, and be an appellate litigator, and I thought that an appellate clerkship could lead to both. After the firm, I applied to Judge [Thomas] Johnston, in the Southern District of West Virginia. I worked for him for a year, until last September, and then I applied to work for [Sixth Circuit appellate judge] Richard Allen Griffin in Michigan, which I start in August.

During the down time you’ve been building the site?

It started as a personal project of mine between now and August and it’s taken off. It started with an article my boyfriend’s father provided that talked about Google AdSense, which allows you to post, in blog format, anything you’d like and AdSense will make sense of key terms and generate ads. So anyone that visits your website will read what you’re writing and click on ads that then generate revenue for your site. I have a lot of information about applying to law clerk vacancies, so the site married two interests – giving advice to people in a similar position to me, and having a viable Web site. I only started it in February. It started off on Google pages, and didn’t look nearly as nice as it does now. A friend who’s a web designer offered to take it up to the next level.

We’ve heard a lot of war stories about the clerkship application process. What’s it like?

Before the advent of Oscar, you could only identify vacanacies through the federal law clerk information system. That’s a link off the www.uscourts.gov Web site. From that point on, it was up to you to send out letters. It was really a huge mail merge.

What’s Oscar?

It’s short for “online system for clerkship applications.” It’s a database that includes all judges who want to receive electronic applications. Now you can go on and check 30 or 40 judges at once and just attach your documents. What would’ve traditionally taken a day or two now takes just minutes.

Last summer, the Law Blog posted on a survey by academics which concluded that many federal appellate judges failed to adhere to the agreed-upon start dates for conducting interviews and making offers. What do you think about that?

The federal law clerk hiring plan is voluntary. If judges decide not to go along with those deadlines and dates it’s up to them. I don’t see any problem with hiring early or hiring late.

You didn’t go to a top law school, but yet you’ve had success snagging clerkships. What’s your advice?

Apply broadly. The initial mistake is that people want to stay in the state where they went to law school. I went to Suffolk in Boston, which has six law schools and only 11 district judges. You’ve got to expand your search.

So you’ve gone from Puerto Rico to Connecticut to West Virginia to Michigan. How’s that on your personal life?

It hasn’t been the easiest thing. But, if you’re clerking at the district court level in a busy district, you’re going to get the same experience as anywhere else. It may seem that a clerkship in North Dakota might not be the most appealing thing if you’re from New York City, but experience far outweighs the cost of moving.

Puerto Rico sounds better than North Dakota.

Now I’m living in Northern Michigan, so it’s definitely been interesting. Very cold and lots of snow.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 27, 2008 (boomark / email).