Do you like prestige? Of course you do. Is there really a law student who doesn’t? That being said, if you’re like the majority of your colleagues and you’d like to embark upon one of the most prestigious career paths available to recent law school graduates, then you’ll probably want to compete for an elite federal clerkship.
The American Bar Association recently released new employment data for the Class of 2023, and thanks to an analysis made by Reuters, we now know which law schools “dominated” the clerkship market by sending the highest percentage of graduates into federal clerkships.
According to the ABA data, just 3.4% of the class of 2023 found work as federal clerks. The 10 law schools that sent the highest percentage of graduates into these clerkships are responsible for a third of all clerkships across the country.
Without further ado, these are the top 10 schools for clerkships:
- Chicago: 25.35%
- Yale: 24.11%
- Stanford: 20.77%
- Notre Dame: 18.18%
- Michigan: 14.01%
- UVA: 13.73%
- Texas: 13.00%
- Harvard: 11.58%
- Duke: 10.92%
- BYU: 9.91%
You can access the full list by clicking here.
Way to go, Chicago! The elite school makes its return to the top spot for clerkships after being pushed down to No. 3 for the class of 2022, coming in behind Stanford and Yale. Chicago had previously dominated the list for the classes of 2020 and 2021. Yale and Stanford still clocked in at the top of the heap for the class of 2023, despite conservative judges boycotting hiring from the schools.
An obvious point to make here is that these rankings don’t distinguish between prestige of clerkship. Were these feeder judges or non-feeder judges, circuit courts or district courts, Article III courts or non-Article III courts? In the land of law, these things are important. Considering how coveted federal clerkships are, we’d absolutely love to see this information. If you have it, please feel free to email us.
Congratulations to all of these law schools on helping their graduates get federal clerkships. Check back with us next year to see if Chicago is able to hold onto the top spot.
These law schools dominated the federal clerk hiring market in 2023 [Reuters]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on X/Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.
