⚖️ Clerkship Stacking Is Changing the Law School Career Pipeline
For decades, a federal judicial clerkship was generally viewed as a prestigious one-year bridge between law school and a legal career.
A recent trend is changing that model.
More law graduates are now “stacking” judicial clerkships—completing two, three, or even four clerkships consecutively before entering private practice, government, academia, or another long-term legal position.
For law school applicants, this development matters because judicial clerkships are limited in number. When graduates who have already completed one clerkship take another, they occupy positions that otherwise could have gone to first-time applicants.
A new study, Stacking the Deck, by legal scholars Tracey E. George, Albert Yoon, and Mitu Gulati examines this phenomenon through approximately 130 interviews with judges. The authors argue that clerkship stacking is not simply the result of individual graduates making unusually aggressive career choices. Instead, it reflects incentives and information problems within the judicial clerkship market.
For prospective law students who hope to clerk after graduation, the study raises an important question:
Will today’s growing competition for judicial clerkships make it harder for tomorrow’s law graduates to get one?
🔎 What Is Clerkship Stacking?
A judicial clerkship typically lasts one year. A law graduate works directly for a judge, helping with legal research, drafting opinions and orders, and analyzing cases.
Traditionally, a graduate might complete one clerkship and then move into private practice, government, academia, or another legal position.
Clerkship stacking occurs when a graduate completes multiple clerkships in succession.
For example:
Law school → Federal district court clerkship → Federal circuit court clerkship → another clerkship → private practice
The practice isn’t entirely new. What has changed is its prevalence and reach.
George, Yoon and Gulati report that multiple consecutive clerkships were historically unusual outside the pipeline leading to the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, however, some graduates are completing two, three, or even four clerkships.
Many law schools also recognize stacking as a strategy in which an applicant secures a second clerkship that begins immediately after the first.
📈 Why Are Law Graduates Stacking Clerkships?
There isn’t one reason.
Instead, several incentives have combined to make stacking increasingly attractive.
1. Clerkships Are Powerful Career Credentials
Judicial clerkships have long been among the most prestigious early-career positions available to law graduates.
A clerk works closely with a judge and receives intensive exposure to legal writing, research, litigation and judicial decision-making.
That experience can make a clerk more attractive to elite law firms, particularly for litigation positions.
Recent reporting on the Stacking the Deck study notes that clerkships have increasingly become an important credential for attorneys seeking top litigation positions.
For graduates who already have one clerkship, another prestigious clerkship can therefore appear to offer a significant additional career benefit.
2. A Second Clerkship Can Open Doors a First One Doesn’t
Not all clerkships carry the same prestige or provide the same professional connections.
A graduate who starts with a federal district court clerkship might pursue a circuit court clerkship next.
Someone who already has a circuit clerkship might seek an opportunity with a particularly influential judge or pursue a path toward a Supreme Court clerkship.
The result can resemble a judicial career ladder:
District court → Circuit court → elite appellate court → Supreme Court
That progression can be particularly attractive to graduates seeking careers in appellate litigation, academia or elite law firms.
The researchers describe the emergence of this kind of credential stacking as part of a broader transformation in the clerkship market.
3. Elite Law Firms Place a High Value on Clerks
A clerkship can also provide an unusually attractive entry point into BigLaw.
Some major firms offer substantial bonuses to judicial clerks, making a clerkship financially attractive despite the relatively modest government salary.
The economic calculation can therefore look something like this:
One year clerking → prestigious credential + valuable training + potential law-firm bonus
For some graduates, completing another clerkship can appear worthwhile if it improves their long-term career prospects.
4. Judges May Prefer Experienced Clerks
One of the more important findings discussed by the researchers is that judges themselves can have incentives to hire experienced clerks.
Judicial work is demanding, and clerks must quickly learn how a particular chambers operates.
A graduate who has already worked for another federal judge may require less training and may arrive with stronger legal research and writing skills.
That creates a feedback loop:
Prior clerkship → more attractive candidate → second clerkship → even stronger candidate
The more this happens, the harder it can become for someone without a prior clerkship to break into the market.
Researchers interviewed approximately 130 judges in examining these dynamics.
5. Some Graduates Can Afford to Delay Higher-Paid Employment
There is another factor that is easy to overlook: money.
Federal judicial clerkships generally pay less than many private-sector legal jobs.
A law graduate with significant educational debt or family financial responsibilities may find it difficult to spend two or three years in relatively lower-paid clerkships.
Another graduate may have greater financial flexibility and therefore be able to pursue multiple prestigious clerkships.
That creates a potentially important socioeconomic divide.
The researchers argue that stacking can disproportionately disadvantage students who cannot afford to postpone entry into higher-paying legal employment. Reuters likewise reported that the trend may particularly affect first-generation lawyers, graduates of less elite schools, and others who lack the resources or networks that facilitate repeated clerkships.
🚪 How Clerkship Stacking Affects Future Law Graduates
This is the most important issue for current law school applicants.
The number of federal judicial clerkships is limited.
If one graduate occupies two clerkship positions over two years instead of one position over one year, one fewer opportunity is potentially available to another graduate during that period.
If stacking becomes widespread, the effect compounds.
Imagine, for simplicity, that a judicial system has 1,000 available clerkship positions in a given year.
If every position goes to a first-time clerk, 1,000 graduates can obtain clerkship experience.
But if 20% of those positions are filled by graduates who have already completed clerkships, the number of first-time opportunities falls substantially.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the total number of clerkships has declined.
It means access to those clerkships becomes more concentrated among repeat clerks.
The authors of Stacking the Deck explicitly identify this as one of the costs of stacking: each additional clerkship taken by an existing clerk reduces opportunities for other candidates.
📉 Could Clerkship Stacking Reduce the Number of Opportunities by 50%?
One particularly striking argument reported in coverage of the study is that stacking could potentially reduce the number of clerkship opportunities available to first-time candidates by as much as 50%, even as the overall number of clerkships expands.
That is not a prediction that half of all clerkships will disappear.
Rather, it illustrates how dramatically the distribution of opportunities could change if graduates increasingly occupy multiple positions.
The researchers’ concern is essentially about access, not necessarily the total number of judicial chambers.
As one recent analysis of the study put it, these are scarce training and mentorship opportunities that may become even more difficult for new candidates to access as stacking grows.
🎓 Why This Matters for Law School Applicants
A college student considering law school might reasonably think:
“I’ll attend law school, graduate, apply for a clerkship, and see what happens.”
The changing clerkship market suggests a more strategic approach.
If you are interested in judicial clerkships, you should begin thinking about the path before you enroll in law school.
🏫 Law School Choice Matters
Some law schools place far more graduates into federal clerkships than others.
That doesn’t mean attending a particular school guarantees a clerkship.
But access to clerkship advising, faculty recommendations, alumni networks and judicial contacts can significantly influence opportunities.
Prospective law students should therefore research:
• Federal clerkship placement rates
• Appellate clerkship placement
• Faculty connections with judges
• Clerkship advising resources
• Alumni clerkship networks
• Geographic placement
• The school’s overall reputation among federal judges
📚 Academic Performance Still Matters
Judicial clerkships are among the most academically competitive opportunities available to new lawyers.
Strong grades, excellent legal writing and meaningful relationships with professors can be critical.
For students interested in clerkships, law school should not be viewed simply as a credential.
Your performance within law school can determine whether you have access to some of its most competitive post-graduate opportunities.
✍️ Legal Writing Is Especially Important
Judges need clerks who can write clearly and analyze complicated legal issues.
A prospective clerk should therefore prioritize opportunities to develop:
• Legal research
• Legal writing
• Brief writing
• Analytical reasoning
• Editing
• Oral advocacy
• Attention to detail
Some law schools are experimenting with courses specifically designed to prepare students for clerkships. One example discussed in reporting on the study is a George Mason University course that teaches students the type of writing and analysis they will encounter in judicial chambers.
🌐 The Information Advantage Matters, Too
The Stacking the Deck researchers identify an important structural problem in the clerkship market: information is not evenly distributed.
Some students know which judges are hiring, when they are hiring, what they look for and how to approach them.
Others may have little idea how the process works.
That can create a significant advantage for students at law schools with strong clerkship programs and extensive judicial networks.
The researchers argue that information asymmetry helps explain why stacking has become individually rational even when many judges recognize that it creates undesirable collective consequences.
⚠️ Does Clerkship Stacking Mean You Should Avoid a Clerkship?
No.
That would be the wrong conclusion.
Judicial clerkships remain extremely valuable professional experiences.
For the right student, even one clerkship can provide outstanding training, mentorship and career opportunities.
The important point is that applicants should understand the market before assuming that a clerkship will be easy to obtain—or that completing multiple clerkships is automatically the best strategy.
A second clerkship may make sense for one graduate and less sense for another.
The question is whether the additional experience provides enough career value to justify delaying the next stage of your career.
🔮 What Could Happen to the Clerkship Market?
The authors of Stacking the Deck conclude that there is no simple solution.
That’s because the incentives are complicated:
• A judge may reasonably prefer an experienced clerk.
• A law graduate may reasonably want another prestigious clerkship.
• A law firm may reasonably value applicants with multiple clerkships.
• And a law school may reasonably encourage its students to pursue prestigious clerkships.
Yet the collective result can be a system in which fewer first-time applicants get opportunities.
That is a classic market-design problem: individual decisions can make sense while producing an undesirable outcome for the market as a whole.
The researchers argue that some reforms intended to improve the clerkship market may actually have contributed to the problem. Their interviews suggest that the issue is not simply a lack of awareness but a structure of incentives that makes individual restraint difficult.
Potential responses could include better clerkship preparation, improved information sharing, changes to hiring practices and greater scrutiny of repeat clerkships.
But no consensus solution has emerged.
🧭 What Should Future Law Students Do?
If you are considering law school and hope to pursue a judicial clerkship, the changing market reinforces several lessons.
1. Research clerkship placement before choosing a law school.
Don’t rely solely on overall law school rankings.
2. Understand how the school’s faculty and alumni network can help.
Judicial clerkships are heavily influenced by recommendations and professional relationships.
3. Develop exceptional legal writing skills.
Your ability to research, analyze and write persuasively will be central to your candidacy.
4. Start planning early.
Don’t wait until your final semester of law school to learn how clerkship hiring works.
5. Consider the financial consequences.
A clerkship can be a tremendous career investment, but multiple clerkships may delay higher-paying employment.
6. Don’t assume a second clerkship is automatically better.
Ask whether the additional clerkship provides a meaningful new credential or simply repeats the experience you already have.
🚀 Looking at Law School?
The changing judicial clerkship market is another reason why law school selection matters.
If you ultimately want a federal clerkship, BigLaw litigation career, judicial career or legal academic position, you should consider those objectives when deciding where to attend law school.
We help law school applicants develop a strategy that considers:
• Academic and professional goals
• Law school admissions competitiveness
• School-specific career outcomes
• Clerkship placement
• Geographic preferences
• Scholarship and financial considerations
• Long-term career objectives
A law school application should not simply answer “Where can I get admitted?”
It should help answer:
“Which law school gives me the best opportunity to build the career I want?”
👉 Call us at 1.800.809.0800 or click the “Book a Meeting” link below!