Avery, Jolls, Posner and Roth have written The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks. The Abstract:
"In the past, judges have often hired
applicants for judicial clerkships as early as the beginning of the
second year of law school, for positions commencing approximately two
years down the road. In the new hiring regime for federal judicial law
clerks, by contrast, judges are exhorted to follow a set of start dates
for considering and hiring applicants during the fall of the third year
of law school. Using the same general methodology as we employed in a
study of the market for federal judicial law clerks conducted in
1998-2000, we have broadly surveyed both federal appellate judges and
law students about their experiences of the new market for law clerks.
This Article analyzes our findings within the prevailing economic
framework for studying markets with tendencies toward early hiring - a
framework we both draw upon and modify in the course of our analysis.
Our data make clear that the movement of the clerkship market back to
the third year of law school is highly valued by judges, but we also
find that a strong majority of the judges responding to our surveys has
concluded that non-adherence to the specified start dates is very
substantial - a conclusion we are able to corroborate with specific
quantitative data from both judge and student surveys. The consistent
experience of a wide range of other markets suggests that such
non-adherence in the law clerk market will lead to either a reversion
to very early hiring or the use of a centralized matching system such
as that used for medical residencies. We suggest, however, potential
avenues by which the clerkship market could stabilize at something like
its present pattern of mixed adherence and non-adherence, thereby
avoiding the complete abandonment of the current system."
Similarly, Richard Epstein has an article in the Autumn 2006 Green Bag entitled "Ending the Mad Scramble: An Experimental Matching Plan for Federal Clerkships."
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