I stumbled back to my cubicle, a trickle of blood running down my cheek. Could you catch hemophilia? Bleeding to death sounded sort of nice, cozy even.

Parking it in my tattered swivel chair, I stared longingly across the Delaware River at Camden, New Jersey. Just six months ago, I had been a well-liked editor on the Columbia Law Review. I had a killer wardrobe, a darling (rent-stabilized) apartment in the West Village and a fabulous group of friends.

Now, I was plotting an escape to New Jersey with dried blood on my face.

I was a federal court of appeals law clerk. Pushing thirty. Postured. Proud. Praying for hemophilia. This was certainly the best experience of my life. Just like everyone at Columbia Law had promised.

09-15, 4:09 AM

Basic Member

Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know I am about to sound crazy, but it is Wednesday and I have only gotten letters saying they have received my application packet. I am starting to freak out here. I know that a girl in my Sec Reg class got an inteview on the 2d circ. Why isn’t anyone calling me?!!

12-24, 01:23 PM

amyolive

Basic Member

Why won’t these judges CALL???

Hi all. I am waiting to hear from 3 judges who obviously don’t know they are about killing me! Don’t they understand that this is my LIFE they’re talking about????? Why can’t they at least let me know if I DIDN’T get it???? It’s Christmas for Christsakes! Have they no spirit!!!! Merry Christmas.

The above serve as illustrative examples of the kind of environment that law schools create. A climate in which the law student—the most paranoid, risk-averse overachiever this universe has to offer—is brainwashed from the very first day of school to believe that if he or she doesn’t get a judicial clerkship, life will effectively end.

Sure, we’d all heard about the glitz and glamour of a law degree. Three short years, a mere hundred twenty thousand dollars, and voilà! “You can do anything!”

ACLU. State Department. District attorney. President of the United States.

There was just one little glitch. You needed a judicial clerkship. A federal one if at all possible.

Sheila Raj: “How does one get a job at the U.S. attorney’s office?”

Torts professor: “Well, that’s impossible unless you clerk.”

Sheila Raj: “I’d love to teach here someday.”

Constitutional Law Professor: Loud sigh followed by “You’ll definitely need a court of appeals clerkship, if not one on the Supreme Court.” Courts of appeals are one rung below the Supreme Court. Typically, to even be considered for a Supreme Court clerkship, one has to have first completed a court of appeals clerkship, and as such, said appellate clerkship is the most prestigious gig one can obtain straight out of law school.