Asking for an expedited review of your app (and one other). Forum

[Anonymous User]

It seems to me that the biggest drawback of the post-plan world is that judges can be hiring months apart. So you might be forced to accept an offer (I'm of the school that you always say yes to judges) before your preferred judges even start looking at applications. Does anyone have any suggestions to mitigate this?

My specific situation:

Clerking as an alum for a well-regarded district court judge in a non-NYC big city (DC/Chicago/LA). Want to eventually move back to my home market -- it's a secondary city that's attractive to a lot of people (think like San Diego or Denver or Austin). I currently have a couple of interviews with district court judges in that market in a few weeks. The problem is that I'd really like to do a COA clerkship after my current one. There are two judges that I'm especially interested in -- I've exchanged emails with one, who said that s/he's not hiring for the appropriate cycle for a couple of months, but my resume looks like it would be pretty competitive. (My academic credentials are only "pretty good," but my post-LS experience is compelling enough to get noticed by alum-only judges.) I haven't contacted the other one but s/he hires people that look like me in terms of pedigree and experience.

Question #1: Is there any way to flag for these judges that I'd prefer to clerk for them but I may be off of the market in a couple of weeks? My thought is maybe to have my current judge email them a copy of his/her rec letter, and in the cover email mention that they should move quickly. The problem with THIS is that I'd hate for him/her to have to scramble to put a letter together in a week. (Though on the plus side, s/he'd prefer that I do the COA clerkships -- the timing works better for chambers, and s/he sort of prides him/herself as being a COA-feeder judge.)

Question #2: Am I crazy for wanting to do a COA clerkship instead of a district court one in my home market?

ETA: I forgot to refer to my current judge as gender-neutral in one place, so I fixed that.