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bk1 wrote:But I sure bet pulling a few anecdotes together will be way better than the first Google result I found (http://www.nalp.org/courtingclerkships) and not at all end up being meaningless.

bk1 wrote:I highly doubt anybody ITT has sufficient data to even come close to assessing whether conservative/liberal/whatever judges are more/less/whatever likely to hire white/black/asian/latin@/whatever.

But I sure bet pulling a few anecdotes together will be way better than the first Google result I found (http://www.nalp.org/courtingclerkships) and not at all end up being meaningless.

rpupkin wrote:I agree that throwing anecdotes around is dangerous--and good studies are definitely better than anecdotes--but note that the study you linked to was published 17 years ago and is based on data collected 20 to 25 years ago.
(Edited for typos)

lolwat wrote:

This is the black clerk anon from earlier. I get that you hate this line of thinking, but that does not make it less true. Education in this country has always been inherently unequal and that didn't just end with blind grading. Please have a peek at Top 14 law schools graduating class latin honors awards. At my T-14 ZERO black people made latin honors for the last three years, but some have been on law review, won academic awards, and gone on to clerk on District and Circuit Courts. Does that not strike you as odd?

I am not blind to the fact that racism is still a thing in our country, and it's probably been highlighted even more as of late. (Not getting political here.) But too often in these discussions, many people simply assume as a fact that everything is inherently racist and puts minorities at a disadvantage. I don't blindly accept that as a fact. Nor does it help to point at the result (less minorities at the top of the class / less minorities in clerkships / whatever the result is) and then make the conclusion that one thing (racism) must be, directly or indirectly, the cause of it all.

In general, those results wouldn't necessarily strike me as odd. But I don't really have enough information here: Are Latin honors grade-based and how low do they go (top %)? What academic awards did those students win? Is law review at your T14 write-on only with no grades being taken into account? And there's also this which I got scooped on:

That strikes me as noteworthy, but I'm not sure I'm drawing the same inference you are. Doesn't the bolded run counter to the notion that african-american applicants are discriminated against in clerkship hiring based on their race?

Seems like those students punched above their weight as far as what you would expect for the chances of a T14 student without Latin honors getting a clerkship. And since the only info here is that they're black and got clerkships despite not getting Latin honors, perhaps we should now conclude that being black actually helps?! (Kidding here.)

Anonymous User wrote:some of whom achieve similar accolades as students with Latin honors and, I assume, are similarly qualified for the clerkship position despite having fewer As on their transcript.

Anonymous User wrote:I was getting at the accomplishments of the students outside of law school classes being similar to that of people with Latin honors, not necessarily that they are punching above their weight class. People don't get law school awards, law review and clerkships based on minority status because then minority students would surely be more represented among clerks.

To rpupkin's comment, that doesn't necessarily mean that minority students are less discriminated against. If judges are hiring based solely on how highly students are ranked in the class, they are eliminating virtually all minority students, some of whom achieve similar accolades as students with Latin honors and, I assume, are similarly qualified for the clerkship position despite having fewer As on their transcript.

BlendedUnicorn wrote:Generally though, this conversation's even worse than the broader AA one because all anyone really has to work with is anecdata. I would love to see if there was any correlation between something like age/gender/race/party of appointing president and diversity of clerks. I suspect the answer is a resounding yes.

Anonymous User wrote:I'm trying to understand something. Without it turning into a dumpster fire, as so many threads about race become.

The latest ABA data shows that 27% of law students are racial minorities. At top schools, where students are more likely to clerk, the number tends to be higher. Harvard, for example, has 32% minority enrollment, according to its 509.

All told, I interviewed with five judges and twenty clerks. Out of the twenty clerks, only three were people of color (two of them were clerking for one judge; three judges had no POC clerks whatsoever). There was only one black clerk.

Why the disparity?