"T10 Recommender" here - yes, absolutely, agree that the same strategy won't work for all candidates. But I do think even for candidates that aren't top 10% HYS (which, to be clear, none of my students are), identifying ideal reach judges and target judges is important (in the same way that for college applicants from 1600 SAT scorers on down have "safety," "reach," and "pipedream" schools). A few of my students are terrific people but not amazing exam takers and have above but not wildly above median grades. For them, we focused on secondary cities where they have ties or some particular reason to be there, found common links between their career ambitions and the pre-judicial experiences of judges in those districts, and in my outreach to those judges I emphasized why I thought the student would be a good fit for them, have other strong skills that would make them a good clerk, and gave them a bit of a sense of who they are as people. Remember, most judges care a lot about fit, too, and want to hire clerks they will enjoy spending time with, both during the clerkship year and as a mentee in the years to come. It's about more than just pure grades, which they don't need a letter of recommendation to interpret (unless, as someone said earlier, it's an H, S, or especially Y transcript
).
Now, unfortunately I can't solve the weak recommender problem, and believe me, I wish I could, and that more of my colleagues (at every law school) took the time to invest in this, because it's so obvious how much
any recommender can move the needle with at least
some judges. But the important thing is that for these purposes, a "weak" recommender isn't one who's an unknown adjunct; they're one who isn't going to lift a finger for you, even if they know you well and/or are a big deal. Likewise, a "strong" recommender is someone who will go to bat for you, even if you didn't get the top grade on their exam and/or they aren't the fanciest luminary in the legal academy. It should go without saying that if I were Akhil Amar I wouldn't be writing here, so you can assume I am not a "household name" of legal academia. But I'm on the young side, and I still remember what it was like to be a stressed out law student seeking guidance, and so what I may lack in star power, I have in energy and concern. And just because I'm not the fanciest person at my school doesn't mean judges aren't interested in what I have to say, provided I make a credible pitch for a candidate who I think it a strong applicant to them. So in general, be open-minded about who among your professors and other recommenders may be willing to, and be useful at, doing outreach for you.
To that end, a few tips on cultivating recommenders and getting them to do outreach***(see caveat below, and while I'm realizing this may be more helpful for future applicants than those of you who just submitted last week, at least this may be helpful for posterity's sake?):
-Recognize that professors are busy and abstractly want to help you, but will generally be more receptive if you make that easy for them and minimize the amount of back and forth and effort they have to go to to do this.
-To do that, provide them with your latest CV, transcript(s), writing sample, and a short statement of background and future career ambitions all in one PDF. At the outset, this will make it easier for them to assess you and think about what your profile will look like for judges they know or know of. The more details you can provide in the background and future career ambitions, the easier it is to write a letter that conveys the person's sense of personality. And if a recommender gets contacted by a judge out of the blue, you've given them all the talking points they could possibly need and can pull up on their computer in the 15 seconds they're exchanging pleasantries with the judge. (I've even had students give me an annotated version of their CV that explains why they did each thing they did and what they felt they got from it, how they exhibited leadership, work ethic, etc. That can be really helpful info too.)
-In terms of asking about outreach (which is still relevant to those of you who have just applied), the guiding principle is to approach recommenders in a way that lets them know you (a) respect their time; (b) respect that they have limited capital with judges and want to use it judiciously; and (c) want them to feel comfortable and not pressured.
E.g., asking all your recommenders to call Merrick Garland is a ludicrous reach if you're not the top 1-3% student at a T5, and will make you seem presumptuous and deluded.
-I would encourage you to send your recommenders a list of who you think are the most appropriate 15-20 safe, target, and reach judges, with short descriptions of why you think they could be a good fit for you. To figure this out, look at where they're sitting, what they did before getting Article III life tenure, and who from your school has clerked for them in the past. Google and wikipedia are surprisingly helpful for this.
-Once you send your list, ask your recommender if they think any of these would be "an especially good fit for me, or if there's anyone else you'd suggest." That's polite code for "do you think I'm competitive for this judge," "would I hurt your credibility if you push for me with him/her?", and "is there someone else I'm not thinking of that's actually more appropriate for me?" If they are good at getting the signal, they'll let you know who, if anyone, they think is a "good fit." Then, you can follow up and ask if they'd be willing to do outreach in the form of an email or phone call. Or you might get radio silence. But radio silence is a good signal that you shouldn't bank of them, and better to know that sooner than later so you can find someone else who will. Remember that grades are
objective, and recommendations are
subjective, so someone who likes you and thinks you'd be a great clerk for a particular judge can write a great recommendation even if your best grades weren't in their class, or you're not the star student of your year, provided your overall application is legitimately strong for the judge and the recommender can make an unqualified endorsement for you.
-In an ideal world, speaking at least for myself, I only want to be pushing one candidate per judge per cycle, so while I may write multiple letters that end up getting sent to the same judge, I'm only going to focus on one student for any given judge in a cycle, because in my experience pushing multiple people at once often leads to no one standing out or getting hired -- and I also care about my law school placing students in clerkships at solid rates generally, in addition to my specific students. Sometimes those goals can be in tension when lots of students want to clerk for the same judge, and I totally get that. But the best way for me to help a student is for the student to accept that not everyone is my "favorite" in some abstract sense, but that after some dialogue about finding the right fit, I'll go to bat for them 100% with the specific handful of judges that together we think are appropriate for them. Sometimes those conversations can be more awkward than other times, and I'm probably on the blunt end of law professor, so I will politely tell a student that I'm supporting someone else for the judge they're applying to (whereas some profs never say this and then the student later learns from someone else, which IMHO sucks even more). I find students are rarely offended by that and generally accept the help I'm willing to offer, so it's just not as bad as I think some of my colleagues imagine it will be. But the better the student is at taking the polite signals, the less uncomfortable the conversation has to be.
-As a general rule, since not all profs are willing to invest in this the way that I am (alas), making this entire process as easy as possible will go a long, long way for you.
-[Edited to add: As a general rule, public law faculty will care more about clerkships than private law faculty, and faculty who clerked prior to becoming professors will care more than those who didn't. This shouldn't be surprising when you think about it - judges matter more to public law scholarship in general, and former clerks are generally (but not always) more invested in helping their students get clerkships. But this is not always apparent to 1Ls and 2Ls, so I thought it was worth adding. And needless to say, there are huge exceptions. But I think this general rule holds, at least among most of the T20 law faculties I'm more familiar with.]
I wish more faculty were comfortable having these conversations, were willing to take the time to do it, and were savvier about how to help student help themselves. But I do think, as a student, that there are ways you can at least nudge faculty in that direction and see if they will take the bait, that you can find recommenders who may be helpful to you even if they don't seem obvious at first, and that even non-fancy students can develop the 10-15 judges in their 100 applications that they can reasonably ask for recommenders to advocate for on their behalf, provided that is a reasonable and comfortable list for the recommenders.
Hope this helps! (Ok, time to get back to the draft of my latest article, yup, we profs like to procrastinate too...)
***(A general caveat to everything I've said is that this process can work differently for the FedSoc applicants, recommenders, and judges, especially many of the new Trump appointees. But if that's you, you know that and don't need much of the advice I've just given.)
