Penn Clerkship Discussion/Movement Forum

[Anonymous User]

1L here, is Heaton a good recommender? How about Feldman or Fisch?

I doubt any of them are good besides maybe Fisch if you are going for chancery or Delaware Supreme Court.

[Anonymous User]

1L here, is Heaton a good recommender? How about Feldman or Fisch?

Fisch has to be one of the best recommenders for Delaware Chancery. Not sure about any of these professors as recommenders generally.

[Anonymous User]

Did anyone get even a mere interview in DDC or EDVA?

I think one ‘23 has a clerkship in EDVa. Penn definitely doesn’t do well there.

[Anonymous User]

Did anyone get even a mere interview in DDC or EDVA?

Have heard of interviews in both as well as offers in COA4 and CADC

[Anonymous User]

What about Galbraith as a recommender?

[Anonymous User]

What can I do to maximize my chances of clerking on EDPA. Not fedsoc and not from the area.

Have high grades. EDPA can be shockingly hard to get, even from Penn

[Anonymous User]

What about Galbraith as a recommender?

Have heard good things. She clerked for Tatel so has a good network too.

[Anonymous User]

1L here, is Heaton a good recommender? How about Feldman or Fisch?

Fisch has to be one of the best recommenders for Delaware Chancery. Not sure about any of these professors as recommenders generally.

Fisch is pretty good and she is usually interested in helping students who want to pursue Chancery. But don't assume that someone is a good recommender just because she is well-known.

[Anonymous User]

I think of recommender quality as being comprised of three, often unrelated parts:

First - Recommendation quality. Whether their writing is effusive and specific.

Second - Recommender connections. Whether the recommender knows or is known by judges.

Third - Propensity to call.

Blackletter profs are typically decent in all 3 categories with some outliers in both directions. Ex. Struve is the gold standard. Yoo is famously unhelpful beyond the written letter. Fisch isn’t the friendliest but have heard of her making calls for candidates that aren’t “hers” and even for non chancery (federal appellate). Adjuncts can be really good for (2) and (3) while being bad at (1). Smart candidates deploy them for calls and back channel but don’t use as written recs.

[Anonymous User]

I think of recommender quality as being comprised of three, often unrelated parts:

First - Recommendation quality. Whether their writing is effusive and specific.

Second - Recommender connections. Whether the recommender knows or is known by judges.

Third - Propensity to call.

Blackletter profs are typically decent in all 3 categories with some outliers in both directions. Ex. Struve is the gold standard. Yoo is famously unhelpful beyond the written letter. Fisch isn’t the friendliest but have heard of her making calls for candidates that aren’t “hers” and even for non chancery (federal appellate). Adjuncts can be really good for (2) and (3) while being bad at (1). Smart candidates deploy them for calls and back channel but don’t use as written recs.

This is good advice, but I don’t agree that black letter profs are typically good at all three at Penn. I’d also say Yoo is in the category of just don’t ask period for almost everyone. He’s a bad recommender.

[Anonymous User]

How's Mayson as a recommender?

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

No. Partially because the administration hasn’t and will not hire conservatives.

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

No. Partially because the administration hasn’t and will not hire conservatives.

Isn’t Bibas becoming a pretty major conservative feeder judge. He hires a ton from Penn. And just a couple posts above, Tatel has been a feeder judge. Recent Penn SCOTUS clerk who is conservative is teaching a seminar this fall and fedsoc is encouraging students to take his class. The real problem is that most SCOTUS justices, Srinivasan, etc want people from HYS. If you wanted to clerk on the Supreme Court you shouldn’t have come to Penn. From what I’ve heard, the class of 2024 has done really well with clerkships. Dumb to complain about Penn not hiring conservative professors because conservatives are not the ones who need well connected professors to get them clerkships.

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

No. Partially because the administration hasn’t and will not hire conservatives.

Isn’t Bibas becoming a pretty major conservative feeder judge. He hires a ton from Penn. And just a couple posts above, Tatel has been a feeder judge. Recent Penn SCOTUS clerk who is conservative is teaching a seminar this fall and fedsoc is encouraging students to take his class. The real problem is that most SCOTUS justices, Srinivasan, etc want people from HYS. If you wanted to clerk on the Supreme Court you shouldn’t have come to Penn. From what I’ve heard, the class of 2024 has done really well with clerkships. Dumb to complain about Penn not hiring conservative professors because conservatives are not the ones who need well connected professors to get them clerkships.

Bibas is the only actual current conservative heavy hitter affiliated with Penn but he just teaches one class. Basically every law school in a major city has adjuncts like this. It’s not impressive for Penn to have a person or two like this.

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

No. Partially because the administration hasn’t and will not hire conservatives.

Isn’t Bibas becoming a pretty major conservative feeder judge. He hires a ton from Penn. And just a couple posts above, Tatel has been a feeder judge. Recent Penn SCOTUS clerk who is conservative is teaching a seminar this fall and fedsoc is encouraging students to take his class. The real problem is that most SCOTUS justices, Srinivasan, etc want people from HYS. If you wanted to clerk on the Supreme Court you shouldn’t have come to Penn. From what I’ve heard, the class of 2024 has done really well with clerkships. Dumb to complain about Penn not hiring conservative professors because conservatives are not the ones who need well connected professors to get them clerkships.

Bibas is the only actual current conservative heavy hitter affiliated with Penn but he just teaches one class. Basically every law school in a major city has adjuncts like this. It’s not impressive for Penn to have a person or two like this.

He teaches two classes. How many schools have more than one feeder or semi feeder circuit judge as an adjunct?

[Anonymous User]

Penn has two conservative circuit judges who teach multiple classes at Penn and seem to fill half their clerk spots with Penn students. Or at least, they filled many their spots for ‘24 students with Penn students. Not sympathetic to conservatives complaining about clerkship support when they don’t need support from the school itself.

[Anonymous User]

Chris is the most competent member of the OCS staff and she gets too much hate

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

No. Partially because the administration hasn’t and will not hire conservatives.

Posted the quoted comment. Wasn’t complaining about conservative support. Agree re Bibas and think favorably of Wax. Was responding narrowly to the prior comment. My argument is one of basic logic:

With the current Court, the school needs to hire conservative profs if they want to have faculty who have clerked for current feeders or justices.

[Anonymous User]

(Deleted)

[Anonymous User]

I completely agree. NYU and CLS have literally every NYC district and CA2 judge on their faculty. Penn is nothing special and clerkships have been a nightmare. The fact that one person in total got NYC interviews is laughable. I myself graduated with coif and got nothing.

[Anonymous User]

For non-penn students reading this, what are ways in which your CDO or faculty help its top students get clerkships? I have anecdotally heard of a school's CDO office lining up clerkships to their top 1L students without them needing to interview.

EDIT: Moving to different thread to keep this one Penn focused.

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

No. Partially because the administration hasn’t and will not hire conservatives.

Isn’t Bibas becoming a pretty major conservative feeder judge. He hires a ton from Penn. And just a couple posts above, Tatel has been a feeder judge. Recent Penn SCOTUS clerk who is conservative is teaching a seminar this fall and fedsoc is encouraging students to take his class. The real problem is that most SCOTUS justices, Srinivasan, etc want people from HYS. If you wanted to clerk on the Supreme Court you shouldn’t have come to Penn. From what I’ve heard, the class of 2024 has done really well with clerkships. Dumb to complain about Penn not hiring conservative professors because conservatives are not the ones who need well connected professors to get them clerkships.

Bibas is the only actual current conservative heavy hitter affiliated with Penn but he just teaches one class. Basically every law school in a major city has adjuncts like this. It’s not impressive for Penn to have a person or two like this.

He teaches two classes. How many schools have more than one feeder or semi feeder circuit judge as an adjunct?

Like half the T14 at least. It’s obviously awesome that he teaches but it’s hilarious to act like Penn’s faculty is decent compared to peer schools because one big time judge teaches as an adjunct. That doesn’t set us apart. I also am not saying that we need to hire conservatives in particular. I’m just making the point that our faculty as a whole is not well connected to the judiciary. But it is obviously true that there really aren’t many respected conservative academics on the faculty at Penn.

[Anonymous User]

For Penn? Zero. Even if you’re the #1 student

It’s crazy that this is true, but I feel like part of it is just simply because Penn doesn’t have a heavy hitting faculty. They don’t proactively try to help the top students because we don’t have professors who can do much for the top students anyway. Do we even have a single professor who clerked for a current SCOTUS justice or any feeder judge? Penn’s faculty is frankly nowhere near the level of HYSC. It’s honestly not even on par with most of the T14 or other solid schools like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt.

No. Partially because the administration hasn’t and will not hire conservatives.

Isn’t Bibas becoming a pretty major conservative feeder judge. He hires a ton from Penn. And just a couple posts above, Tatel has been a feeder judge. Recent Penn SCOTUS clerk who is conservative is teaching a seminar this fall and fedsoc is encouraging students to take his class. The real problem is that most SCOTUS justices, Srinivasan, etc want people from HYS. If you wanted to clerk on the Supreme Court you shouldn’t have come to Penn. From what I’ve heard, the class of 2024 has done really well with clerkships. Dumb to complain about Penn not hiring conservative professors because conservatives are not the ones who need well connected professors to get them clerkships.

Bibas is the only actual current conservative heavy hitter affiliated with Penn but he just teaches one class. Basically every law school in a major city has adjuncts like this. It’s not impressive for Penn to have a person or two like this.

He teaches two classes. How many schools have more than one feeder or semi feeder circuit judge as an adjunct?

Like half the T14 at least. It’s obviously awesome that he teaches but it’s hilarious to act like Penn’s faculty is decent compared to peer schools because one big time judge teaches as an adjunct. That doesn’t set us apart. I also am not saying that we need to hire conservatives in particular. I’m just making the point that our faculty as a whole is not well connected to the judiciary. But it is obviously true that there really aren’t many respected conservative academics on the faculty at Penn.

Here is a list of feeder judges for OT 2023 through OT 2025 per David Lat:

Katsas (9)

Thapar (8)

Grant (5)

Oldham (5)

W. Pryor (5)

Friedrich (D.D.C.) (5)

Bibas (4)

Newsom (4)

Srinivasan (3)

Kovner (E.D.N.Y.) (3)

Barron (2)

Pillard (2)

J.R. Walker (2)

Wilkinson (2)

Engelmayer (S.D.N.Y.) (2)

Mitchell (Ala.) (2)


Here's another, older list I found

Kavanaugh, Brett M. (CADC) 25 5.54%
Sutton, Jeffrey S. (CA6) 24 5.32%
Garland, Merrick B. (CADC) 22 4.88%
Katzmann, Robert A. (CA2) 22 4.88%
Pryor, William H. (CA11) 20 4.43%
Griffith, Thomas B. (CADC) 17 3.77%
Srinivasan, Srikanth (CADC) 17 3.77%
Wilkinson, J. Harvie (CA4) 17 3.77%
Tatel, David S. (CADC) 16 3.55%
Gorsuch, Neil M. (CA10) 13 2.88%
Boasberg, James E. (DDC) 12 2.66%
O'Scannlain, Diarmuid F. (CA9) 12 2.66%
Katsas, Gregory G. (CADC) 11 2.44%
Kethledge, Raymond M. (CA6) 11 2.44%
Kozinski, Alex (CA9) 9 2.00%
Thapar, Amul R. (CA6) 9 2.00%
Calabresi, Guido (CA2) 7 1.55%
Fletcher, William A. (CA9) 7 1.55%
Friedrich, Dabney L. (DDC) 7 1.55%
Livingston, Debra Ann (CA2) 7 1.55%
Pillard, Cornelia T. (CADC) 7 1.55%
Sykes, Diane S. (CA7) 7 1.55%
Jones, Edith Hollan (CA5) 6 1.33%
Rakoff, Jed S. (SDNY) 6 1.33%
Watford, Paul J. (CA9) 6 1.33%
Chhabria, Vince Girdhari (NDCA) 5 1.11%
Lohier, Raymond J. (CA2) 5 1.11%
Reinhardt, Stephen (CA9) 5 1.11%
Barrett, Amy Coney (CA7) 4 0.89%
Brown, Janice Rogers (CADC) 4 0.89%
Feinerman, Gary Scott (NDIL) 4 0.89%
Furman, Jesse M. (SDNY) 4 0.89%
Grant, Britt C. (CA11) 4 0.89%
Hardiman, Thomas M. (CA3) 4 0.89%
Leon, Richard J. (DDC) 4 0.89%
Millett, Patricia Ann (CADC) 4 0.89%
Moss, Randolph D. (DDC) 4 0.89%
Nathan, Alison J. (SDNY) 4 0.89%
Rao, Neomi J. (CADC) 4 0.89%
Scirica, Anthony J. (CA3) 4 0.89%
Sullivan, Richard J. (CA2) 4 0.89%

Tell me which six or so schools have 1-2 regularly teaching like Bibas and Scirica. Don't care if you use a different list. Our problem is not faculty. It's that we're just not HYS. If you want to clerk on the Supreme Court or CADC you should've tried harder on LSAT/college GPA.