Historically, clerks have had a pretty sweet deal. A year spent with a judge increases their attractiveness to law firms; in the past, this translated to big bonuses for going into Biglaw. During the recession, the deal got slightly less sweet, as firms went a little sour on clerks.

Over the last month, a number of readers have anxiously emailed us about clerkship bonuses. One example:

Have you heard anything about whether firms are lowering or maintaining their clerkship bonuses? My firm said although they gave $50k last year, they are “waiting to see what other firms do first.”

In 2008, our then-survey-guru Justin Bernold created this handy guide to clerkship bonuses, laying out the going rates — ranging from $10,000 to $70,000 — for these attractive recruits. (Of course, the most attractive recruits — Supreme Court clerks, aka the Elect — command six-figure signing fees.)

So what’s happening with clerkship bonuses in 2010? We’ve talked to a few experts and a few tipsters. There’s been some scaling back already. Experts say the market rate for clerkship bonuses may come down, but in their usual fashion, firms appear to be waiting for a big dog to take the lead on that. Could Cravath be that dog?

If you are a federal law clerk, now is the time to start thinking about your next career move. Law firm positions for clerks finishing up in fall 2010 are filling up fast, and if you are among this group, this Job of the Week is for you.

Position: Litigation Associate

Location: New York, DC, LA or Chicago

Bonus: These positions qualify for Lateral Link’s $10,000 placement bonus.

Description: Several top firms (including prominent national firms and several NY boutiques) have engaged Lateral Link to identify judicial clerks to join their associate ranks. Clerks should have previous big firm experience and be coming from a federal clerkship. Outstanding academic credentials.

If you are currently clerking, please sign up for Lateral Link at www.laterallink.com, and a Lateral Link search consultant will contact you about these positions. If you are currently a Lateral Link member, please view Position #5808 and request to be contacted by your personal search consultant.

Earlier: Prior Job of the Week listings

The most recent New Yorker features a profile of the newest resident of the High Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Given the tone of the piece, you might think One First Street is turning into Melrose Place. Journalist Lauren Collins describes Sotomayor as “the first celebrity Justice”: a “diabetic, a divorcée, a dental-bill debtor, a person who, the night before her investiture ceremony, belted out “We Are Family” in a karaoke bar at a Red Roof Inn.”

The profile covers some familiar territory, highlighting attacks on Sotomayor’s intellect during the confirmation process and indignation over her aggressive questioning during oral arguments since taking a seat on the High bench.

Overall, though, it’s more favorable in tone than the profile of John Roberts in the magazine last year. As the WSJ Law Blog notes, Sotomayor comes across as “eminently personable” and as a “stickler for preparation.”

Tina Brown of the Daily Beast, a former editor of the New Yorker, is a bit more graphic in her reaction to the piece for NPR:

Brown says the justice comes across as an “up-from-the-bootstraps woman who loves to bust out a poker game and knock back a scotch.” But, Brown adds, she also comes across as meticulous, rigorous and heavily influenced by her mother, a nurse, who emphasized education above all else…

“Sotomayor is not a great prose styler, not a fancy-flourish merchant,” says Brown. “She’s not a person who’s going to reinvent the philosophical approach to law, but she does believe that the law is to be understood by the common man in the street. And I think that there’s a lot to be said for that, actually.”

We concur with Brown’s ruling on the piece. We’ve excerpted our favorite anecdote from the profile after the jump. Clerking for Sotomayor sounds fun….

Our obsession with Supreme Court clerks is longstanding, dating back to our blogging for Underneath Their Robes (where we used to profile SCOTUS clerks). And it seems we’re not alone in lusting after the Elect.

Apparently oral argument makes people think of other oral activities. Check out this “Missed Connection” from Craigslist:

Law clerk at SCOTUS honest services argument - w4m (Supreme Court Building)

We were both there to hear the honest services arguments, which were fascinating. You were siting with the law clerks, I think, so I’m wondering if you’re one of them. You looked slightly older and more mature than the rest of the people you were sitting with. You’re quite handsome and I enjoyed watching you as you followed the arguments. Too bad you left at the case break—I’d been trying to catch your eye. (I was sitting in the front row of reserved seating.) I promise that if you agree to meet me for dinner that I won’t mention Black or Weyhrauch. What say you?

If you’ll forgive the quibbling, this posting is subpar; it’s missing some information. First, the poster has omitted her age (which typically goes after the “w4m”). Second, she offers little identifying information about herself (e.g., “I was wearing a red scarf”). Third, she offers little identifying information about the clerk, other than that he’s “more mature” and “quite handsome.” We suspect that every male Supreme Court clerk fancies himself “more mature” and “quite handsome.”

Typically a missed connection involves, well, a “connection.” The lack of identifying information suggests that no such connection was forged here. But we admire the poster’s effort.

This is not, by the way, the first time a CL “Missed Connection” has arisen out of a Supreme Court argument.

If you are a Biglaw associate and are lucky enough to score a federal clerkship, congratulations. It is a nice feather in your cap.

But in this job market, are you wise to actually accept your clerkship offer?

As many of you know, clerks have to formally resign from their firms while clerking. In the before times, in the long, long ago, this was no big deal. You resign, clerk for a year or two, and then get “re-hired” by your firm when you are ready to return to private practice.

As the legal recession took hold last year, some associates who received clerkship offers worried that their firms wouldn’t hire them back. But for the most part, people decided to take a clerkship instead of staying at the firm and risk getting laid off.

At Above the Law, we’ve heard a lot of talk about these clerks trying to come back to work now, only to find the door back into Biglaw closed.

At Cahill Gordon, we’re hearing that clerks were not re-hired despite promises to do so.

Details after the jump.

On Monday, November 16, we attended an interesting talk by Judge Gerard Lynch, formerly of the Southern District of New York and now on the Second Circuit. He spoke before the Regis Bar Association, a group of lawyers and law students who are graduates of our shared alma matter — Regis High School, an all-boys Catholic school run by the Jesuits, located here in New York.

As one would expect from a federal judge, especially one in a high-powered city like NYC, Judge Lynch has an amazing résumé. He graduated first in his class from Regis, first in his class from Columbia College (1972), and first in his class from Columbia Law School (1975). He clerked for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the Second Circuit, followed by Justice William Brennan on the Supreme Court. Prior to his appointment to the district court in 2000, Judge Lynch was a law professor at Columbia, worked in private practice (at a firm that would later become part of Covington & Burling), and served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the legendary U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District.

In September, Judge Lynch was confirmed to the Second Circuit by a vote of 94-3. He was the first Obama appointee to be confirmed to a circuit court.

Judge Lynch began his remarks to the RBA by discussing his background. He explained that he came from working-class roots and was the first in his family to graduate from college. He also noted that government lawyers and judges don’t make very much money: “As a public servant, first-year associates at large law firms have generally made more than I have,” he observed, before adding: “Thanks to the recession, that’s changed.”

(A federal district judge, which Judge Lynch was until his recent elevation, earns $169,300 a year — a bit above the New York starting salary of $160,000. As a circuit judge, he now earns $179,500. If Judge Lynch were to become Justice Lynch — he is sometimes mentioned on Supreme Court shortlists, although being a 58-year-old white male doesn’t help — he would earn $208,100, as an associate justice. Despite many years earning a government salary, Judge Lynch has done well for himself; his financial disclosures reveal a net worth of $1.6 million, with zero debt.)

Judge Lynch described being a trial judge as “the greatest job you can have.” Find out why, after the jump.

It’s the afternoon of Thursday, September 17. Do you know where your clerkship is?

Today is the first day, pursuant to the Law Clerk Hiring Plan for 2009 — which some judges follow, and some don’t — when interviews may be held and offers made. The plan even specifies a time of day for interviews and offers to begin — “8.00 a.m. (EDT)” — perhaps because, in years past, some judges brought applicants in for midnight meetings.

Relive the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, perhaps by (anonymously) disclosing your credentials and the clerkship(s) you got (or didn’t get), in the comments to this open thread.

Law Clerk Addict
Clerkship Notification Blog: 2010-11 Clerkship Season
THE LAW CLERK HIRING PLAN FOR 2009 [Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan]
About OSCAR [Online System for Clerkship Application & Review]

Earlier: Clerkship Application Season: Clear The Phones
Clerkship Application Season: Open Thread

The current New Yorker has an interesting piece by Jeffrey Toobin on President Obama’s judicial picks. Toobin took part in a live chat about the piece at NewYorker.com right now earlier today if you’re interested. (Try not to crash their website.).

UPDATE: The chat’s quite interesting. Toobin reveals why he likes Justice Souter best and answers this young wannabe judge’s question:

11:31 Guest: I’m a 25 year old law student, I want to be a judge, and my roommate smokes pot. How worried should I be? Do you think people will still care when I’m older?

11:32 Jeffrey Toobin: Don’t inhale! I’m kidding. I don’t think it will make a bit of difference. Our president has more or less admitted he was a pretty big pothead in his day, and it’s been a non-issue. Certainly the fact that your roommate smokes — not you — is irrelevant.

Toobin’s piece is available online to non-subscribers here. If you don’t feel like clicking through seven pages, here’s the ATL reader’s digest version:

A couple of days ago, we heralded the start of clerkship application season. Given the weakness in the legal economy, there should be a lot of people trying to snag a clerkship offer this year.

Today is the day that judges can start calling around and setting up interviews. A tipster reports:

Per the hiring plan, judges can start calling to extend interviews at 10 a.m. today. Thousands of 3Ls across the country are doubtless waiting anxiously by their phones. The whole process obviously will be agonizing …

Who is making calls? Share your boasts and fears in the comments.

Earlier: Clerkship Application Season: Open Thread

Once everyone gets back from Labor Day weekend, the craziness known as the clerkship application process will begin. This coming Tuesday is the first date when applications may be received, according to the 2009 Law Clerk Hiring Plan (followed by many but not all federal judges).

It’s become pretty standard to advise law students and lawyers dealing with the awful legal job market to consider clerking. As Harvard Law School told its students, earlier this year:

One option we would like to highlight is a judicial clerkship, which conveniently tends to be for one year, is valued by the full spectrum of legal employers, and is a fantastic job in itself…. Be sure to consider all types of clerkship opportunities, including those at state and specialty courts, because the competition is likely to be fierce this season.

Indeed. This will probably be the most competitive clerkship season in a decade (or longer). Landing a clerkship is easier said than done.

Update: As reported by U.S. News & World Report (via the ABA Journal), some law schools are better than others at sending their graduates into clerkships. The top three: (1) Yale, (2) the University of North Dakota, and (3) Stanford. Check out the full list over here.

Correction: Whoops. It seems that some of that clerkship info is wrong.

It’s not just feeder judge clerkships, or circuit court clerkships, or district court clerkships in hot districts that are tough to land. These days, even district clerkships in so-called “flyover country” require great credentials.

Discussion of hiring standards and timetables, after the jump.

Just a quick follow-up to yesterday’s discussion of whether Justice John Paul Stevens’s failure to hire a full complement of law clerks for October Term 2010 might shed light upon his retirement plans. In today’s New York Times, Adam Liptak has an excellent article on the subject. It begins:

A Supreme Court clerkship is a glittering prize and the ultimate credential in American law, one coveted by the top graduates of the best law schools. Until recently, though, only connoisseurs of ambition and status followed the justices’ hiring process closely.

It turns out those hiring decisions may be a sort of early warning system for hints about the justices’ retirement plans. “We’ve started tracking Supreme Court hiring in real time,” said David Lat, the founder of Above the Law, a legal blog.

Thanks for the shout-out, Mr. Liptak! When it comes to being “connoisseurs of ambition and status,” we plead guilty.

Justice David H. Souter’s failure to hire clerks this spring accurately signaled his decision to step down. On Wednesday, the court confirmed that Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 89, has hired only one clerk, instead of the usual four, for the term starting in October 2010. That ignited speculation that Justice Stevens may be planning to step down next summer.

Some thoughts on what’s going on here, after the jump.

A few weeks ago, we were emailing with one of our sources about an interesting fact we noticed, based on Above the Law’s real-time coverage of Supreme Court clerk hiring. The fact: thus far, Justice John Paul Stevens has hired just one law clerk for October Term 2010 (Sam Erman (Michigan 2007 / Garland)).

We didn’t write about it at the time, because OT 2010 is still a year away, and it seemed a bit speculative to make much of it so far in advance. But others noticed this fact too — and were faster on the trigger about it. Like the AP:

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court’s liberals will retire next year.

If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May.

Souter’s failure to hire clerks was the first signal that he was contemplating leaving the court….

Indeed. We started the speculation about Justice Souter’s retirement back in April 2009, over at Underneath Their Robes, based in part on his lack of law clerk hiring (and based in part on a sighting of him with Senator Pat Leahy).

But back to Justice Stevens:

In response to a question from The Associated Press, Stevens confirmed through a court spokeswoman Tuesday that he has hired only one clerk for the term that begins in October 2010. He is among several justices who typically have hired all four clerks for the following year by now. Information about this advance hiring is not released by the court but is regularly published by some legal blogs.

Cough cough — like Above the Law?

Commentary from expert observers, plus a reader poll, after the jump.

Now that the New York Times has covered it, it’s official: the recession has hit the legal profession.

Here’s more evidence. Yesterday afternoon, while walking along 53rd Street in Manhattan (between Broadway and Eighth), we came across The Man in a Van. Aaron Heideman, aka The Man in a Van, is traveling around the country, collecting stories of how people have been affected by the recession. Contributors write down their narratives on a giant poster (which, when unfurled, spans 50 yards). Selected stories are written on the van itself.

Here is one person’s story, from a former law clerk — someone who would usually have no trouble landing a job:

Two additional pictures — a larger shot of the banner, plus one of the van — after the jump.

We’ve previously reported on the hiring of Supreme Court law clerks for October Term 2009. Their names appear here (everyone but Justice Sotomayor’s clerks) and here (Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s clerks).

As we mentioned, we weren’t 100 percent certain on the Sotomayor clerks. Happily, as it turns out, our intelligence was correct. Thanks to everyone who shared information with us; we can’t accurately track Supreme Court clerk hiring without your help.

The Public Information Office of the Supreme Court has released the official list of October Term 2009 law clerks, and it matches up with what we’ve reported in these pages. For a copy of the official list, click here to download (as a Word document). (Note that it doesn’t include law school and prior clerkship information, which usually comes in a second, more detailed list.)

Not counting the law clerks’ middle initials, the official list doesn’t contain much information that hasn’t already appeared on ATL — with one exception. We now know that retired Justice David H. Souter’s clerk will be Thomas Pulham, formerly of the D.C. office of Jenner & Block (which has sent a number of its associates into SCOTUS clerkships).

Based on the official list, we’ve made some small tweaks to our list (e.g., changed some maiden names to married names). Check out the final list, a mash-up of the official list with the law school and prior clerkship information that we’ve gathered on our own, after the jump.

As goes Harvard Law School, so goes the rest of the law school world. Last month, HLS pointed its students towards an escape from Biglaw purgatory: clerkships.

Now Penn Law is doing the same, revising its clerkship policy to allow students to blanket the country — and cyberspace — with clerkship applications. From Law Clerk Addict:

JUDGE LIMIT POLICY

In light of the current market conditions and the expectation that the competition for clerkships this year will be greater than in the past, CPP and the Faculty Clerkship Committee decided to reconsider the 100 judge limit and have agreed to the following new limit: Applicants will be limited to 75 paper applications. There is no limit on the number of OSCAR judges you may apply to.

At least there’s still a limit on paper applications. Trees everywhere are breathing sighs of relief.

(For those of you who clerked in the Mesozoic Era, as we did, OSCAR has nothing to do with the Academy Awards; rather, it’s the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review.)

Update: UVA is following suit. Full message after the jump.

More after the jump.

The National Law Journal suggests that the down economy could be hitting the pockets of the Elect. Some firms are suggesting that the $250,000 bonus to hire a former Supreme Court clerk is just too expensive in today’s economy:

At firms that have been shaken by the downturn, however, a $250,000 bonus will be hard to sell, some practitioners say. “Intuitively, it doesn’t feel right to pay that kind of bonus when you are trying to make economies wherever you can at the firm,” said veteran advocate Carter Phillips, managing partner at Sidley Austin’s Washington office. Thomas Goldstein of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where there have been cuts, agrees that it’s tough to justify a $250,000 bonus when a firm is considering letting go a staff person paid $50,000. Because of that juxtaposition, he predicted bonuses will shrink — though he said it’s too early in the hiring season to say how much. “The number of firms willing to pay that amount of money will be down.”

But surely these firms aren’t talking about collusion, are they? SCOTUS clerks command top dollar, and firms that are struggling can’t artificially deflate the price for this top talent — even if they want to:

Firms won’t be sorry to wave goodbye to what Goldstein calls the “incredible escalation” that the $250,000 bonus represents. Even before the recession, firms were grumbling about it because of a recurring pattern: Some clerks grab the bonus, work at the firm for a year or three, then skip off to academia with loans paid off and kids’ tuition in the bank. “Firms are going to be more interested in clerks staying around and practicing law,” [former solicitor general Paul] Clement said.

While some firms might be priced out of the Elect market, we are still talking about a “recession-proof” set of credentials.

More after the jump.

Don’t get too close to any Ivory Tower in your town today. The news that Cravath is leaving the class of 2010 out of work for a year has sent monocles flying as students at top law schools learn a powerful lesson about free market capitalism.

Harvard Law School sent out a letter to all of its rising 3Ls in the wake of the Cravath announcement. It essentially warned them that you can’t trade in an HLS degree for food and shelter:

Dear Rising 3Ls:

We hope you are getting off to a great start in your summer jobs. We write to alert you about a situation that may require action on your part. As you know, many law firms deferred the start dates of class of 2009 associates from 2009 to 2010. Without clear indication that the economy will turn around by 2010, some firms are planning ahead and already notifying summer associates from the class of 2010 that their start dates are likely to be deferred until 2011 or later. See, e.g., Cravath and Skadden. Generally firms have been generous in providing fellowships or stipends to the class of 2009 given the surprise to that class, but firms may not provide such options to you in the class of 2010 because you have more advance notice about economic conditions. If you are at a law firm this summer and hope to return after graduation, you should ask yourself now what you might do to fill the 2010-2011 year if necessary. [Emphasis in the original.]

What should the class of 2010 do for post-graduate employment, “if necessary”? Stipends look like they are going to be less generous, so people might actually need to earn some money for a year.

So, what can you do with a law degree once Biglaw decides that they don’t want you? I hear law firms in Baghdad are booming right now.

Harvard has its own ideas, after the jump.

There has been a lot going on at WilmerHale recently. Summer associates are coming, regular associates are “transitioning.” The uncertainty has made some WilmerHale alumni who are currently clerking wonder if they can return to the firm when their clerkships end.

Above the Law has received reports from current clerks who were expecting to be hired back by WilmerHale after their clerkships are over. Some tipsters report that WilmerHale has decided not to rehire any of its former associates who took a year off to clerk. We know that many clerks are worried about being in a similar situation, so we asked WilmerHale clarify its position on rehiring clerks. The firm gave us this response:

All former summer associates who received an offer and then went on to clerk after graduation from law school have been invited to join the firm as associates. The firm, however, does not tell associates who leave for a clerkship that they can return after their clerkships are complete; rather, former associates must reapply to the firm, and we have not historically given offers of employment to all former associates at the conclusion of their clerkships. This year, we extended offers to some but not all of the former associates who inquired about returning; in addition, we have hired a small number of very promising judicial clerks who had not previously been with the firm.

So, if you clerk before you start at the firm, you are golden. But if you worked for a couple of years and then decided to clerk, best of luck.

Despite the difficulties clerks are facing when trying to get back into the Biglaw market, there are still many people who want to cool their heels as a clerk. One deferred incoming WilmerHale associate was so happy to receive a clerkship that the firm posted his gushing thanks on its internal website.

More details after the jump.

Just at the moment, a NASCAR driver that has lost control of his car and is 0.3 seconds from colliding with the wall is in a slightly safer position than a third year law student. The latest terrible news (subscription) comes from the Massachusetts Superior Court:

With this year’s budget cutbacks at the Trial Court, 25 third-year law students are scrambling for jobs instead of preparing for fall clerkships at the Superior Court.

The would-be law clerks lost their promised jobs last fall when the Trial Court instituted a hiring freeze, according to Superior Court Chief Justice Barbara J. Rouse.

According to one prospective clerk, who asked not to be named for fear of hurting future job leads, the court’s decision to rescind the clerkships was extremely ill-timed.

According to the story, officials knew there would be a hiring freeze as early as last November or October. But they are just getting around to telling the would-be clerks:

According to a statement issued by Rouse in response to questions from Lawyers Weekly, the clerkship offers “always are contingent on funding.”

In light of the 2009 fiscal issues, “we made the conditional nature of the offers even more clear,” Rouse writes. “The absolute hiring freeze implemented by the Trial Court in mid-October and the deteriorating nature of the state’s fiscal condition has precluded the hiring of any new personnel. … I regret that we are unable to benefit from the assistance of these qualified, capable individuals, however, we are managing unprecedented cuts and difficult decisions across the judicial branch.”

Is there some claim, perhaps based on a theory of reliance (i.e. promissory estoppel), that could be relevant here? More details after the jump.

On that ill-fated Thursday last month — aka the Valentine’s Day massacre, in which hundreds of law firm employees lost their jobs — a federal judicial clerk quipped: “I know the budget is set, but this almost makes me want to chain myself to my desk so they can’t make me leave. People at firms must be quaking in their Manolos.”

Well, law clerks are quaking in their Keds. Many of them have requested coverage of the plight of clerks in this economy — similar to the post we did back in February 2008, when the job market for clerks was already starting to soften. So here you go.

Once upon a time, clerks were a hot commodity, wooed by major law firms with constantly increasing clerkship bonuses. The market-rate clerkship bonus rose to $50,000 for one clerkship, $70,000 for two clerkships, and $250,000 for Supreme Court clerks. But times have changed since 2007 — and clerks, despite their general orientation towards the somewhat more recession-proof field of litigation, are not immune.

Back in February 2008, we wrote about firms no longer welcoming back former associates who left their firms to clerk, contrary to past practice. We also covered the trend of firms imposing freezes on hiring clerks who didn’t summer there.

The bad news continues to roll in. More recently, we’ve heard reports of firms cold-offering clerks holding offers to return. Now we’re hearing reports — anecdotal, admittedly — of firms outright rescinding offers to current clerks:

I know one friend, who is clerking for a federal judge, who had her offer from a large law firm formally revoked recently. My fellow clerks and I have not been allowed to accept our offers yet and are afraid they may be revoked as well.

Also, we are not sure if the firms will pay out the typical clerkship bonuses in this market. The bonus is obviously the least of our worries, but nonetheless it definitely factored into our decision to take clerkships in the first place.

More discussion, including a Latham & Watkins case study, after the jump.