Judicial Clerkships

If you are interested in a clerking for a judge, especially in 2025 right after graduation, please check out new information about respective judges’ hiring status/timelines and a summary directed at 2Ls but also potentially relevant to 1Ls. Use your HarvardKey credentials to log in to the Bench.

Looking for post-graduation options? A latest count as of December 16 revealed 343 judges potentially still hiring for Fall 2023 clerkships, not to mention nominees who will need clerks too if they are confirmed to become new judges.

For those interested in public international law, the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s Judicial Fellows Programme offers an opportunity like a clerkship. HLS is one of several law schools invited to nominate a single candidate, and the school provides a stipend of $45,000 to its nominee.

A quick alert for Canadian students – some application deadlines for 2024 clerkships are coming up in January.  See a related post in the…

Engaging with HLS faculty makes for a more educational and enjoyable law school experience.

If you aren’t already familiar with one of the most substantive jobs you can have at the beginning of a career in law, learn about this exciting option and how to develop your candidacy while still in law school.

Interested in clerking? If you missed the 9/14 update meeting, catch up by reviewing the annotated slides (pdf).

The OCS Clerkship Team is excited to announce new virtual drop-in hours on Tuesdays from 12:30pm-1:30pm beginning September 20. Clerkship-specific login information can be found on the drop-ins page. For general questions that may be applicable to a broader audience, please continue to post to the Bench Blog open posts. For longer conversations, please schedule a full appointment.

If you are interested in clerking in 2024 or 2025 and not already plugged into the application process, now’s a good time to join, get organized, and perhaps start applying.  Our latest tracking of judge’s hiring status indicates many are acting already, although of course others will act later.

Does your choice of a job for next summer have much impact on a later clerkship search? The short answer is no, not enough to make the clerkship angle a deciding factor.

To the extent you have any choices among projects in your summer job, try to seek out writing projects. These projects will help develop your writing skills and be a helpful source of writing samples for future job searches, including for judicial clerkships.

You can still start a clerkship search from scratch now or in the future if you develop new interest. See prior reassurance, the timeline for clerkship applications, and the concrete steps to take. You need to arrange for three letters of recommendation before you can start applying, but the letters do not need to be submitted at the same time as your side of the application materials. The recs can follow later. 

2Ls interested in 2023 or 2024 judicial clerkships now should subscribe (if you haven’t already) to our separate clerkship blog, the Bench, to receive important clerkship updates by email. Please subscribe using your HLS email address for security reasons. In this spring semester, we will guide you toward being ready to apply this summer. Content directed at your class is coming soon. Use your HarvardKey credentials to log in to the Bench.

If you are interested in 2022, 2023, and/or 2024 judicial clerkships, please subscribe (if you haven’t already) to our separate clerkship blog, the Bench, to receive important clerkship updates by email. Please subscribe using your HLS email address for security reasons. Then use your HarvardKey credentials to log in to the Bench.

ver the winter break, you can take time to recharge, without needing to think about clerkships. In January, we will have more information about the application timeline and process, including a newly-revamped version of our clerkship website. If you are antsy to do something with spare time over the break, see the clerkship preparation summary from October.

In group advising sessions, many 1L have been asking questions about clerkships, including the timeline for applications and what are good summer jobs if interested in clerking. Find the answers to these questions and more in our Introduction to Judicial Clerkships webinar.

A quick alert for Canadian students. Canadian courts tend to explain their clerkship hiring processes on their websites. A few example sites are linked in this Bench blog post.

There are some good and not-so-good reasons for considering a judicial internship for your 1L summer or during a school semester. Check out our webpages about judicial internships (and clerkships) for reference, as well as some specific opportunities already posted in the HLS Job Bank.

A quick alert for Canadian students. Canadian courts tend to explain their clerkship hiring processes on their websites. A few example sites are linked in this Bench blog post.

2Ls, if you are interested in clerking, what should you be doing now? Login to The Bench and check out this list of suggestions. To access The Bench, use your HLS Me Account/LDAP username (example: email address “jharvard@jd23.law.harvard.edu” would translate to username “jharvard.jd23”) and your HarvardKey password.

In case you missed our live panel discussion last week, you now can watch the “Engaging with Faculty” program video. Professors Andrew Crespo, Richard Lazarus, Anna Lvovsky, and Alexandra Natapoff provided insights about how best to cultivate substantive relationships in our current environment.