For those of you who are interested in clerking, I highly recommend an excellent article by Judge Ruggero Aldisert, Ryan C. Kirkpatrick and James R. Stevens III.  "Rat Race: An Insider Guide to Landing Judicial Clerkships" (Westlaw password required) gives students a blunt, realistic, and practical overview of the judicial clerkship application process.  The authors don’t sugarcoat their advice.  For example, the authors recommend that student applicants keep their cover letters short and sweet:

Unless you have some special interest in or connection with a particular judge, use the standard form letter. The cover letter is not the place to recount all of your academic and professional accomplishments or to discuss your summer work experiences; that is the purpose of the resume. If you are the editor of a journal or rank highly in your class, you may note those achievements. Other than that, however, the cover letter should be straightforward and short.

And for those students who are enthusiastic users of social software, the authors give this cautionary advice:

Most judges may be unfamiliar with the power of the Internet, but their clerks are not. This past year, when there was a free moment or two in the chambers, the law clerks "Googled" several of our applicants’ names and, lo and behold, they found a treasure trove of information omitted from the carefully-crafted application packet. What does this tell you, the applicant? Be careful what you put on personal web pages, web logs, or other Internet sites such as Friendster, because a clerk with a couple of minutes on his or her hands could be researching you. Although clerks may find it fun to circulate a link to your website around the office, you may not appreciate what knowledge of your party antics may do to your job chances.

Good luck to all of you who will be applying to judicial clerkships this year!  And if you need help researching your judges’ opinions or background, please stop by the reference desk.  We’re happy to help you with this part of the application process.