How state court clerkship opportunities affect legal employment

California state courts do not offer clerkships to new law school graduates. And that decision affects the employment outcomes of graduates of California law schools.

Federal clerkships have been examined at great length (here and elsewhere). State court clerkships, however, remained relatively underexamined. And they are a source of significant volatility in comparing employment outcomes of graduates.

It's a crude general statement to say that law students tend to practice in the state in which their law school is located. I looked at how many law school graduates came from each state's law schools in 2013. (Alaska has no law school.) I then looked at how many of those graduates obtained state court clerkships in the reported ABA employment statistics. Lacking more granular data, it was a rough proxy--graduates, after all, may clerk in another state rather than the state of their law school. (For more details, see the bottom of this post.)

Here's a map (courtesy of Choropleth.us) of how many law school graduates from each state's law schools obtained state court clerkships, with figures in a table below:

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State	St. Clerks	St. Grads	Pct.
New Jersey	273	855	31.9%
South Dakota	14	71	19.7%
Hawaii	20	104	19.2%
Montana	15	81	18.5%
Nevada	23	132	17.4%
North Dakota	12	74	16.2%
Maryland	95	602	15.8%
Delaware	44	279	15.8%
Minnesota	121	942	12.8%
Idaho	13	117	11.1%
South Carolina	49	442	11.1%
New Mexico	12	114	10.5%
Vermont	21	200	10.5%
Colorado	46	444	10.4%
Utah	26	292	8.9%
Oregon	45	524	8.6%
Pennsylvania	140	1700	8.2%
Rhode Island	14	175	8.0%
Iowa	25	328	7.6%
Maine	6	96	6.3%
Kentucky	25	421	5.9%
Virginia	85	1440	5.9%
Washington	38	655	5.8%
Arizona	36	630	5.7%
Louisiana	52	924	5.6%
Mississippi	20	377	5.3%
Wyoming	4	76	5.3%
District of Columbia	113	2211	5.1%
West Virginia	6	130	4.6%
Connecticut	24	538	4.5%
Nationwide	2044	46116	4.5%
Massachusetts	100	2384	4.2%
Indiana	31	831	3.7%
Alabama	15	421	3.6%
North Carolina	46	1424	3.2%
Wisconsin	15	487	3.1%
Georgia	34	1112	3.1%
Missouri	27	885	3.1%
Tennessee	15	497	3.0%
Kansas	9	324	2.8%
Michigan	54	2228	2.4%
New York	113	5009	2.3%
New Hampshire	2	107	1.9%
Nebraska	4	249	1.6%
Texas	30	2323	1.3%
Ohio	19	1476	1.3%
Illinois	29	2274	1.3%
Arkansas	3	275	1.1%
Florida	34	3185	1.1%
California	46	5185	0.9%
Oklahoma	1	466	0.2%
Alaska	0	0	0.0%

For most of the top few states (e.g., Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Dakota) have similar characteristics: one in-state school, a relatively insular market, and small law schools. Those schools each send a handful of their graduates to clerk in their states' courts--at least, it's probably a good guess, despite the lack of more granular data, that they're clerking in their home state.

A state like New Jersey is an anomaly. It has a robust state court clerkships system designed specifically for recent law graduates. Its website boasts 480 one-year positions. So it's probably no surprise that New Jersey-based law schools channel an extremely high number of graduates into state court clerkships.

Other states are not so fortunate--California among them, as it sits near the bottom of the list.

Here are the numbers as a percentage of full-time, long-term, bar passage-required jobs. (As a note, even though these positions are often only one year, they are still considered "long-term.")

State	St. Clerks	FTLT BPR	Pct.
New Jersey	273	539	50.6%
Hawaii	20	56	35.7%
Delaware	44	132	33.3%
Maryland	95	290	32.8%
South Dakota	14	44	31.8%
Nevada	23	84	27.4%
North Dakota	12	44	27.3%
Montana	15	56	26.8%
Minnesota	121	538	22.5%
Vermont	21	109	19.3%
Rhode Island	14	73	19.2%
South Carolina	49	269	18.2%
Idaho	13	73	17.8%
Colorado	46	273	16.8%
Oregon	45	296	15.2%
Maine	6	41	14.6%
New Mexico	12	84	14.3%
Utah	26	187	13.9%
Pennsylvania	140	1012	13.8%
Louisiana	52	464	11.2%
Iowa	25	229	10.9%
Arizona	36	338	10.7%
Washington	38	364	10.4%
Kentucky	25	244	10.2%
Virginia	85	965	8.8%
Mississippi	20	230	8.7%
Connecticut	24	290	8.3%
West Virginia	6	75	8.0%
Wyoming	4	51	7.8%
District of Columbia	113	1441	7.8%
Nationwide	2044	26539	7.7%
Massachusetts	100	1345	7.4%
Indiana	31	477	6.5%
North Carolina	46	754	6.1%
Michigan	54	915	5.9%
Alabama	15	272	5.5%
Wisconsin	15	279	5.4%
Missouri	27	523	5.2%
Georgia	34	724	4.7%
Kansas	9	206	4.4%
Tennessee	15	363	4.1%
New York	113	3153	3.6%
New Hampshire	2	74	2.7%
Nebraska	4	151	2.6%
Ohio	19	818	2.3%
Florida	34	1653	2.1%
Illinois	29	1413	2.1%
Texas	30	1506	2.0%
Arkansas	3	163	1.8%
California	46	2557	1.8%
Oklahoma	1	302	0.3%
Alaska	0	0	0.0%

Now, of course, if California courts began offering robust clerkships opportunities for graduates, it might simply be that graduates who otherwise would have pursued other job opportunities would instead take a state court clerkship first. But, this data, I think, does show that regional employment opportunities greatly affect the short-term legal employment outcomes of graduates. (And I imagine many will draw a variety of conclusions from this data--but, the primary purpose of this post is to provide the data.)

Methodology note: A few schools do distort the picture for a few states (like Yale in Connecticut sends relatively few of its graduates into state court clerkships). So I thought I might define each school's "home market" as the state where the school sent the largest percentage of its graduates. The only schools that had a percentage difference of at least one-half of one percentage point were Pennsylvania, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Connecticut--and the greatest of these was Connecticut at a 2.6-point difference. These were too small for me to decide to use this metric--particularly because the state where the school sends the largest percentage of its students may change from year to year, which would make future comparisons across years more difficult. As the methodology only examines graduates from each state's schools, Alaska lists zero, but it has does offer state clerkships.