For recent law school graduates, clerking for a federal judge can be a key career stepping stone, and the hiring process is both highly opaque and famously nerve-wracking. Even as law school cohorts have become more diverse, the clerkship ranks have remained heavily skewed toward white men, particularly from a handful of top-ranked law schools. 

Leaders from Berkeley Law’s Berkeley Judicial Institute wanted to know why. So they asked 50 federal judges how and why they hire particular clerks in the first qualitative study of the issue. These conversations yielded a number of insights for law students, law schools, and other judges, from how much an aspiring clerk’s cover letter matters to the fact that “diversity” doesn’t mean the same thing to every judge. The pathbreaking study will be published in the Harvard Law Review later this year. 

In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky talks to the study’s three authors: Former U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California Jeremy Fogel, who’s now the executive director of BJI; California Supreme Court Associate Justice Goodwin Liu; and Mary Hoopes, an associate professor of law at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and co-director of the William Matthew Byrne Jr. Judicial Clerkship Institute. 

About: 

More Just from Berkeley Law is a podcast about how law schools can and must play a role in solving society’s most difficult problems. 

The rule of law — and the role of the law — has never been more important. In these difficult times, law schools can, and must, play an active role in finding solutions. But how? Each episode of More Just starts with a problem, then explores potential solutions, featuring Dean Erwin Chemerinsky as well as other deans, professors, students, and advocates, about how they’re making law schools matter. 

Have a question about teaching or studying law, or a topic you’d like Dean Chemerinsky to explore? Email us at morejust@berkeley.edu and tell us what’s on your mind.

For a transcript, please visit the episode page on the Berkeley Law podcast hub.

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