Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm taking another look at the pilot Federal Clerk Hiring Plan and noting that support for the effort—now in its second year—isn't universal. Or at least, some legal educators see room for improvement. Next up, I'm checking on the student reaction to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' recent teaching visit to the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Spoiler alert: Not everyone was happy to see him on campus.

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

Not Everyone Loves the Federal Clerk Hiring Plan

|

Here's the deal: Last week I wrote this story about law deans from top schools writing to federal judges in support of the one-year-old pilot federal clerk hiring plan. (If you don't know about it, the short version is that a group of judges devise the pilot in 2018 to rein in the clerk hiring chaos. It essentially pushes clerk hiring to the end of the 2L year, and gives a specific date when judges can accept applications.) The letter was signed by 11 law deans from the so-called T-14 schools and made a strong case that hiring under the parameters of the plan was a vast improvement for their students and led to a less stressful 1L year, since the students weren't yet applying for clerkships. They sent it to every federal judge last month in hopes of persuading more judges to hire under the plan this year and to lobby for its widespread adoption after the two-year pilot ends.