career > clerkship letters request instructions

As you are creating your requests to faculty for letters of recommendation for potential clerkships, you will be asking both Career Services and Faculty Support staff for assistance with getting judges address information and generating the form letters. By following these instructions, you will minimize the problems either group may encounter in assisting your efforts to generate these Clerkship Letters.

1. Go to Career Services (Suite 206) and pick up a Judicial Clerkship Recommendation Letters Request Form and a copy of these instructions.


2. Come to Career Services and ask to see the CQ Press 2007 Federal and State Judicial Clerkship Directory, which is the most current list of Federal Circuit and District Court Judges. We will photocopy pages for you for any/all Circuits to which you will be applying. From these lists, you will need to create an Excel Workbook.


3. Contact each professor from whom you are requesting a letter of recommendation and ask that they develop a letter for you. Please discuss with them when you would like the letters to be sent out. Allow at least two weeks from when you speak with them until you want the letters sent. The professor(s) will send Debby Warren the letter when they complete it.


4. Turn in the completed Judicial Clerkship Recommendation Letters Request Form to Debby Warren in Suite 350. For federal judicial clerkships, turn in your requests no later than two weeks before Labor Day.


5. Email your modified Excel workbook file(s) [link to attached mock excel file] to Debby Warren. Complete the Judicial Clerkship Recommendation Letters Request Form and any other request forms that you need for your clerkship letters. Debby will contact you directly if problems with your files arise. Debby will immediately email back all files received in any other format other than an Excel Workbook and will ask you to send the file in the proper format.


6. Completed letters will be mailed directly or placed in your mail box for you to send to the courts, based on what you indicated on the Judicial Clerkship Recommendation Letters Request Form. They should be available within 3-4 days of receiving your letter of recommendation request form, your Excel Workbook, and your letters from each professor.