Academics

Judicial Clerkships

UGA Law is a leader in clerkship placements for both state and federal courts. Our faculty and staff work closely with interested students to help them achieve their goals of post-graduate clerkships.

Transcript

The University of Georgia School of Law has a strong track record of placing students in clerkships. So on the federal side, you could have a District Court clerkship, the Court of Appeals level. And then occasionally we also have clerkships at the Supreme Court level, which are the most prestigious because there are approximately only 36 to 40 of those every year.

And what they can do for you, aside from opening some professional paths to you, is giving you different kinds of skills where you can really improve your writing and research and understand the litigation process much better, as well as getting a significant mentor in your career that can help you figure out those different paths that may work best for you.

The Law School tries to make lots of opportunities for judges to come to campus for lectures, for panel discussions, and to teach classes. And so one of the principal ways that we do that is through our Jurist-in-Residence programs. Those are great opportunities for us to build relationships with judges, and it gives them an opportunity to see the quality of our students. They'll work closely with the students in their class. They'll meet other students while they're here. I think that helps make them more receptive to hiring our students for clerkships down the road.

So we have a number of students who will get a chance to intern for a judge while they are in law school. Those can be great opportunities for students who are interested in clerkships, and so a number of federal judges, in Atlanta in particular, have hired our students for clerkships after they spent time in their chambers for an internship.

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