Ten Years of Online Clerkship Hiring
Ten years and approximately 9,000 clerkship position postings ago, the federal Judiciary launched the Online System for Clerkship Applications and Review, or OSCAR. The information and application system created a transparent online law clerk hiring process for applicants and law schools, while giving federal judges a way to communicate their hiring practices and timelines. OSCAR has proved so popular, that in the last decade more than 2.5 million applications have been submitted by prospective law clerks and staff attorneys.
[Editor's Note: Judge Timothy Burgess, chair of the OSCAR Working Group, talks about OSCAR's impact on the clerkship hiring process in the "On Topic" interview above.]
Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie (3rd Cir.) credits Judge James Robertson ( D. DC.), former chair of the Judicial Conference Information Technology Committee, as the driving force behind OSCAR over a decade ago.
As Vanaskie recalls, “Jim Robertson talked about trucks arriving at the court full of applications and having to commandeer the clerk’s office staff in the District of Columbia to unload the trucks and sort through all those applications and get them to the judges’ chambers. It was an enormous task.” Seeing a need, Robertson began OSCAR’s development with a group of judges from the District Courts for the District of Columbia and the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and the Court of Federal Claims.
Over the last 10 years, OSCAR has evolved from a court-managed, local IT initiative to a nationally-supported program that’s a favorite of federal judges hiring law clerks or staff attorneys. Since June 2005, the number of Article III, bankruptcy, and magistrate judges participating in the OSCAR program has grown from 388 to 1,722 in 2014. Seventy-three percent of all federal judges now maintain a hiring profile on OSCAR.
Prior to OSCAR, a judge with an open clerkship position might receive reams of paper applications and materials, all of which had to be sorted and screened by hand.
Judge Stefan Underhill (D. Conn.) remembers those pre-OSCAR days.
“I’d bring home two or three boxes full of law clerkship applications, watch NFL football, and sort through them over the course of a long weekend. It was pretty bad,” he said. For a vacant law clerkship, Underhill typically receives 300 to 400 applications; chambers in major metropolitan areas might receive twice that number.
“I do think it’s easier for both students and judges to screen using the OSCAR system,” Underhill said. “It’s easier for students to find chambers to which they’d like to apply and its easier for judge to say what they’re looking for in a law clerk.”
Judge Pamela Pepper (E.D. Wis.) has used OSCAR both as a bankruptcy judge and as a new district judge.
“I like the fact that you don’t have piles and piles of paper. You don’t have letters of recommendation coming one week and application envelopes arriving another week and you have to remember which goes where. OSCAR is a place where it all lives online. You can see when the application packet is completed,” Pepper said.
Prior to OSCAR, students and attorneys might hear of open positions by word-of-mouth or by contacting judges’ chambers, and they rarely knew what a judge wanted in a law clerk.
With OSCAR, judges post descriptions of what they’re looking for in law clerks or attorneys—for example, coursework, class rank, bar membership, moot court, or prior work experience. Judges can electronically sort complete applications and focus on those that meet their criteria.
“I can post my hiring preferences on OSCAR: for example, I hire late and I don’t take paper applications,” said Underhill. “Anybody who might be interested in clerking for me won’t have to guess. It’s just a form of communication.”
Applicants also can view profiles of judges and easily submit applications to a number of open positions on OSCAR, no need for postage or copying. One OSCAR improvement over the years has been the ability for applicants to update their documents, reporting new grades, class rank updates, awards, recommendations, and other information. They also can see judges’ preferred interview methods—telephone or video conference, or no preference—and the minimum number of semesters of law school grades required for a law clerk application.
For Vanaskie, a favorite OSCAR improvement over the years has been an enhanced search ability that lets judges readily sort through and rank the applications of most interest to them. As an adjunct law professor, he also likes added functionality that dramatically improved his ability to upload his letters of recommendation.
Recent software upgrades to OSCAR will make it easier for judges to keep their OSCAR profiles current, which benefits both judges and prospective law clerks.
“It’s critical that judges get law clerks who are good fits for them, who can help them do their work. But it’s also really important that the students and lawyers out in the world who are applying for these positions have something of a level playing field,” said Pepper. “OSCAR gives everyone the same information. It’s pretty user-friendly, easy to change, easy to update, and easy to access the things you want.”
“OSCAR is here to stay, which is a great thing,” Vanaskie agrees. “It’s a tremendous benefit for the law schools and students, as well as the judges and judges’ chambers staff. OSCAR not only helps me organize my review of hundreds of applications, it lets me find the nuggets. Those are the applications that may not have surfaced in a paper review, but who tumble out when that person makes my screening list. All of a sudden, thanks to OSCAR, I see somebody who I think is exceptional.”
For more about OSCAR including current law clerk positions, information on how to apply, FAQs, resources, and news, visit the OSCAR website.
Related Topics: Technology