Harvard, Yale, and NYU Again Top List of The Legal Accountability Project’s Clerkships Database Subscribers By Law School
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
For Immediate Release
Contact: Aliza Shatzman, 267-481-2095, aliza.shatzman@legalaccountabilityproject.org
Harvard, Yale, and NYU Again Top List of The Legal Accountability Project’s Clerkships Database Subscribers By Law School
Three years ago, The Legal Accountability Project (LAP) committed to an ambitious goal: launching a first-in-the-nation Clerkships Database to democratize judicial clerkship information and opportunities, thereby ensuring all law students could access baseline information about clerking. Many in legal academia thought clerkship transparency and accountability couldn’t be done, and a few thought it shouldn’t be done. But LAP identified an unmet need for candid clerkship information and swiftly filled that void for students and recent graduates nationwide.
Since 2022, LAP has transformed the judicial clerkship system, serving more than 2,000 law students and recent graduates from nearly every U.S. law school - from the most well-resourced to the least - who sought out this information themselves and, in most cases, paid to access it. Today’s law students won’t remember a time when clerkship hiring was less than transparent–when the only information they might access about judges to avoid was through clerkship “whisper networks,” hoarded by a few top law schools and shared selectively, if at all, with students.
Here are the top 15 law schools by number of Clerkships Database subscribers this year:
Harvard (207)
Yale (161)
NYU (130)
Columbia (111)
Georgetown (106)
Chicago (101)
Berkeley (83)
George Washington (68)
Michigan (52)
Stanford (43)
Texas (43)
Virginia (42)
Duke (38)
Vanderbilt (37)
Penn (29)
LAP also welcomed 6 law review subscribers - Harvard, NYU, Texas, George Washington, California, and Southern California - and 2 law school subscribers, Illinois Law and Catholic Law. And thanks to generous donations, some students from 8 law schools - Harvard, Yale, Chicago, NYU, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Rutgers, and Houston - were able to access LAP’s Database free of charge.
More than 95 percent of Database subscribers this year described their experience using the platform as positive and rated the Database as better than their school’s existing resources–including most students at schools that maintain internal clerkships databases.
LAP continues to urge law schools to subscribe for just $5 per student per year, so students no longer have to pay, thereby ensuring there are no equity or access issues. Many law schools signal a commitment to robust clerkship advising: based on student demand and feedback on the platform, LAP’s Database is a necessary component of clerkship advising.
Ensuring that clerkship applicants can avoid abusive judges is particularly urgent. As a recent NPR investigation highlighted, law clerks who are mistreated by judges have no legal recourse. LAP’s post-clerkship surveys suggest that around 20-25 percent of clerkship experiences are negative. And while not every negative experience can be characterized as abusive, no one should endure workplace mistreatment, particularly not at the hands of a life-tenured federal judge who can exert enormous power and influence over the clerk’s career in a work environment where clerks have no legal protection against retaliation for reporting.
Particularly now, the legal profession looks to law schools to lead the charge for reform–both by student activists demanding better for themselves and their peers, and from law school leaders signaling a commitment to democracy. Law schools should work with us and lead the way on judicial accountability and workplace transparency.
LAP’s Database is a common-sense solution to historically intractable social problems. We’re proud to be the go-to source of candid clerkship information and look forward to serving even more clerkship applicants in the years ahead.
