Imagine this. You grab a cup of coffee and head to the court. With enough coffee flowing through your veins, you're now ready to chat with the judge about legal questions, granting orders and even the construction of documents. Who are you? You're a law clerk and this is just the beginning of your day.
The rest of your day may be spent going through complaints, looking at petitions or motions, and even reading through pleadings so you can help develop a case. Then, you need to type up some judicial opinions, decisions, or citations. There's lots of work to do as a law clerk, so you need to be organized so you don't waste a single minute.
As a law clerk, you'll probably spend a lot of time with judges. You're there to provide assistance on legal determinations while also writing up research-based opinions that are relevant to the court. The best part of becoming a law clerk is that you don't have to wait very long to become one. You could be a student by day and a law clerk by night. Unless you have night classes, in which case it might be switched.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Law Clerk. For example, did you know that they make an average of $24.28 an hour? That's $50,511 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 6% and produce 50,100 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many Law Clerks have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed Communication skills, Computer skills and Interpersonal skills.
If you're interested in becoming a Law Clerk, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 63.0% of Law Clerks have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 5.5% of Law Clerks have master's degrees. Even though most Law Clerks have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a Law Clerk. When we researched the most common majors for a Law Clerk, we found that they most commonly earn Bachelor's Degree degrees or Doctoral Degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on Law Clerk resumes include Master's Degree degrees or Associate Degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a Law Clerk. In fact, many Law Clerk jobs require experience in a role such as Legal Extern. Meanwhile, many Law Clerks also have previous career experience in roles such as Internship or Judicial Internship.