Clerkships and WashULaw

Anna Donovan: Hello and welcome back to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. My name is Anna Donovan. I am rolling solo today, without Naomi, but I have two wonderful guests joining us from the Career Center.

First, I have Mahrya Fulfer Page. She is the Senior Director of Judicial Clerkships and Public Interest. She’s also a Lecturer in Law and the Co-Director of the Judicial Clerkship Externship. Welcome, Mahrya.

And I also have Molly Snyder, who is a Senior Career Counselor and the other co-director of our Judicial Clerkship Externship at WashU Law. Welcome, both of you.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Thanks for having us.

Anna Donovan: Fantastic. I know we did a podcast episode some season ago, some episodes ago with you, Mahrya, about clerkships, but maybe kind of starting from the top a little bit. You know, a lot of questions I get from prospective students and current applicants are how WashU Law specifically in the Career Center supports students who are interested in pursuing a clerkship. Could you talk a little bit about how your office does that?

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Absolutely. So thank you for having me.

So we do a lot of things to help support our students with clerkships. First and foremost, we really like to meet with you. So that will go for any job that you want, whether it’s big law, prosecution, public defense. What we really want to focus on is we like individual strategies. And the only way to know your individual strategy is to get to know the individual.

And so we do really work towards meeting with students on the regular, meeting with them to discover what they want to get out of the clerkship, what they want to give to the clerkship, and where they want it to go. Once we’ve kind of nailed down those things, we have a lot of other methods in which we support students.

We help students with paper applications. I know I said paper out loud, like with a stamp and like an envelope and all of that. So we do do a lot of work helping with paper applications because some judges do accept—

Molly Snyder: Accept those and prefer those.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: We also work towards gearing students up with their materials. We review everything that they have, their resume, their cover letter. We strategize about who you should ask for recommendation letters from and things like that. And then we will help you with those applications whether you’re on campus or even off campus.

We do have a lot of students that apply for clerkships straight out of law school. So they finish their law school, their three years, and then they go off into the world and clerk for a judge. There are some judges that prefer that you have work experience. That’s great. Go get your work experience and then if you are wanting to apply in two years, three years, five years, ten years, I just helped an alum who was ten years out, who was applying to clerkships now. We are here to help.

And with that, you just reach back out to the Career Center and we will also, again, strategize with you and help you find the best method to apply to and the best path to apply.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. I think that’s great for people to hear that you guys are going to be a resource for them as alumni, and that you are open to helping students in the future of their career if they want to pivot to a clerkship. Fantastic.

What is the timeline looking like? You know, definitely every incoming first-year student should be meeting with their Career Center regularly. Sort of when does actually like getting down to starting to work on your materials to apply for a postgraduate clerkship happen for students?

Mahrya Fulfer Page: So again, I’m going to punt back to the individualized thing. It really is super individualized, depending on you know what your goals are, where you want to apply, and of course, where you fall in the class. Although, you know, we’ve had students from every quartile of the class get clerkships. It just depends on the path that you want to take. Sometimes you might need to clerk several times for different judges, but that might be the path that you want to take and you need to take to get to your goal.

So it really can begin as early as you want or as late as you want. You know, we have students who are like, oh, I’m a three-year L. The clerkships are gone. That is not true. I can help you find one. I am a firm believer that there is a lid for every pot. So if you, when you come here, you will probably hear me say that to you at least once, but I do think that there is a lid for every pot in a lot of things in life, including a clerkship.

Anna Donovan: Fantastic. And, you know, for people who are thinking about these things early and maybe not necessarily the third-year student kind of coming to clerkships at that point, how can students make themselves a good clerkship applicant?

Mahrya Fulfer Page: I mean, there’s a lot of ways to do it. It can be your prior work history. It can be the internships that you do. Of course, we’re going to tell you to do well in school. That always helps. If you don’t, that’s okay too, because we will find a path that fits you.

There are other things that you can do, though, to bolster your resume too, whether it be joining a journal, which I’m going to probably encourage you very strongly to try out for a journal, but there’s also writing competitions that I might tell you to do, as well as doing moot court competitions. We have several different moot court teams at WashU, the National Moot Court team, but there’s also the Jessup, which is an international one, and then there’s… Oh, it’s like admiralty law, which makes, because they’re like, they’re awarded like a paddle, and I love it.

But it’s just different ways of getting great writing, great litigation experience, all of those things that can help amp up your application and make you a candidate that judges want to consider.

Another thing that I really like is our professors. Our professors for a clerkship application, you would ask for letters of recommendation. So our professors have to write all of those. So I always tell students, get to know your professors. You know, go to office hours. Go ask questions. You know, make sure that they’re good researched, sound questions, because everybody has time issues, you know, we have to, we have to meet with lots of students. But go and talk to them. They’re really amazing. And most of them will really work with you and talk with you about great things. And that’s the way with with your journal note, if you find a topic that is incredibly interesting about antitrust, go and talk to Professor Droback about it. He will have delightful things to say.

And then, in addition, I do suggest sometimes students, it’s a good idea to do either a judicial internship or, dun dun dun, a judicial externship. And that’s one of the things WashU does a great job with is that we do have a lot of externship opportunities. I will plug not only ours, because Molly and I love ours, but there are others, too, where you can get some real hands-on experience.

So we have the government externship, where you could go work with a U.S. Attorney’s office. We have the semester in practice, where you literally go somewhere. We have a student right now who is in Nevada with a judge. We’ve had students that have gone to Alaska and worked for the Public Defender’s office, which, by the way, is fantastic because they, you literally, I think, he tried a case there. So I will give that a plug too.

And then we also have the lawyering practice externship, which is here in St. Louis, which we have so many places that you can go to. There’s Legal Services, which is arguably one of the best legal services organizations in the country. We have a ton of prosecutor and public defender’s offices. We have all sorts of new startups that are happening, as well as sports teams too.

But for ours, we have the judicial externship. And what makes, there’s a lot of reasons St. Louis is fantastic, but one of the great things is, is that we are close to a ton of judges. We have the Eastern District of Missouri here, which is a federal courthouse. And then right across the river, which is like five minutes away and a metro ride away, is the Southern District of Illinois. So students could have opportunities to do a judicial externship with federal judges in both of those courthouses.

Additionally, the Eighth Circuit hears oral arguments here in St. Louis. So if you want to watch oral arguments, come here. You can watch all of them. We try to post them and make sure that students attend. And we do have an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals judge that sits in St. Louis as well.

Aside from those judges, we also have the Eastern District of Missouri Court of Appeals that sits here in St. Louis. And then there are two close, St. Louis is fun. So there’s St. Louis City, which is technically within St. Louis County, but they are two separate entities. Therefore, they have two separate courthouses that are literally like five miles apart, if that. And so there’s all those judges too that you can either intern with or extern with. So there really is a large opportunity to work with, to work next to, to learn from so many judges at various levels.

There’s family law. We have a fantastic family law judge that does take interns from time to time. There’s also bankruptcy judges here too. There are two, as well as one that’s a retired bankruptcy judge that teaches now at WashU. And so there are just so many opportunities to get some experience, figure out what you want, what you like about it, what you’re looking for.

And that, I think, can make you, to circle back to what your actual question was, is what can make you a really strong applicant. It’s just the knowing what you’re getting yourself into and knowing that you want to do it.

I’m sorry, Molly, I’m talking too much.

Molly Snyder: That’s okay.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: I was gonna flip right over to Molly.

Molly Snyder: Yay!

Anna Donovan: So we just had a lovely conversation with Steve Alagna, and he, as the director of our appellate clinic, you know, mentioned that our clinics and externships are for second and third year students. So Molly, so if, you know, you have your students, you’ve applied, they’ve gotten, you know, into the judicial clerkship externship, kind of where does it go from there? How do you help students, I guess, like, find their placement? Sort of what is the process for your specific externship students?

Molly Snyder: Sure. So like Mahrya said, something that I really love about where we’re placed specifically is the opportunity to be with the Eastern District of Missouri and Southern District of Illinois, plus all of the state level and Judge Gruender, the appellate level judge, all right here.

So students, when they are seeking placement in the externship, they submit a preference form within their other materials. And we have strong relationships with the judges. And so we work with the judges, work with the student to place them, again, based on their career goals, based on where they want to be, based on what the judge is looking for. We will make those placements and then support both the student and the judges throughout the semester as the student learns in chambers.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. And do you, I guess, both meet with those students like on a regularly scheduled situation?

Molly Snyder: Yes. And something that I think we both love, one of the requirements that we both love in the Judicial Externship is observation requirements. And so students, there’s a list of, I don’t know, 15 observations that they need to go in person and see. It’s just such a better education to see it in person than it is to hear about it or watch it online.

So we meet with the students weekly, talk through their writing, what they’re learning, the feedback they’re getting. And we talk through their observations, what they’re seeing, what they’re learning, what they want to take with them into their own practice.

Anna Donovan: Fantastic. And do you…

Mahrya Fulfer Page: That is my favorite part, too. I mean, I was a…

Anna Donovan: I didn’t even know that about the externship. I feel like I’m learning things here today.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: No, I was a prosecutor prior to coming here, and jury selection voir dire is like my favorite thing in the history of the world. And so I always am so excited to talk about it with our students. Sometimes it’s the first time they’ve ever seen it. And to talk about, like, what the whole point of it is, because most people think, like, oh, they’re picking me. And it’s really not. It’s more they’re not picking you. And the people that just are left is who’s on the jury. So I love… That’s one of my favorite parts is just talking about the observations.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. And for your students who complete the externship, do you find that they are mostly looking to continue on to do postgraduate clerkships? Or sort of what is their… Are there, I guess, at least at that current moment, kind of career trajectories? Do you know?

Mahrya Fulfer Page: I think it’s, like, 50-50. You know, you have some students that, for whatever reason, they really want to get out and start working. You know, they either want to be a public defender, so they, by hook or by crook, they will be in a courtroom straight out. And so this is a good opportunity for them to get inside the head of judges and see what judges and jurors look for.

We’ll have other students who didn’t want to do clerkships. They were just doing this to improve their writing. And then afterwards, they’re like, oh, my goodness, this is what I want to do. I love this. And so then, yes, those people do pursue it. But I do think it’s just a great opportunity for them to get an idea of what is out there.

So I would say it’s probably 50-50. There are some students who know they want to do transactional work, and that’s all they’ve ever wanted to do. Now, I will argue with them any day of the week and say that you should still consider a clerkship, because you don’t want to go into litigation. That’s why you want to be a transactional attorney. So you should kind of know what happens when that ends up. But I digress.

And so with those people, if they know that they’re like, I could never clerk, this would be the time to do it. They don’t ever, you know, they can still get that experience, and then they can go in their happy transactional world and reminisce about how fantastic litigation is.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. Bottom line, everyone consider a clerkship.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Everyone should consider it and see if it’s for you. And see if it fits into what your career plan, your life plan, because there’s, you know, there’s your career and then there’s your life. And so it all has to kind of go together.

Anna Donovan: Yeah. Excellent. Molly, anything else to add? Any plug you want to make or anything you want to explain to our millions of listeners about? Clerkships or your externship or I guess even kind of how you work with students in the career center if you want.

Molly Snyder: I mean, I think I would just go circle back to the fact that we really work with each student individually. And so if you want to clerk, we’re all in. We’ll help you in every way we possibly can. And if you’re not interested in a clerkship, we’ll help you with whatever your career goals are. And I really love that.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, absolutely. I really love that too. It is part of why I love my job talking to prospective students about why they should consider WashU Law and why this is a fantastic school because I think we have the best career center of of any law school out there for all that you do and above and beyond for all of our students, including meetings with some of our prospective students when they come to visit.

So we like to end our podcasts on getting our guests some hot St. Louis tips or things that you all love about St. Louis, you know, to continue to sell our beautiful, amazing, wonderful city. Mahrya, would you like to to tell our listeners what you love about St. Louis? You can pick one thing. You can pick many things. It could be broad, specific, whatever you got.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Absolutely. So I’m not from St. Louis, but now I’ve been here 17 years. I think 17. I don’t know. I met my husband in law school. He was from St. Louis and pro tip, they all come back. So…

Anna Donovan: Or they don’t leave.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Or they don’t leave. It’s because they love it. It’s because it’s I love it. It’s a it’s a it’s an easy place to love. And so I guess one of the things that I really have loved about St. Louis is I love all of the festivals and events, and many of them are free that that are just always all the time.

So I’m gonna put in a plug and if you meet me within five seconds, you’ll know I’m Greek. I am Greek. If you are Greek, come here and I will take you to church with me or just introduce you to all the Greek people. But we have the biggest ethnic festival in St. Louis is the Greek Fest. I will encourage everyone to go. It’s Labor Day weekend. It’s one of my favorite St. Louis traditions, but we have so many other ones too.

We have, my other favorite one is Pride, there’s two Prides, but the Pride I love is in Tower Grove Park, which is my favorite park in the city. I know you may listen to other podcasts and they may say Forest Park, Forest Park. I love Tower Grove Park. It has the that that the Tower Grove Pride festival is one of my favorite. It’s super inclusive. You’ll see family. You’ll see kids. You’ll see all sorts of people there.

And then I also love we have the Festival of Nations there as well, which is this huge festival that has has countries represented. I mean, every country you can think of through food, through dance, through activities. And there’s so many other ones too.

I mean, one of the other things, St. Louis has a long-standing Catholic tradition, and they have all these fish fries and like a lot of students and have made it like their mission to go to every single fish fry because they’re different. Like St. Cecilia is a historically Latinx community and so theirs is a fish fry that has like homemade tamales. You know, St. Pius has a bagpipe player. And so like just those things about St. Louis are so endearing. And so, you know, really coming, when you come here to just embrace all of the cool things that are slightly quirky and amazingly endearing about St. Louis, including a lot of the festivals, events, you know, anything that’s happening. And there’s so much free live music. I can’t even convey and trivia nights. I also love trivia nights.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. Molly, what do you got?

Molly Snyder: I will second that there is a ton of live music. And I love—I don’t think there’s anywhere else where you can have world-class music, art, World Series baseball, Stanley Cup hockey, and be home in 20 minutes.

Anna Donovan: Yeah. But I think that’s a really great point about the, I feel like when I say that to people as a lifelong St. Louisan, people think that our city is really small, but it is just a really accessible, nice city where you can just get to all the cultural things.

Molly Snyder: And not pay $500 for parking.

Anna Donovan: Or park really far away or have to only take public transportation there. Yeah, we’re really fortunate in the, you can go out and do all of these things that we’ve just told you, so.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: And to go with my events, WashU does a lot of really amazing, fun events too. So my other plug is we, WashU does a musical showcase every year. It is bar none my favorite thing WashU does because there are so many crazy talented people in so many different crazy talented ways. And so every year, two professors, Professor Baker and Professor Richards always are the MCs, the DJs of it. And then people come out of the woodwork and they are so, we had one year, one of our students used to play with Yo-Yo Ma. And so she came and played her violin and it was so moving and fantastic.

We’ve had, you know, students who were in bands that came and, and started a band with me. And then Professor Droback always is looking, so if you play a brass instrument, you come find me, especially like a sousaphone. I mean, I would kill for a sousaphone. So Professor Droback also always performs in it and always tries to get a brass band together. But it’s the most heartwarming thing. The whole community comes together because we do have people that are, you know, non-traditional students, students, you know, that are straight out of undergrad and also students that have two kids and all of them come to this event. And it’s so just wonderful to see students in a, not just their law school. Choose to see them, like how they burn off steam or how they, what’s something else that they love. And then having the support of the not only the, their fellow community, their fellow students, but the professors and everybody comes and it’s just delightful.

So if you If you play a musical instrument, you come find me.

Anna Donovan: Yes. And that is going to be on Thursday, April 4th, 2024, because we always try to get it to coincide with our admitted students days. But, you know, people are welcome to attend. And I think, also pointing to that, you know, we talked about some great things like across St. Louis, but also, you know, Mahrya mentioned the musical showcase. I was just talking with one of our work studies who performs in the WashU Diwali, which is, you know, you don’t even have to leave campus to do some really cool things as well.

They just started the stand-up comedy stand-up comedy caucus. And apparently, they may do a skit on Molly and I, and I was like, I cannot wait. I can’t wait. I hope that is unreal very soon for my elder millennial self to send.

Molly Snyder: That makes me very, very nervous.

Anna Donovan: concerned.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: It’s going to be fantastic. Our students are talented.

Anna Donovan: Absolutely.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Apparently it was a raging success, professor, again, Professor Droback, I think was in it. A lot of other professors were, or a lot of other students were and it was just amazing.

Anna Donovan: Awesome. And then there’s also, of course, the SLU-WashU basketball game, which our faculty has never lost, right, Molly?

Molly Snyder: High five.

Anna Donovan: Champions.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: So, I mean, SLU may bring a guy that dunks, but our faculty, which includes Molly and I, we dominated every year.

Anna Donovan: There we go. Yeah. Everyone. You want to go to school that everyone is so deeply obsessed with both the school and the city.

Thank you both for being here today. I so appreciate it. Again, you know, for prospective students, really… Looking into how your future career center is going to support you, whether you know what you want to do or not, and help you get a job you’re really excited about or a postgraduate clerkship is something to really think of as, you know, at some point, they’re deciding on their final law school choices.

Usually Naomi wraps up the podcast, but she is not here. For anyone who has any questions, please reach out to our office. You can reach us via email at applylaw@wustl.edu. Email us, you know, contact us if there’s any topics you want us to cover or, you know, any questions you need answered, any way we can support your law school application process.

Anyway, thank you again, Molly and Mahrya.

Molly Snyder: Thank you.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Thank you.

Anna Donovan: All right, bye.

Mahrya Fulfer Page: Bye.