Article with survey data about misbehaving judges here, with an overview of same at the WSJ Law Blog. Here is the abstract:
In the past, judges have often hired applicants for judicial clerkships as early as the beginning of the second year of law school for positions commencing approximately two years down the road. In the new hiring regime for federal judicial law clerks, by contrast, judges are exhorted to follow a set of start dates for considering and hiring applicants during the fall of the third year of law school. Using the same general methodology as we employed in a study of the market for federal judicial law clerks conducted in 1998-2000, we have broadly surveyed both federal appellate judges and law students about their experiences of the new market for law clerks. This paper analyzes our findings within the prevailing economic framework for studying markets with tendencies toward “early” hiring. Our data make clear that the movement of the clerkship market back to the third year of law school is highly valued by judges, but we also find that a strong majority of the judges responding to our surveys has concluded that nonadherence to the specified start dates is very substantial — a conclusion we are able to corroborate with specific quantitative data from both judge and student surveys. The consistent experience of a wide range of other markets suggests that such nonadherence in the law clerk market will lead to either a reversion to very early hiring or the use of a centralized matching system such as that used for medical residencies. We suggest, however, potential avenues by which the clerkship market could stabilize at something like its present pattern of mixed adherence and nonadherence, thereby avoiding the complete abandonment of the current system.
Via Leiter. Here is a quote pulled from the article:
[T]he current non-system makes applicants see judges behaving in ways which are unseemly, to put it mildly. That view of our behavior will inevitably shape what these people think of the judiciary. To the extent that many of these applicants will become leaders in the bar and in politics, we will as judges reap what we have sown. They will hold us in contempt and will not be wholly wrong.
−Federal appellate judge, 1999
It is a seriously depressing read, even though the authors stuck to timing issues, without exploring the financial costs imposed on interviewees, or negative experiences unrelated to timing, such as objectionably personal questions and outright sexual harassment.
–Ann Bartow
