A propos this, here is an old study of placement in SCOTUS clerkships for 15 terms. Because of the small number of clerks chosen in a given year; because clerks are only chosen from the very top of any law school’s class; because current clerks participate in the process of selecting new clerks; and because the Justices themselves have particular school loyalties,[1] gross numbers are probably more informative, and so the ranking below is based on the total number of clerks placed on the Supreme Court. For informational purposes, the approximate size, rounded to the nearest 50, of recent graduating classes is listed in the final column.
This includes all clerks on the Supreme Court from the 1991 term through the current 2005 term. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist’s clerks were accepted by the new Chief Justice John Roberts, and so are counted; the clerks C.J. Roberts brought with him from the D.C. Circuit were not counted, since they were selected in a less competitive process.
| Rank | School | Total number of clerks | Typical Class Size |
| 1 | Harvard University | 128 | 550 |
| 2 | Yale University | 100 | 200 |
| 3 | University of Chicago | 65 | 200 |
| 4 | Stanford University | 42 | 150 |
| 5 | Columbia University | 32 | 400 |
| 6 | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | 21 | 350 |
| 7 | University of Virginia | 19 | 350 |
| 8 | New York University | 16 | 400 |
| 9 | University of California, Berkeley | 12 | 250 |
| 10 | University of Texas, Austin | 11 | 450 |
| 11 | Northwestern University | 9 | 200 |
| 12 | Duke University | 7 | 200 |
| 12 | Georgetown University | 7 | 600 |
| 14 | University of Notre Dame | 6 | 150 |
| 15 | George Washington University | 5 | 400 |
| 15 | University of Pennsylvania | 5 | 250 |
| 17 | University of California, Los Angeles | 4 | 250 |
| 18 | Brigham Young University | 3 | 150 |
| 18 | University of Kansas | 3 | 150 |
| 18 | Vanderbilt University | 3 | 200 |
| 21 | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2 | 250 |
| 21 | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | 2 | 250 |
The following schools each graduated one student who secured a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship between 1991 and 2005: Boston College; Cornell University; Ohio State University; Oxford University; Pepperdine University; Rutgers University, Newark; State University of New York, Buffalo; University of Arizona; University of Georgia; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; University of Missouri, Columbia; and University of Southern California.
[1] Justice Stevens, for example, taught at Northwestern, and often hires Northwestern clerks; the same is true for Justice Breyer and Harvard; Justice Ginsburg and Columbia; and Justice Scalia and Chicago. Justice Scalia is also partial to Notre Dame.




I am shocked and so deeply sorry to hear about this. My thoughts are with Zafra and his family. I…