Law clerk job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A law clerk posting has six working parts: duties, law-school status and qualifications, skills and software, pay and benefits, schedule and term, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

Two things make this posting different from an attorney or paralegal ad.

First, supervision defines the role — the template builds every duty so a lawyer reviews the work, which is why the duties block, not the title, tells a candidate what the job is.

Second, the title covers two different jobs: in federal wage data the law-clerk occupation (SOC 23-1012) is "Judicial Law Clerks," the court role, while on this page it means the firm role — so say in the first lines that this is a clerkship at a law firm for a law student or recent graduate.

If you are still deciding whether the role is right for your firm — the level you need, where to source, the classification analysis — our guide to how to hire a law clerk covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

Core duties.

Write tasks a candidate can picture on day one, not adjectives: the research memo due Friday, the discovery responses stacking up, the exhibit binders no one has time to build.

Hold every line to one test — does the posting make clear that a lawyer reviews the work?

Supervision belongs in the duties block, with the supervising attorney named, rather than in the fine print.

Duties that earn their place on a law clerk posting:

• Legal research on [practice area] questions, written up as memoranda for attorney review
• First drafts of pleadings, discovery responses and correspondence, for attorney edit
• Cite-checking briefs and memoranda before filing
• Summarizing depositions, medical records and other case documents
• Organizing exhibits, hearing binders and case files
• Document review for discovery or transactional projects, under the attorney's direction
• Attending client meetings, depositions or court proceedings with the supervising attorney, as requested

Client-contact lines need the most care on this block.

Write what the clerk gathers, summarizes and prepares — never what they advise.

A line like "serve as clients' point of contact" reads very differently from "attend client meetings with the supervising attorney and follow up on action items," and the second one is the job a clerk can actually hold.

Qualifications and bar admission.

The defining feature of the hire: a law clerk works before admission, so the posting requires status, not a license.

Say which status you are hiring — currently enrolled ([2L/3L]) or a recent graduate awaiting [state] bar results — and let the requirements follow the work: strong research and writing, a writing sample, and any coursework your practice area builds on.

For a graduate awaiting results, the wording rule has teeth: ABA Model Rule 5.5(b)(2) — a model rule; the version in force is your state's — says a lawyer not admitted in a jurisdiction must not hold out or represent that they are admitted there, and it is the rule that bears on the title-and-bio questions unadmitted graduates raise.

The posting titles them law clerk, not attorney.

And if you are considering any client-facing or court-facing duty for a clerk, confirm what your state's rules permit with your state bar's ethics counsel first — this page's research did not verify state student-practice rules.

For the candidate-side view of the role and its training routes, our law clerk career guide covers it.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — your research platform, document management, e-filing, and any drafting conventions or citation style you expect — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

The core skill is writing that survives attorney review: analysis that holds up and citations that check out.

If your clerks record time against matters, say so in the posting; if they do not, say that instead.

Skills tests.

If you screen with a research or drafting exercise, keep it short and run it on a mock file.

The FLSA defines "employ" to include "to suffer or permit to work," so a candidate producing real, usable work for the firm — a brief the firm actually files, say — may be an employee owed wages; a short exercise on a mock file is the safer design.

Pay range and benefits.

State the structure (hourly, or a stipend for a defined term), the hours per week, the term dates, and a range you believe.

On benchmarks: in the federal data the law-clerk occupation is Judicial Law Clerks (SOC 23-1012), so BLS OEWS publishes no wage series for the firm clerk.

In the BLS OEWS May 2025 release, that judicial series had a median annual wage of $64,920 — court employment, not the law-student clerk your firm hires — so it is not a benchmark for your posting.

NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey put the median weekly salary for second-year summer associates at $3,850 across all firms and $4,100 at firms of more than 700 lawyers — a median spanning all firm sizes, so read it as market context rather than a small-firm benchmark.

Set the range from your own budget and your local market, and say what it is: a good-faith estimate, not a promise.

The posting-range statutes our research verified: California (employers with 15 or more employees, and the pay scale for a position on an applicant's reasonable request regardless of employer size), Washington (15 or more, in effect since January 1, 2023), Illinois (15 or more; a hyperlink to the information is allowed), Minnesota (30 or more; ranges may not be open-ended), Massachusetts (employers with 25 or more employees in the state, effective October 29, 2025), New York State (four or more employees), New York City (since November 1, 2022), Colorado, Connecticut (effective October 1, 2026) and Virginia.

California defines "pay scale" as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire, with penalties running $100 to $10,000 per violation.

Nevada's rule works differently — the wage or salary range goes to an applicant who has completed an interview, not into the posting.

Other states and cities have their own rules we did not read, so check with your state labor agency before you post.

Two pay decisions sit behind the range, and both belong to employment counsel more than to the posting: how an unlicensed clerk is classified for overtime, and whether an unpaid or course-credit-only arrangement is one you should post at all — DOL Fact Sheet 71 says courts use a seven-factor "primary beneficiary test" to decide whether an intern at a for-profit employer is an employee owed minimum wage and overtime, and no single factor is decisive.

The classification and overtime analysis for this hire is in our guide to how to hire a law clerk; confirm the final structure with employment counsel and your state labor agency before the posting goes live.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

If one clerk has to span the research, the drafting and the intake support, write exactly that breadth into the duties block instead of dressing it up.

The named-supervisor line matters more in a small firm, not less: with fewer lawyers, each person's review role is specific, so name who reviews the work rather than pointing at "the team."

And keep the schedule honest — a school-year clerk at [X] hours a week is a different hire from a full-time summer clerk, and the posting should say which one it is.

Adapting for a practice area.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the documents your matters actually produce.

A litigation clerk's list lives in research memoranda, deposition summaries, exhibit lists and hearing binders; a transactional list keeps entity documents, closing sets and document review moving; a personal-injury list summarizes medical records and drafts demand-package pieces; a family-law list handles sensitive files and steady status follow-up.

Let the requirements block follow: ask for coursework or writing samples that match the documents your practice generates, not "legal interest" in the abstract.

Adapting for the term and the class year.

State the term dates and hours in the posting itself — availability is the whole schedule for a student hire, and exam periods and the school's summer calendar decide what a clerk can actually serve.

Scope the work to the class year: give a first-year summer clerk narrower assignments and more review time; a third-year student can carry longer projects; a graduate awaiting bar results can take on the most, within the same supervision line as everyone else.

Name the dates, hours and class year in a summer law clerk posting so applicants can check themselves against the term before they apply.

Five wordings sink otherwise good law clerk postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Duties that promise the lawyer's part.

"Advise clients on their options," "manage your own caseload," "represent the firm in court" — a clerk has not been admitted to the bar, and ABA Model Rule 5.5(a), the ABA's model version, bars a lawyer from practicing law in violation of the jurisdiction's regulation of the profession or assisting another in doing so — and the assist clause is the employer's exposure when a clerk's duties overreach.

Keep every duty inside supervised work, and keep the lawyer's part of the job — client advice, signatures on filings, court appearances, settlements — with your licensed attorneys.

What your state lets a clerk do around that line, including any certified student-practice route, was not verified in this page's research; confirm with your state bar's ethics counsel before you post any client-facing or court-facing duty.

2. Preference wording that screens by who people are.

The EEOC says it is illegal to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for, or discourages applications from, people because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information — its own example is an ad seeking "recent college graduates," which may discourage people over 40 from applying.

Require the status the job actually needs ("currently enrolled in law school," "graduate awaiting [state] bar results") instead of shorthand that implies an age — "young," "digital native" — or a bare "recent grad," the construction of the EEOC's own example above.

Keep application questions to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified — the EEOC treats questions about race, sex, national origin, age or religion as irrelevant to that decision — and treat the borderline ones as risky rather than harmless, because federal law does not clearly forbid every such question but the answers can be used as evidence of discriminatory intent unless justified by a business purpose.

Keep the process accessible too: an employer must provide an accommodation a disabled applicant needs in order to apply, unless it causes significant difficulty or expense.

3. Salary-history questions.

In the states our research verified, the question itself is restricted: California bars every employer, at any size, from seeking an applicant's salary history and from relying on it in hiring or pay decisions; New York bars relying on it and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted, or seeking it from a current or former employer; Illinois bars screening applicants by it and requesting it as a condition of an interview or offer; Massachusetts bars seeking it from the candidate or a current or former employer; and Virginia and Nevada also ban seeking it.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask an applicant about their salary expectation for the position, and to consider history only if the applicant volunteers it.

Other states and cities have rules we did not read, so check yours before the interview stage.

4. Conviction-history questions too early.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) and New York City's Fair Chance Act (most employers) bar asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment; Illinois bars covered employers from asking until the applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview or, with no interview, until after a conditional offer.

If your application form asks about criminal record, check your state and city law before you post.

5. Vague everything.

"Wear many hats," "fast-paced environment" and a duties block that never names a task are the markers of the generic posting — one that never says whether the work is supervised legal work or a catch-all front desk.

The fix is the template above: specific tasks, the dates and hours of the term, the software the work runs on, and the attorney who reviews it.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — student applicants are working to school deadlines, so no application should sit unanswered for weeks.

If the pay range or the duties change, update the posting rather than explaining the difference in interviews.

Prepare the interview the same way for every candidate: the same questions, the same mock-file exercise, a scoring sheet — it keeps comparisons fair and keeps every question limited to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified, the EEOC's standard for pre-employment questions.

And before yours goes up, browse the live law clerk jobs on this board to see the pay framing and duty lists you are competing against.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. Posting laws, wage rules and ethics rules change and vary by jurisdiction — confirm them with your state labor agency, employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel before you post.