Where do law firms find law clerks?

Start with the law schools in your market.

A career services office is the standing bridge between a school's students and the employers who want them: call the office, introduce the firm, and ask how employer postings, resume collections and interview programs work at that school.

What each school offers varies, so the relationship — not a form submission — is what gets your posting passed from the office to the students who are looking.

Do not assume the recruiting calendar you remember still holds.

NALP reports that some law schools moved traditional OCI to spring or early summer in 2025, following the rise of early interview programs.

A firm does not need an OCI slot to reach students, either: in the 2025 recruiting cycle for 2L summer programs — the summer 2026 class — NALP counted 80% of offers coming from employer-sponsored recruiting (a firm's own direct application process) and 20% from law-school-sponsored methods such as OCI.

That count tracks summer-program hiring specifically, so treat it as a signpost for clerk hiring rather than a measurement of it — the direct route it points to is the one a clerk posting rides.

Ask each school where employer postings appear and how students hear about them, and put the school's job board on the list of places your posting runs.

Student practice clinics are the other on-campus pool: a clinic is supervised legal work during the term, and the clinic office knows who wants paid work alongside it.

Ask the clinic director to circulate your posting.

Your own roster points at a third pool: the law schools your attorneys and staff attended, their alumni boards and events, and the classmates they still talk to.

One piece of federal guidance attaches to word of mouth.

The EEOC's guidance is that recruiting only by word of mouth from a workforce that is mostly one group may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires come from that group.

Alumni referrals are a channel, not a whole strategy — run a public posting alongside them so the pool stays wider than the people you already know.

The pools above are where the candidates are; what to verify and how to screen once they apply is the sequence in our guide to how to hire a law clerk.

The association board our research confirmed for this role is the ALA Job Board.

The Association of Legal Administrators runs a Job Board that carries ads for practicing attorneys, legal managers and administrative positions, and support staff such as legal secretaries, legal assistants, paralegals and law clerks — the seat this page is about.

Posting prices were not part of our research, so ask the board before you budget around it.

The school-side boards come through the career services relationship from the first section: ask each school how employers post, where the listing appears, and how students are pointed at it.

Between the two you cover both halves of the pool — the students your market's schools are training, and the employed audience the ALA board reaches: it lists attorneys and legal managers alongside the support staff, law clerks included.

General job boards are the other half of the picture, and which source actually produces hires is a decision of its own.

Our guide to where to post law firm jobs compares the channels board by board; this page stays on where law clerk candidates concentrate.

You can see the candidate side of a legal-specific board on our law clerk jobs page.

For a student or entry-level clerk seat, work the direct channels first — the pools in the first section cost relationship time, not a fee, and the applications come to you.

A search firm earns its place when speed or scarcity is the problem: a seat you need filled this month, a practice-area profile nobody applied against, or a docket that has left your team no hours to source.

Where that line sits is your call; our research did not size the trade-off.

If you engage a search firm, one published standard is worth knowing about.

NALSC — the National Association of Legal Search Consultants — requires members to subscribe to its Code of Ethics as a condition of membership.

The code is a member standard, not law, but it describes conduct you can write into a search agreement, and two provisions matter to a hiring firm.

Candidates may be submitted to employers only with the candidate's express prior consent, and only with the employer's prior authorization or a reasonable belief, from prior direct contact, that the employer would accept the submission.

And a member search firm may not solicit any attorney from the office of an employer where it made a placement for six months after that placement, unless the search firm and the employer agree otherwise — the firm you just paid may not turn around and solicit your attorneys for six months.

The provision's text names attorneys, not clerks or staff.

Fees are where you do your own diligence.

Our research found no primary-source benchmark for legal recruiter contingency percentages or staffing-agency markups, so treat whatever number a firm quotes as a negotiated opening position, and get the fee, what triggers it, and any replacement guarantee in writing before you sign.

The temporary-and-contract lane — a staffing agency placing someone on your matters for a defined period — is its own arrangement, covered in our guide to legal staffing agencies.

The experienced end of the clerk pool is already employed: clerks working at other firms, and judicial law clerks whose court terms are ending.

None of them will arrive through a posting — that is what makes them passive — so reach is direct: a specific note from a partner or the supervising attorney that says why you thought of them, what the seat is, and what the clerk would actually do.

Keep the first conversation a conversation, not an offer.

The cheaper half of passive recruiting is not letting strong clerks go cold in the first place.

Offer your best former clerks a return season, ask whether you can keep their resume on file with their consent, and stay in touch with the applicants you liked but could not seat — next term's opening starts with last term's shortlist.

Two cautions travel with this kind of outreach.

First, the EEOC's word-of-mouth guidance from the first section applies to experienced hires too: referrals and direct approaches are channels, so keep a public posting in the mix.

Second, if you run the search through a search firm instead of your own contacts and the firm is an NALSC member, the code's terms above govern how it may submit candidates — with each candidate's express consent — and where it may solicit after placing someone with you.

The posting is the filter.

Say which class years you will consider — 2Ls and 3Ls, 1Ls, or students from a particular school or program — whether the seat is school-year or summer, the weekly hours, the practice areas the clerk will touch, who supervises the work, and how pay is structured.

Describe the work and the academic stage, not the person you picture.

The section-by-section template lives in our guide to the law clerk job description.

Federal rules attach to the ad itself.

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

For a clerk seat the academic stage is part of the job, so say it as stage: the class years, the term the work starts, the hours.

What does not belong is phrasing that screens by age or life stage when the stage is not the work.

If you include pay in the posting, disclosure rules are their own topic and vary by state; they are covered with the posting channels in our guide to where to post law firm jobs.

Employer information, not legal advice. The hiring rules described here come from the EEOC as our sources state them, and they change; confirm current requirements with the EEOC or employment counsel before you post.