Applicants for Law Clerk Positions

Description:
The United States Attorney for the District of Maryland will hire 8-10 law students to serve as volunteer law clerks during the summer in our Northern Division, which is based across the street from the federal courthouse in Baltimore. We will hire 3-4 volunteer law clerks each summer for our Southern Division, based in the federal courthouse in Greenbelt.

During the spring and fall school terms, we will employ 2-4 law clerks in each office. Law clerks serve on a volunteer basis without payment from the United States Attorney's Office. Some students may be eligible for federal work study programs or for public service grants from their law schools. The Assistant U.S. Attorney who supervises the law clerk program distributes assignments based on the interests of the clerks and the needs of the office in an effort to expose each clerk to a variety of substantive matters.

Clerks generally concentrate on either criminal or civil matters, but there is ample opportunity to work on both types of cases. The office seeks to give all students extensive opportunities to witness depositions, motion hearings, trials, and, on occasion, appellate arguments.

The Office tries to assign each law clerk to a case that is scheduled to go to trial during the summer, so the clerk will have the opportunity to observe one trial in its entirety.In addition, the Office organizes a series of programs specifically for the law clerks. These events have included shooting various weapons, including a sniper rifle at a police firing range and a trip to the FBI training facility at Quantico, Virginia, to use a computerized firearms training simulator. Speakers have included Fourth Circuit Judges Diana Gribbon Motz and Paul V. Niemeyer, District Judge Marvin Garbis, District Judge and former U.S. Attorney Richard Bennett, Magistrate Judge Beth Gesner, and Federal Public Defender James Wyda.