Clerkship interviews and women's attire

I have to admit, this is not exactly a topic that I expected to be blogging about, but it did come up in a recent clerkship interview workshop for students and prompted a further serious discussion with a couple of my fellow junior colleagues . . . .

The issue is, what advice would you give a female clerkship applicant as to whether she should feel comfortable wearing a pants suit -- as opposed to a skirt suit -- for a clerkship interview.  And second, would you give that advice unprompted?

The concern is that there might be some judges who have an unwritten dress code for female lawyers and that failure to conform to that dress code might marginally harm an applicant's chance for the clerkship.  On the flip side is the concern that even giving such advice will necessarily perpetuate that unwritten dress code itself.

My own view was that it probably wouldn't make a difference in the vast majority of instances, but it might make a marginal difference in a few cases (0 < N < 5%, would be my estimate).  So my suggestion was that the student wear the pants suit if she preferred it, but to be aware that there's a small risk involved.

All of which, to be clear, is not a normative statement of how I think women should dress for interviews, but rather, just a predictive statement.  But I'm curious whether any readers think that N ~ 0 for all intents and purposes.  (By the way, in case you are wondering, the two colleagues I was having this discussion with are both women, and I was more or less in the middle in terms of suggested advice.  We were pretty much in agreement on the general principle, only differing somewhat on our estimate of N.)

Comments

[A.non]

I took a class last year which was taught by a judge. His advice: don't do it. He said many judges were "enlightened" and it wouldn't matter but just as many, including women judges(!) were not and to them it would. So why risk it?

Seems silly to me, but when you hear it from a member of the bench, I think it means something.

[Anon]

I applied over the summer for a few federal appellate judges who don't follow the hiring plan. I did all my interviews in pants suits, and I received two offers (one quickly followed the other). In my case, it didn't seem to make a difference.

[Anon]

I can't imagine what it would be like, as a woman, to clerk for an entire year for a judge who believes that it is inappropriate for a woman to wear pants to an interview.

[Anon]

One of the district court judges in the court where I clerked expected his female clerks to wear skirts every day. Then again, I wouldn't want to clerk for someone like that.

[Anon]

I second 9:01. Who wants to work for a judge who has that attitude anyway?

[y81]

It must be nice to be so young (or, for some of your professional colleagues, so trivial) that you are willing to sacrifice professional advancement for the sake of sartorial self-expression. It's less nice (but very youthful) to be so superficial that you would judge a person by whether they approve of pants suits.