Supported by a plea from more than 100 law school deans, an ad hoc group of federal appeals judges has reinstated a plan for recruiting future law clerks after their second year in law school, rather than basing the hires on first-year performance.

The new hiring plan, promulgated on Feb. 28, mirrors a policy that dated back to 2003 but collapsed in 2013 when fiercely competitive individual judges ignored the rules and pursued top first-year students for clerkships, some of whom went on to Supreme Court clerk positions. Former Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski famously flouted the earlier rules, once joking that he started recruiting clerks “at birth.”