Law Commons^™

Some Are More Equal Than Others: U.S. Supreme Court Clerkships, Tracey E. George, G. Mitu Gulati, Albert H. Yoon

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The most elite and scarce of all U.S. legal credentials is serving as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. A close second is clerking for a Justice. A Court clerkship is a prize as well as a ticket to future success. Rich accounts of the experience fill bookshelves and journal pages. Yet the public lacks a clear story about who wins this clerkship lottery. Original analysis of forty years of clerkships tells that story. New datasets detail clerks’ paths from college to the Court to careers. Research shows that Court clerkships favor educational pedigree and status over pure achievement. …

Law Library Blog (April 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Nava Wins Inaugural Judicial Fellowship 06/23/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Clerks And The Death Penalty, Matthew Tokson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is part of GW's Supreme Court Clerks at 100 symposium.

The Supreme Court is involved, directly or otherwise, with virtually every execution carried out in the United States. Most executions are appealed to the Court, and inmates commonly request a stay of execution a few days or hours before their scheduled death. The clerks review these requests and recommend a ruling.

A few days after I arrived at the Court, I got my first death penalty assignment. As the date drew near, the defendant asked the Court to stay his execution. I opened his file and began to …

2019-2020 Annual Report: Roger Williams University School Of Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Dean's Desk: Students Find Clerkships In Smaller Counties Rewarding, Austen L. Parrish

Austen Parrish (2014-2022)

The students at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law come to Bloomington from all over the nation. During their summers, the temptation is for them to work in the country’s largest cities, often with the majority working in Indianapolis, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York. Many others work in our innovative Stewart Fellows global internship program, where students are placed in countries throughout the world.

Fewer students, however, choose to work in Indiana’s smaller towns, and the hundreds of trial court judges working there often need help. Many trial courts have crowded dockets and limited staffing, particularly those in …

Law School News: Dean Michael Yelnosky To Step Down After 2019-20 Academic Year 9-5-2019, Jill Rodrigues, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (October 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: Jobs Data 12-22-2016, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Dawn Of The Discipline-Based Law Faculty, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article reports on an empirical study of the prevalence of Ph.D.s on law faculties, the rate at which J.D.-Ph.D.s are being hired by those faculties, the impact of that hiring on faculties’ legal experience levels, and the likely resulting future composition of law faculties. Approximately 29% of the tenure-track faculties of the top twenty-six law schools currently hold Ph.D.s, and 67% of those schools’ entry level hires in 2014 and 2015 are J.D.-Ph.D.s. Recent hiring has separated into two tracks. On the growing J.D.-Ph.D. track, both legal experience and preparation time is declining. On the fading J.D.-only track, legal …

A Program In Legislation, Dakota S. Rudesill, Christopher J. Walker, Daniel P. Tokaji

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Bonus Babies Escape Golden Handcuffs: How Money And Politics Has Transformed The Career Paths Of Supreme Court Law Clerks, Artemus Ward, Christina Dwyer, Kiranjit Gill

Marquette Law Review

Job prospects for former Supreme Court law clerks have radically changed in recent years. Beginning in 1986, skyrocketing law firm signing bonuses caused a transformation from the natural sorting system, where clerks chose among private practice, government, academic, and public interest positions, to a Bonus Baby Regime where former clerks almost always choose to work in private firms after they leave the Court. This development is a result of both financial and ideological factors. While the more conservative clerking corps of recent years has been increasingly drawn to private practice, the firms themselves hire along ideological lines. Still, while former …

Hiring Supreme Court Law Clerks: Probing The Ideological Linkage Between Judges And Justices, Lawrence Baum

Marquette Law Review

Since the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of Supreme Court law clerks have had prior experience clerking in lower courts, primarily the federal courts of appeals. Throughout that period, there has been a tendency for Justices to take clerks from lower court judges who share the Justices’ ideological tendencies, in what can be called an ideological linkage between judges and Justices in the selection of law clerks. However, that tendency became considerably stronger between the 1970s and 1990s, and it has remained very strong since the 1990s.

This Article probes the sources of that alteration in the Justices’ selection of law …

Reflections On The End Of The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Aaron L. Nielson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

As applicants, federal judges, and law school career counselors everywhere frantically come to terms with the new clerkship landscape, one truth is inescapable: the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan ("the Plan") is dead. On January 29, 2013, the D.C. Circuit-the Plan's last and best defender-announced that it would no longer follow the Plan. The consequences of that announcement have been swift. For the last several months, months earlier than almost anyone expected, untold numbers of federal judges across the country have been rushing to hire law clerks. For these judges, the unregulated clerkship market of the pre-Plan era is back. …

Tips For Capturing 2014 Federal Court Clerkships, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Now is a perfect moment for analyzing 2014 clerkships because law students across the country have completed their productive summer employment and are poised to commence their final year. Below are ideas which could help aspirants secure those coveted positions that start during next August.

Aspire, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Informational pamphlet on the opportunities available when considering University of Michigan Law School.

Closing The Legislative Experience Gap: How A Legislative Law Clerk Program Will Benefit The Legal Profession And Congress, Dakota S. Rudesill

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Most federal law today is statutory or rooted in statutes, which are created through a complicated process best understood through work experience inside legislatures. This article demonstrates that America’s most influential lawyers are not getting it. My new empirical analysis of the work experience of the top 500 lawyers nationwide as ranked by Lawdragon.com finds that work experience in legislative bodies is dramatically less common among the profession’s leaders than is formative work experience in courts, government executive agencies, private practice, and academe. This article continues the empirical study of the professional experience of the legal profession’s elite published in …

Starting Out: Changing Patterns Of First Jobs For Michigan Law School Graduates, Terry K. Adams, David L. Chambers

Articles

In the early 1950s, the typical graduate of Michigan Law began his career working as an associate in a law firm with four other lawyers and earned about $5,000 in his first year. Surprising to us today, in his new job he would have earned slightly less than other classmates whose first jobs were in government. Fifty years later, in the early 2000s, the typical graduate still started out as an associate in a law firm, but the firm she worked for had more than 400 lawyers. She earned about $114,000 in her first year, about three times as much …

The Bureaucratic Court, Benjamin C. Mizer

Michigan Law Review

In August 2006, the New York Times caused a stir by reporting that the number of female law clerks at the United States Supreme Court has fallen sharply in the first full Term in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is no longer on the bench. In an era in which nearly fifty percent of all law school graduates are women, the Times reported, less than twenty percent of the clerks in the Court's 2006 Term - seven of thirty-seven - are women. In interviews, Justices Souter and Breyer viewed the sharp drop in the number of female clerks as an …

Rhetoric Of Academe, Curtis E. A. Karnow

University of San Francisco Law Review

This piece explores the ways in which legal education moved from clerkships in law offices to receiving law degrees from academic institutions. As such, this piece also tracks the formation of legal precedent over time, which too, has shifted from rigid reliance on case law, to more reliance on academic rhetoric propounded by legal scholars.

The Process For Becoming A Law School Professor In The United States, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

As the process of legal education reform in Japan, centered on the establishment of a new tier of professional graduate schools in law, moves forward, one issue that has arisen is how law professors will be trained in coming years. In that connection, I am frequently asked what the typical route is for training law school professors in the US. Based in part on an examination of the backgrounds prior to entering law teaching for over 500 law professors at eight US law schools and on personal experiences (including serving for three years on the appointments committee at the University …

Selecting Law Clerks, Patricia M. Wald

Michigan Law Review

April may indeed have been "the cruellest month" this year for federal judges and their prospective clerks. For a decade now, federal judges have been trying - largely without success - to conduct a dignified, collegial, efficient law clerk selection process. Because each federal judge has only to choose two to three clerks each year, and there is a large universe of qualified applicants graduating each year from our law schools, this would not seem an insurmountable task. And because each federal judge has choice first-year positions to offer and has no need or ability to dicker on salary or …

The New York Law School Reporter, V 6, No. 6, May 1989, New York Law School

Student Newspapers

Vol 6, no. IV

This Newspaper contains:

Tenure Controversy Escalates, page 1

Public Interest Scholarship Fund Takes Off, page 1

(Almost) Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Tenure Process but Were Afraid to Ask, page 4

IRAC, page 5

Muck-Wrestling, page 7

An Assault on Gun Control, page 12

Moot Court Association, page 17