Chapter 7: The Judge's Ghostwriter

Law students who graduate near the top of their class can apply for judicial "clerkships," which means working as a judge's legal assistant for a set term, usually one or two years, beginning in the fall after graduation. (Some federal judges now hire permanent clerks, but I'm not talking about them in this chapter.) Because I graduated midyear, I didn't fit into any clerkship schedules. The positions come open in August or September, not January. So I was never a clerk, which I rather regret. I think I would have enjoyed it.

A judicial clerkship is a traditional transition period between law school and the cold world of legal practice.  ...

For a newly minted lawyer, nothing is greater than being a clerk of the Supreme Court. It is a distinction the clerk will wear like a badge throughout his or (much less frequently) her entire professional career. A former Supreme Court clerk can teach at any law school and get hired at any big law firm, so long as he manages to avoid getting disbarred or arrested. Actual skill in either teaching or practicing law is (as they say in want ads) desirable but not required. The clerk, in short, will spend the rest of his life as a seller of prestige, and buyers will always be willing to line up.

If your ambition is to become a Supreme Court clerk, you would be well advised to go to a law school ranked in the top 5 percent for tuition, though one of three public universities will do in a pinch: Michigan, Virginia, and California-Berkeley. Once you're there, you need to get straight A's, become an editor of the law review, and also assiduously cultivate the professor who has a tradition of "feeding" students to a federal appeals court judge who in turn has a reputation for "feeding" clerks to the Supreme Court. Many years of goal-directed ass-kissing are required, and even then the odds are heavily against you, since there are never more than 36 clerks in a year. But if you win the lottery, the payoff is huge.

On the downside, it means that you reach the peak of your legal career before you begin it. Everything else is downhill for the ex–Supreme Court clerk, unless he goes on to win the next lottery and becomes a justice himself.