In the United States, judicial law clerks are usually recent
law school graduates who performed at or near the top of their class and/or attended highly ranked law schools. Serving as a law clerk, especially to a
U.S. federal judge, is considered to be one of the most prestigious positions in legal circles, and tends to open up wide-ranging opportunities in academia,
law firm practice, and influential government work. Judicial clerkships with federal or state appellate judges tend to be more competitive than those with
state-level trial court judges. However, because there are many more law graduates with high academic credentials than there are clerkship positions available at any level, competition for judicial clerkships is always intense. Because of the competitive selection criteria, many law clerks go on to become distinguished legal figures, professors, and judges later in their careers. Many Supreme Court justices previously clerked for other Supreme Court justices: •
Byron White clerked for
Fred M. Vinson •
John Paul Stevens clerked for
Wiley Blount Rutledge •
Stephen Breyer clerked for
Arthur Goldberg •
William Rehnquist clerked for
Robert H. Jackson •
John Roberts clerked for
William Rehnquist •
Elena Kagan clerked for
Thurgood Marshall •
Neil Gorsuch clerked for
Byron White and
Anthony Kennedy •
Brett Kavanaugh clerked for
Anthony Kennedy •
Amy Coney Barrett clerked for
Antonin Scalia •
Ketanji Brown Jackson clerked for
Stephen Breyer Neil Gorsuch is the first justice who served alongside a justice for whom he himself had once clerked. Several of the justices have also clerked in the courts of appeals. Justice
Samuel Alito, for instance, clerked for the
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 1960, Supreme Court Justice
Felix Frankfurter rejected
Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a clerkship position due to her gender. She was rejected despite a strong recommendation from
Albert Martin Sacks, who was a professor and later
Dean of Harvard Law School. In 1948, Frankfurter had hired
William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr. as a law clerk, the first African American law clerk to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some judges seek to hire law clerks who not only have excelled academically but also share the judge's ideological orientation. However, this occurs mostly at the level of some state supreme courts and the United States Supreme Court. Law clerks can have a great deal of influence on the judges with whom they work. Upon completing a judicial clerkship, a law clerk often becomes very marketable to elite
law firms. However, some law clerks decide they enjoy the position so much they continue to serve the judge as a law clerk in a permanent capacity.
Federal clerkships A clerkship with a federal judge is one of the most highly sought positions in the legal field. Some federal judges receive thousands of applications for a single position, and even the least sought-after federal clerkships will likely be applied to by at least one thousand candidates. Successful candidates tend to be very high in their class, with most being members of their law school's
law review or other
journal or
moot court team. Such clerkships are generally seen as more prestigious than those with state judges. Almost all federal judges have at least one law clerk; many have two or more. Associate Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are allowed four clerks. Although the Chief Justice is allowed to hire five clerks, Chief Justice Rehnquist hired only three per year, and Chief Justice Roberts usually hires only four. Generally, law clerks serve a term of one to two years; however, some federal judges hire a permanent law clerk. Such judges usually have one permanent law clerk and one or two law clerks who serve on a term basis. The most prestigious clerkship is one with a U.S. Supreme Court Justice; there are only 37 of these positions available every year. However, in recent times securing a federal court of appeals clerkship with a federal judge has been a prerequisite to clerking on the Supreme Court. Therefore, usually the second most prestigious place to clerk is at one of the
U.S. courts of appeals. Clerkships with certain appellate judges, such as
J. Michael Luttig, who have sent many clerks on to the Supreme Court, often called "
feeder judges" are especially difficult to obtain. Luttig, before his retirement, was the leading "feeder" judge at the court of appeals level, with virtually all of his law clerks having gone on to clerk with
conservative justices on the
Supreme Court, a total of 40 with 33 clerking for either Justice Thomas or Justice Scalia. This reflects the increasing polarization of the court, with both liberal and conservative judges hiring clerks who reflect their ideological orientation. Generally, the next most sought after federal clerkship is one with a
United States district court judge. Some U.S. district courts are more sought after than others due to the district's popular location, for example: the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, the Northern District of California, and the District of the District of Columbia. There are also federal clerkships with other federal judges such as
U.S. magistrate judges;
U.S. Tax Court judges, senior judges, and special trial judges;
Bankruptcy Appellate Panel judges; and
U.S. bankruptcy judges. Former federal law clerks are often highly sought after by large law firms. Firms believe that such individuals have excellent legal research and
writing skills, and a strong command of the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Firms are even more interested in a former law clerk if the firm generally appears before the clerk's former judge. The interest in former law clerks is seen by the fact that most large firms have a special hiring process for former clerks, and often pay such individuals large signing bonuses. Generally, interested candidates apply for federal clerkships more than a year before the clerkship begins. The federal clerkship application process has also largely been streamlined by the National Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan and the OSCAR system, an online database in which federal judges post upcoming vacancies (although not all federal judges use this system). The National Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan sets dates for when federal judges may receive applications, and when they may contact, interview, and hire law clerks. Generally, judges begin looking at applications in the early fall, with contact and interviews happening a few weeks later. These dates only apply to the hiring of matriculating third-year law students; practicing attorneys may apply earlier. Moreover, while many judges adhere to the National Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan's schedule, many do not follow the plan and interview and hire law students over the summer. The Supreme Court does not follow this timetable. As a result of the extreme competition—both by the judges to get the best candidates and by candidates to get the best clerkships—the pace of the hiring is extremely quick. It is not unknown for federal judges to offer a candidate a clerkship on the spot at the conclusion of a first interview. Judicial law fellows, pro bono attorneys (or clerks or counsel) and volunteer clerks, perform substantially the same tasks as normal judicial law clerks do, but for no pay, reduced pay or a stipend. The
Administrative Law Judges of some
federal agencies - such as the
U.S. International Trade Commission, the
Federal Trade Commission, the
United States Patent and Trademark Office, the
Federal Communications Commission, the
Social Security Administration, the
Department of Justice, the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the
Veterans Administration, the
Department of Transportation, the
Environmental Protection Agency, the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development - may hire
Attorney Advisors that perform judicial law clerk duties for them, such as researching the most current case law, writing and editing opinions and orders and assisting the Administrative Law Judges with trial-like adjudications, hearings and other similar procedures. Some scholars and practitioners have questioned the lack of a federal congressional clerkship program. One study found that few top law school graduates have or will take seriously the process of being a legislative aide to gain practical skills after graduation. Instead, recent law school graduates opt for judicial clerkships leaving few in the legal field with practical legislative experience. The
U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct issued the ethical guidance, on September 12, 2024, that law clerks should be restricted by federal judges from seeking employment with political organizations while employed by the court system, "to avoid the risk of compromising the judiciary's independence".
State clerkships Judicial clerkships in state appellate courts are similar to those in federal appellate courts, but are primarily focused on state law rather than on federal law issues. State supreme courts began using law clerks as early as the 1930s. Some state courts also use the title "staff attorney" for career clerks and clerks that support all judges. For law students who wish to practice in a specific state or geographic region after clerking, state appellate-level or trial court clerkships can often be more valuable than federal clerkships in terms of getting to know the judges, lawyers, and firms in that area, as well as in terms of seeing trial lawyers at work.
History Although Justice
Horace Gray was the first federal judge (and hence the first Supreme Court justice) to hire law clerks in 1882, according to historian
James Chace,
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and
Louis Brandeis were the first Supreme Court justices to use recent law school graduates as clerks, rather than hiring a "stenographer-secretary". As a law professor at
Harvard, Felix Frankfurter selected law clerks for Justices Holmes and Brandeis. Brandeis' practices in how to train and use his clerks at the court professionalized clerkships.
Exceptions The
Supreme Court of California and the various districts of the
California Courts of Appeal have generally avoided using law clerks since the late 1980s. Instead, California has largely switched to using permanent staff attorneys at all levels of the judiciary; a few judges do use law clerks, but they are quite rare. For example, the Supreme Court of California has over 85 staff attorneys, of whom about half are attached to particular justices and the rest are shared as a central staff. The California system has been heavily criticized for denying young attorneys the chance to gain experience, and low turnover has resulted in a lack of ethnic and gender diversity among the staff attorneys. But most California judges prefer staff attorneys because it reduces the problem of having to bring new law clerks up to speed on pending complex cases, particularly those involving the death penalty. ==References==