Supreme Court Clerks: Where Are They Now?
In our recent New York Times op-ed piece on Supreme Court clerkship bonuses, we argued that "[f]rom a narrowly economic point of view -- focusing on the actual work the clerks will perform, and setting aside the law firms' quest for prestige and bragging rights -- it is difficult to understand why firms fight for the right to shower 26-year-olds with cash."
One of the contentions we thought about offering in support of this claim was that Supreme Court clerks don't stick around their law firms for very long after getting their huge bonuses. This was our sense of things, based admittedly on "anec-data." It seemed to us that SCOTUS clerks go to law firms, stay for maybe two years, and then leave to become law professors, or government or public interest lawyers.
But then we decided to go back and look at the data. We thought it would be interesting to see how many Supreme Court clerks from October Term 2002 and October Term 2003 are still in private practice. The OT 2002 and OT 2003 clerk classes were ideal for the purpose of assessing the effect of bonuses because (1) law firms were offering gargantuan bonuses by this point in time, and (2) enough years have passed to allow for meaningful assessment of the clerks' career paths.
We undertook this research, and it ended up showing that a reasonably high percentage of clerks -- about 50 percent -- are in private practice, a few years down the road. It's not an overwhelmingly high percentage (in which case our argument that the firms effectively subsidize other quarters of the profession would be undermined). But it's also not as low as we expected. We revised our argument accordingly, omitting any suggestion that a majority of clerks "take the money and run."
Anyway, having done all this research, we felt like we should put it to some use (since it ended up not being reflected in the final version of the op-ed piece). Posting it on ATL seemed worthwhile enough.
Are you curious about what Supreme Court clerks from a few years ago are up to nowadays? Check out the lists, after the jump.
The Supreme Court's Bonus Babies [New York Times]
Of course, we begin with a few caveats:
1. Please note that these lists are not terribly reliable. You should not use them for any important purpose.2. We compiled them based mainly on hasty and half-assed Google searches, plus what we know through the grapevine. They have not been fact-checked in any way.
3. You'll see that there are many gaps -- many clerks for whom we don't have up-to-date or complete information.
Please offer additions and corrections in the comments. We will update this list on a rolling basis.
THANKS!!!
OCTOBER TERM 2002 SCOTUS CLERKS
At least 19 out of 35, or 54 percent, are still in private practice.
Rehnquist
Leah O. Brannon: associate, antitrust/litigation, Cleary Gottlieb, Washington, DC
Andrew R. DeVooght: associate, litigation, Winston & Strawn, Chicago
Robert K. Hur: associate, special matters/government investigations, King & Spalding, Washington, DC
Stevens
Troy A. McKenzie: assistant professor of law, NYU Law School (formerly at Debevoise)
Eric R. Olson: partner, Bartlit Beck, Denver, CO
Kathryn A. Watts: assistant professor of law, University of Washington (starting September 2007) (formerly at Sidley Austin)
Amy J. Wildermuth: associate professor of law, University of Utah
O'Connor
Emily J. Henn: litigation associate, Covington & Burling, Washington, DC
Justin A. Nelson: litigation associate, Susman & Godfrey, Seattle, WA
Allyson P. Newton Ho: litigation, Baker Botts, Dallas, TX
Cristina M. Rodriguez: assistant professor of law, NYU Law School
Scalia
Jonathan F. Mitchell: visiting assistant professor, University of Chicago Law School
Brian J. Murray: associate, issues & appeals, Jones Day, Chicago
John C. O'Quinn: deputy associate attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice
Gil Seinfeld: assistant professor of law, University of Michigan Law School
Kennedy
Rachel L. Brand: assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Policy
Brian R. Matsui: associate, Morrison & Foerster, Washington, DC
Igor V. Timofyev: Department of Homeland Security
Michael F. Williams: litigation associate, Kirkland & Ellis, Washington, DC
Souter
Mark C. Fleming: junior partner, litigation, WilmerHale, Boston, MA
Jesse M. Furman: assistant U.S. attorney, S.D.N.Y.
Derek Ho: litigation associate, Kellogg Huber, Washington, DC
Sarah L. Levine: ???
Thomas
Victoria Dorfman: litigation associate, Jones Day, Washington, DC
Adam K. Mortara: litigation partner, Bartlit Beck, Chicago, IL
David R. Stras: associate professor of law, University of Minnesota
Emin Toro: tax associate, Covington & Burling, Washington, DC
Ginsburg
Toby J. Heytens: associate professor of law, UVA
Trevor W. Morrison: associate professor of law, Cornell
Elizabeth G. Porter: scholar in residence, Catholic University of America
Karl R. Thompson: counsel, O'Melveny & Myers, Washington, DC
Breyer
Priya R. Aiyar: litigation associate, Kellogg Huber
John M. Golden: assistant professor, University of Texas - Austin
Maritza U. Okata: counsel, O'Melveny & Myers, Washington, DC
Anne K. Small: litigation associate, WilmerHale, New York, NY
OCTOBER TERM 2003 SCOTUS CLERKS
At least 16 out of 35, or 46 percent, are still in private practice.
Rehnquist
Leon F. DeJulius Jr.: associate, issues and appeals/litigation, Jones Day, Pittsburgh
Courtney C. Gilligan (Saleski): assistant U.S. attorney, Washington, DC (formerly at Baker Botts in DC)
Aaron M. Streett: associate, litigation, Baker Botts, Houston, TX
Stevens
Leondra R. Kruger: visiting assistant professor of law, University of Chicago Law School
Amanda C. Leiter: NRDC fellow and Georgetown Law professor
Margaret H. Lemos: assistant professor of law, Cardozo Law School
Benjamin C. Mizer: Deputy Solicitor General, State of Ohio (formerly at WilmerHale in DC)
O'Connor
Janet R. Carter: associate, litigation, WilmerHale, New York, NY
Sean C. Grimsley: partner, litigation, Bartlit Beck, Denver, CO
Ronnell A. Jones: Visiting Faculty Fellow, University of Arizona Law School
Sambhav N. Sankar: associate, litigation, WilmerHale, Washington, DC
Scalia
Benjamin L. Hatch: associate, competition, Hunton & Williams, Richmond, VA
Christopher Scott Hemphill: associate professor of law, Columbia Law School
Robert K. Kry: associate, litigation, Baker Botts, Washington, DC
Kevin C. Walsh: associate, competition, Hunton & Williams, Richmond, VA
Kennedy
Bertrand-Marc Allen: in-house counsel at Boeing (formerly at Kellogg Huber)
Edward C. Dawson: associate, Yetter & Warden (formerly at Weil Gotshal in Austin)
Orin Kerr: Associate Professor of Law, GW Law School
Chi T. "Steve" Kwok: assistant U.S. attorney, S.D.N.Y. (formerly at Wachtell Lipton)
Souter
Julian D. Mortenson: associate, litigation, WilmerHale, New York, NY
Gregory G. Rapawy: associate, litigation, Kellogg Huber
Samuel J. Rascoff: NYPD intelligence analyst
Jeannie C. Suk: assistant professor of law, Harvard Law School
Thomas
Richard M. Corn: associate, tax, Sullivan & Cromwell, New York, NY
John A. Eisenberg: deputy assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel
Diane L. McGimsey: associate, litigation, Sullivan & Cromwell, Los Angeles, CA
Hannah C. Smith: associate, Williams & Connolly, Washington, DC
Ginsburg
Abbe R. Gluck: senior staff, Attorney General's office, administration of Governor Jon Corzine (N.J.)
Aziz Z. Huq: Counsel, Brennan Center
Anne M. Joseph (O'Connell): Assistant Professor of Law, Boalt Hall
Neil S. Siegel: assistant professor of law and political science, Duke Law School
Breyer
Ariela M. Migdal: self-employed (primarily federal appellate work, including telecom appeals)
Pratik A. Shah: associate, litigation, WilmerHale, Boston
Alexandra M. Walsh: associate, litigation, Baker Botts, Washington, DC
Davis J. Wang: associate, tax, Sullivan & Cromwell, New York, NY
(73) Comments
Last I checked, John O'Quinn was at DOJ in DC, as a Deputy Assistance Attorney General I think
Oh the obsession with the silly overachievers that will someday take out their personal inadequacies on a new crop of law students across the country.
Unscientific, but it seems Stevens and Ginsburg's clerks are least likely to be in private practice by far... With all in, Ginsburh has only 1 of 8. Stevens has 1 of 6 reported. Contrast with 6/7 for Breyer and Thomas, 4/7 for Souter and Scalia, 2/5 for kennedy, and a whopping 5/5 for Rehnquist.
Furman is still AUSA at SDNY USAO as of past spring
What about counting those who are working in the public sector? They're giving back just as much as those in academia.
It seems like anticlimax to clerk at the Supreme Court and then wind up as a "mere" law firm partner (or even worse, associate) a few years down the road.
There's nothing wrong with being a law firm partner. But aren't Supreme Court clerks supposed to go out and change the world?
Orin Kerr was a professor at GW before he clerked for Kennedy. He went directly back to GW after his clerkship. So he never got the big-ass bonus.
John C. O'Quinn (Scalia '02) is Deputy Associate Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 2006-present
http://www.phikappaphi.org/honorcord/oquinn.html
Lat, your google skills are lacking.
2:46 (1st poster): Some of these people are high-powered liberals who are waiting out the Republican administration.
When Hillary becomes president, then they will probably head off to the SG's office, OLC, White House Counsel, etc.
In the last five years what firms have grabbed the most Supreme Court clerks?
2:46 - sort of like Rhodes Scholars?
Troy A. McKenzie just accepted an asst. professor position at NYU Law. (go to www.law.nyu.edu, and wait for the announcement to stroll up on the page.)
Troy McKenzie was just hired as a law professor at NYU.
John A. Eisenberg - Deputy AAG at OLC, DOJ
Heard through the grapevine that Mizer is the new SG for Ohio.
I think Courtney Gilligan-Saleski is an AUSA in DC now.
Ok, so even with this [somewhat incomplete] data, which shows that exactly one, Aziz Z. Huq, is at a nonprofit/public-interest shop, Lat still felt comfortable making the claim that "The financial freedom supplied by these bonuses can allow the clerks who decide against a corporate career to move on more quickly to what truly interests them — academia, government practice or public-interest law. Law firms end up in effect subsidizing less wealthy precincts of the profession."
So given that this data, researched by Lat, is showing that nearly half are still in private practice; ~40% in academia; ~8% in gov't positions; and ~2% in public-interest, I think calling Lat's conclusion disingenuous would be a slight understatement.
Between Davis Wang and Ben Mizer, OT 2003 was a hot term for the men4menz. (Orin Kerr only wishes he was in on that)
Bartlitt Beck and grossly disproportionate share of The Elect from those years - two for a firm of just 60 attorneys.
Two former Scalia clerks are at Hunton in Richmond. God knows why.
Hunton trots them out to the summers to show off the same way they trot out their, like, one black partner. Not very convincing, overall.
I concur with 3:06. She's an AUSA in DC.
Interesting info, but how many of these clerks took the money in the first place?
I'm pretty sure that a significant % of the professors and government lawyers on your list never spent time at a private firm after their SCOTUS clerkships. So the percent who took the money and stayed is probably even higher.
One of the former SC clerks at Hunton in Va is Ben Hatch - perhaps the nicest, most mild-mannered guy on Earth.
Lots of SCOTUS Clerks at WilmerHale. DO they pay big bonuses?
Armchair litigator makes a very fine point.
Yes, Courtney Gilligan-Saleski is an AUSA in the DC office. Odd choice. Why not Eastern District of VA?
what is the deal with the former clerk who is working for the NYPD???
3:07- Private practice does not include government or public interest. One leaves government to go into private practice.
shouldn't lat have faithfully done his research, which he obviously half-assed, answered or grappled with questions like armchair litigator's, and fully tested his hypothesis? since when does beating the scientific method with a croquet mallet of speculation get you into the NYT? okay, maybe that question shouldn't be answered.
3:07--Sorry. Re-read your post and I understand now.
Jesus Christ Lat, no wonder you got shit canned from Wachtell. You can't even take the time to fact check the current status of 35 law clerks? Why even post something if you are going to give the caveat of "oh by the way, this is a half-assed list of clerks and what they are doing today. It is probably grossly unreliable so don't use it for anything meaningful." Why even read your post if you give a caveat like that? Somewhere in Manhattan, Herb Wachtell is frowning on your laziness.
About Bartlit Beck...
Nearly 15% of their attorneys are past Supreme Court law clerks.
3:11 - probably because he gets to work with this guy while not having to live in DC.
http://www.hunton.com/bios/bio.aspx?id=16663&tab=0013
Is Ariela Migdal still in Israel?
http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=PubArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticleState&&cid=1067350973292
I know of one Supreme Court clerk who went into public service. I recall hearing that Christine Van Aken (Souter 2004) is an attorney for the city of San Francisco. She was at Arnold & Porter in NY before her S Ct clerkship.
NYBar has the following:
CHI T. STEVE KWOK
U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE
ONE ST. ANDREWS PLAZA
NEW YORK, NY 10007
United States
(212) 637-2415
I bet the rest can be tracked down with ease using the various state bar websites available.
Looks like Migdal (Breyer '03) just got back from being a public defender in Israel. Does that count as govt service in Lat's book?
"Breyer clerk Ariela Migdal, who campaigned for her father-in-law, Joseph Lieberman, in the 2000 election, has been working as a public defender in Israel, according to Harvard Magazine."
http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=PubArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticleState&&cid=1067350973292
"Ariela Migdal (‘87) and her husband, Ethan Tucker, just moved from Kibbutz Maale Gilboa, Israel, where her two children (Eden, 3, and Yitzhak, 18 months) were born, to New York. She is a lawyer." http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:OV61889PT7MJ:www.jds.org/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D69%26Itemid%3D93+%22Ariela+Migdal%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us
gotta love google.
3:31 - sorry
3:32.
Ben Mizer is not *the* SG of Ohio, though he might work for the Office of the SG. The new SG is Bill Marshall, a fantastic tenured prof at UNC Law and a former Clinton WH counsel.
if Lat just put half the effort into searching out these clerks as he does searching out gay porn....
3:31 -- The man's poop must smell of vanilla and fresh strawberries to make Richmond worthwile.
Kwok is on DOJ email for Southern District of NY. Lat is totally phoning it this afternoon.
Q: WHY THE F DO YOU PEOPLE CARE?
Having chaired a faculty hiring committee for a few years, I can comment that we interviewed several former Supreme Court clerks, virtually all of whom first went into practice, usually with large firms. On the other hand, the bonuses were much smaller back then...
3:28, Lat did not get "s**canned" from Wachtell. He left for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Stop trying to turn ATL comments into AutoAdmit.
First google hit for John A Eisenberg:
JOHN EISENBERG, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE testimony before Congress 9/06.
And Sarah Levine, formerly of Ropes & Gray in Boston, is listed by Mass atty registration as living in DC, but no work address.
Are any current SC clerks going to Barlit Beck this year?
Brian Leach (sp?) from Souter is joining Bartlit Beck this year.
Also Martha Pacold (Thomas OT03) is joining Bartlit Beck from DOJ.
Pratik Shah did a faculty fellowship at Alabama Law before going to WilmerHale in Boston not DC.
Kathryn Watts is now full-time at UWashington Law. http://www.law.washington.edu/Students/Registration/Planning%20Packet2007-08.pdf
Melissa Arbus, who clerked for Stevens (OT 2004) http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2004_spr/supreme_clerks_pf.htm
is still at Latham & Watkins http://www.lw.com/Attorneys.aspx?page=AttorneyBio&attno=04173
Check her out here: http://www.friendster.com/photos/22661855/0/418895762 (on the right in pink)
I like Bartlit's partnership track. Do they basically just hire SCOTUS clerks and young trial lawyer superstars?
Hey Lat, I am by no means a bleeding heart (far from it), but jeez, do these people need any more fawning and aggrandizement?
Why not do a piece on the sacrifice of people better than me who eat the load of law school debt and go out and work for peanuts doing something good for the world.
I can only read so much Harvard-grad ass-licking.
4:35,
Just because law school grads take jobs trying to litigate their way to social change doesn't mean they're "doing something good for the world." They're acting on private interests in the name of "public interest." There's no glory in that except self-righteousness.
So, where do the non-SCOTUS clerks hired by places like Bartlit Beck and Kellogg Huber come from and do they feel inferior?
Presumably Lat isn't getting paid Wachtell wages to run this site. So don't expect him to put in Wachtell hours fact-checking this crap.
Why should he invest (waste) the time when he knows that commenters will come along and fact-check this stuff for him?
Also, it's a blog, not a legal brief. It doesn't need to be perfect, especially not from the get-go.
Keeping track of the career moves of SCOTUS clerks could be easily monitored using Wikipedia (which is basically what this post + comments amounts to).
I had Porter for Torts this year (yeah, I know, I go to the shitty DC law school, I'm over it) and she was actually an excellent professor. So perhaps them jumping ship to academia isn't always horrible!
Kellogg Huber seems to have two tiers for its attorneys: You're either hired as an "associate" or a "staff attorney." That's harsh.
http://www.bartlit-beck.com/articles/artfergu.asp
Apparently, bartlit beck never made it past the year 2000. Clients might still connect to your email network via a modem??!?
Sarah Levine is at the SEC.
Those Scalia guys didn't go to Hunton & Williams in Richmond because of Hew Pate. It turns out that Ben Hatch, who is from Roanoke, thought Richmond actually WAS a big city. The other guy, (Kevin?) Walsh, is really just an academic (is becoming a prof I think) and wanted to do research on the civil procedure of the Confederacy, all while slurping up a huge bonus.
Hey 3:11, Hunton actually scores pretty well for minority partners. But why check out the facts before making an allegation?
http://www.hunton.com/files/tbl_s10News%5CFileUpload44%5C11880%5CDiversityScorecard.pdf
@4:50 -- CUA law is in the top 100 of law schools. Considering that UDC is in tier 4), it seems like the shitty law school mantle is not something you can claim?
Gil Seinfeld is awesome. Period.
Yeah, his show was brilliant and hilarious.
(Any relation to Jerry?)
5:16--the article is from '96. Why it's still posted may be a fair question, but I like it when things get left on the web way past their sell-by date.
Anonymous 3:11--
Hunton has more than one black partner. Although you might be thinking of Frank Emory, who is the head of the Litigation practice, or Robert Grey, the immediate past president of the ABA, who we do "trot out" on a pretty regular basis, not because they're black, but because they're impressive human beings.
Kellogg Huber takes the cake proportionally in terms of Supreme Court recruiting over the last few years. Four (two from OT'02, two from '03, one from '04) for a firm of 40+ lawyers.
3:46 -- Kellogg Huber hires lots of non-SC clerks as associates. It's not at all the case that you're a staff atty if you're not a SCOTUS clerk. And their bonus for appellate clerks is substantial.
Correction: 2:59 responds to 4:56. sorry.
Re 3:46 -- Kellogg Huber's court of appeals clerkship bonus is $100,000.
2:41 I think the point is that it is far more interesting to take a look 5-6 years down the line and see where people are. Not many firms look like they are interesting enough to hold on to their Supreme Court clerks. Kellogg is a sweatshop and everyone knows it. There are a ton of liberal clerks there just waiting for Hillary! so that they can go into gov't.