I miss Billy Merck.

We should get our Laurie Lin fix soon. Where's LEWW for this week?

I miss A3G.

Any announcement on who is going to which firm?

A3G was doomed to come to an end. As Lat mentioned in that Althouse chat, people were on to him before he did the New Yorker interview with Jeff Toobin.

UTR was good while it lasted, but all good things come to an end.

"Contracts between Supreme Court clerks and the law firms that hire them"

Contracts? I've worked at multiple law firms and never signed a contract. Is this normal for Scotus clerks?

Yawn.... I'm too hung-over to keep my mouth shut on this issue. Who cares about SCOTUS clerks? What percentage of ATL readers are SCOTUS clerks, potential future SCOTUS clerks, or are even acquainted with SCOTUS clerks?

The only value I gain from this posting is that it furthers my contention that BigLaws care nothing for actual work product and instead only reward prestige credentials that they can advertise on their website. I've only personally known one former SCOTUS clerk. That individual was an extremely talented legal writer - though I know other attorneys who were not clerks of any sort whose legal writing abilities are superior to that individual. Not one of those people ever received a 250K bonus.

I agree with 12:01. Why is Lat so fixated on these clerks? He's the nerdy equivalent of a jock-sniffer.

11:58 Clerk-- yes, it's pretty standard. I've had to sign contracts at two different law firms regarding my agreement not to leave within a year or I would have to repay my bar/signing bonuses. I don't know that they would ever try to enforce those clauses, but they were in the contracts.

12:01, 12:05:

This is just a shout-out to Lat's original constituency of Underneath Their Robes readers -- many of whom were "SCOTUS clerks, potential future SCOTUS clerks, or [good friends] with SCOTUS clerks."

You don't have to read every post on this site. Skip the ones that don't interest you. I'm no longer interested in pay raise stuff because I've got mine. But I don't go into the pay raise threads and bitch about how boring they are.

12:14

but you do go into stories to bitch about people bitching?

12:20: Yes.

I don't want Lat to stop writing about SCOTUS clerks because of a few bitchy commenters. Their views aren't representative of everyone who reads ATL.

FIRST to say "First."

First.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So basically, take a SCOTUS bonus and treat it as though it were the clerk's paycheck for the year of clerking, and you wind up with a SCOTUS clerk making more money than his/her boss.

Anyone else think that's a little ridiculous?

No more ridiculous than the fact that an appellate clerk who goes on to a firm and gets a 35K bonus plus their second-year salary also makes more than a Justice.

1:39, the difference is that the student still made less FOR HIS OR HER WORK AS A CLERK. I think the prestige-and-public-service/salary tradeoff is a fair one. If you want to be a federal judge, or a clerk, you're getting enormous benefits that compensate for the smaller salary. I have no problem with the fact that people in private practice make much more money than people in public practice.

What I DO think is absurd is that a bonus this high makes it such that the CLERK is no longer making this tradeoff, even though his/her bosses are. That's just patently ridiculous.

Actually, that's just supply and demand. Lots o' firms want SCOTUS clerks, and there's only 37 of 'em a year.

Moreover, your argument fails from the outset because of the silly convention you must adopt -- treating the bonus as if it were the clerk's salary during the clerkship, when it obviously is not. Thus, even SCOTUS clerks are making a tradeoff in the form of lower salary in exchange for the enormous benefits. It's just that for them, the enormous benefits include a six-figure bonus.

There's really nothing shocking about this. Certainly not "a little ridiculous," much less the "patently ridiculous" you increased it to after shifting your argument to the false claim that SCOTUS clerks do not make a tradeoff. At least stick to the raw dollars if you want to be coherent (but still wrong).

Please tell me that 1:57 is not a scotus clerk.

Why do you think firms (and only firms as opposed to, say, academic institutions) offer the 'enormous benefit' of a lamborghini-sized bonus in the first place?
I bet it is the same reason they offer "class credit" for the years spent clerking -- to nullify the cost/benefit analysis clerks might suffer by granting them the same (if not better) footing as their non-clerking peers.

Class credit removes the time trade-off.
Ginormous bonuses remove the salary difference. Supply and demand may have created this system, but the point of the bonuses remains the same.

1:39 -- huh???

The clerks appear to have the option of taking the money at the start of their clerkship. What kind of "new math" do you have to concoct to pretend this isn't a wage???

I didn't say it was shocking, or that it isn't the result of irrational market forces. But it is ridiculous.

2:29: Clerks cannot accept a bonus before the end of the clerkship.

Read the canons, it's in there.

Don't know what canons you refer to, but I'll take your word for it and stand corrected.

My point remains the same. If I knew that I could defer my salary by a single year and thereby increase it by roughly 30%, in addition to attaining a ridiculous level of prestige, it would be beyond a no-brainer.

As 2:24 noted, to pretend that the bonus is not geared as compensation to relieve clerks of any tradeoff effects is beyond willful ignorance.

2:36:

See http://www.dccourts.gov/dccourts/docs/AdvisoryOpinionNo7.pdf at 6-8

1:32, it is hardly "willful ignorance" to believe that the bonus is "not geared as compensation to relieve clerks of any tradeoff effects." Big firms don't care about the clerk's opportunity costs of clerking. They merely care about growing their bottom lines, and obviously believe that snagging SC clerks is an effective means towards achieving this end. They pay the market price for clerks based on the laws of supply and demand, as noted above.

That the bonus figure happens to be so large that it compensates and then some for the forgone wages a clerk might otherwise have made if he went straight into private practice is purely incidental. The bonus is not "geared" for this purpose.

The analysis for class credit is the same. Firms offer this perquisite because it is the market price to retain clerks. Make no mistake, if firms could attract clerks for cheaper they would do so in half a heart beat.

3:02, talk about obstinately missing the point.

I bet you're one of those people who thinks a supply and demand curve tells you everything you need to know about life. Good luck raising kids, if you ever figure out how to get someone to sleep with you -- which I suppose you can do by paying them, since the market is the answer to everything, right?

Easy there 3:02. There's no need to question my parenting skills or to turn me into a John looking for a hooker, for goodness sake!

I am not sure why you think I missed the point, but I'm willing to consider any reasoned arguments you have on the subject.

I do think supply and demand curves explain a lot of behavior, including the clerkship bonuses we have been discussing, so in that sense they are useful analytical tools. But I don't think that markets tell me everything I need to know about life. And I also don't think my prior comments, fairly read, provide any evidence for your claim that I hold such a belief.

Keep your comments above the belt, there is no need to insult to make your points.

I'll give it one last try then.

I never said it's not the result of market forces. I never said that law firms are consciously doing this as a means to (more than) make up for the missed year of work. I never denied that this is the market rate.

What I said is that it's ridiculous. I don't think it is RIGHT or SENSIBLE. Has NOTHING to do with market forces. A major reason for the disparity between public and private compensation is because public work is more fulfilling and far, far less demanding (in other words, people will accept a MUCH lower salary than they could get in a firm, because of this other compensation). Because the MARKET has resulted in compensation to clerks that completely relieves them of the tradeoff and then some, you have a situation where a select few people -- not by any means the most qualified to "deserve" this -- randomly happen to get their cake and eat it too. I stand by my assertion that this is, yes, *patently ridiculous*.

Thus, the market is irrational and immoral, in spite of the fact that, as you have pointed out several times now, it exists and works according to its own internal (irrational and immoral) rubric.

Unless you've clerked for a justice of the SCOTUS, I don't think you can say the job is less demanding.

4:55, I imagine that, clerking for SCOTUS, you're never working for someone who causes you to question their basic competency. Sadly, the same cannot be said of working at BigLaw. Constantly worrying that you're committing malpractice can take years off your life. I'd say that's pretty fucking demanding.

Whenever I see SCOTUS, I always read SCROTUM. I think there's a lesson to be learned from that.

I doubt anyone's still reading, but I had work to do during the week and I feel like responding, so what the hell.

First, to whoever was wondering -- no, I am not a SCOTUS clerk. Yet.

Next. The original claim was that it is "a little ridiculous" that a SCOTUS clerk makes more than her boss, *if* we consider the 200-250K bonus from her firm, paid after the clerkship is over, to be additional salary *during* her clerkship. My original post pointed out that the mere fact that SCOTUS clerks go on to be paid more than their bosses is no more ridiculous than the fact that virtually every clerk goes on to be paid more than her boss.

The response to this was to suggest that the source of ridiculousness is the fact that the post-hoc bonus, if we pretend that it was actually paid during the clerkship, means the clerk made more during the clerkship than her boss. But then the argument abruptly shifted to be not the fact that subordinate makes more than the Article III jurist, but that the subordinate supposedly is no longer making a "tradeoff" because of this bonus. As a later post it, they get to have their cake and eat it too.

To which I responded that this is nonsense, because clerks self-evidently DO make a tradeoff. They are not paid that bonus during the year. They do not out-earn their Justices while clerking. They only reap that financial benefit after their clerkship, and then only if they go to a private firm rather than the government or academia.

As a result, the bonus is not, as erroneously assumed, some sort of compensation-equalizer that negates the cost to the clerk in taking the "tradeoff." Rather, it is part of the package of benefits the clerk receives as part of the tradeoff.

Everyone knows these bonuses are paid to SCOTUS clerks. Those who apply for and accept SCOTUS clerkships do so full well understanding that they are trading off a year of whatever they'd otherwise be doing in order to have the experience of clerking for the Court. They also know that upon completion of the clerkship, if they desire, they can accept employment with a private firm that will, among other things, pay them this bonus.

If that helps make the tradeoff worth it to them, so be it. I fail to see the problem.

What it seems to come down to here is petty jealousy (but then why should that be surprising; petty jealousy is what keeps these comment boards so active on virtually every thread). The simple fact is that SCOTUS clerks have one of the most sought-after legal and intellectual experiences this country has to offer, and wind up being handsomely rewarded for that experience (again, if they so choose). Sure, those of us who never have that experience can grouse all we want about how the process is "random" and that there is nothing about the lucky few that make them particularly "deserving" of these benefits.

But that's just "NY to 190!" in a more sophisticated form. Myopic jealousy mixed with greed.

What's "patently ridiculous" is that you are so consumed with your envy that you don't even realize it -- your last entry makes this clear. The thing that really bothers you is not your concern that clerks are getting paid more than your boss, or that somehow the purity of the judicial system is threatened by these bonuses. It's that you think the life of a clerk is all cushy and slow-paced and relaxing and undemanding and *easy*, and therefore not deserving of this windfall. And presumably, YOUR job is so much harder and more stressed and painful and demanding (esp. if 4:34 and 4:57 are the same person), so obviously it's Just Not Fair that THEY get this bonus and YOU don't.

In other words -- you're nothing more than a crybaby. (And apparently one who so lacks self-confidence that s/he lets some asshole partner question his competency -- which, in a roundabout way, probably suggests that the asshole partner is on to something.)

Correction:

your concern that clerks are getting paid more than THEIR boss

I stopped reading at "Yet."

The talk of the hallways is that the market rate is definitely $250,000. Firms that want to stay competitive are paying it to this batch of clerks.

The question mark should be a period for the OT06 bonus babies. The only question left is which firm is first to break to 300?