First!

Why does anyone care? By the way, did I mention that WILMER MATCHED BONUSES in NY, no hours requirement attached!

9:55, send Lat the memo. I'll believe it when it's on the main page.

I guess the list above says it all for Thomas-
George Mason
GW
Creighton
Rutgers

Give me a break

10am - there is no memo. They made an announcement to all NY associates yesterday at 4pm. They don't do firm-wide memos because they don't want it posted on ATL.

Yeah, what's going on with Thomas? His TTT affirmative action program will just haunt these lawyers for the rest of their lives. Everyone will know that even though they achieved a prestigious Supreme Court clerkship, their achievement will be overshadowed by the perception that they weren't really S.Ct. material. People will say, "She clerked for the Supreme Court, but it was a Thomas AA hire so it doesn't really count." I don't know why Thomas would do this to these poor lawyers.

Early Alito clerkships may be similarly devalued b/c of Alito's weakness for hiring his former Third Circuit clerks.

10:02,

Actually, Thomas' selection of clerks from non-top tiered schools should be applauded. He selects top students who would otherwise be overlooked. A Supreme Court clerkship opens many doors and it's good to see a Justice supporting diversity. Wow! Did I just say Thomas is for diversity? Better check the temperature in hell because it's about to freeze over.

On a more interesting and topical note, U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose has been reassigned to Justice Department headquarters in DC.

Who gives a crap about Supreme Court clerks?

lol@the ridiculous elitism on this thread. I hail from a top-20 law school, and even I have to admit that while some of the lower tier schools churn out mostly sub-par students, they also turn out some fantastically brilliant ones as well. There is no reason why a student from Creighton Law can't get a clerkship on the USSC if he/she is talented enough. It's laughable to think otherwise.

I hate when the comments degenerate into "Thomas is such a TTT."

First, all clerked for prestigious COA judges.

Second, at least Consovoy, Evans, and Strawbridge all graduated first in their class. Consovoy had astronomical grades, and Evans has the highest GPA on record.

The fact that Thomas likes to see people from average upbringing push on to outstanding success doesn't make his choice to hire outside the vaunted HYS wrong. Just look at the individual candidates and you'll see that.

Finally, if you look down the list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_clerks_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States you'll see that a great many Thomas hires "count."

Wow, what a bunch of elitist fucks. How can you assume that Thomas' clerks are highly qualified just because the didn't go to Yale, Harvard, or Stanford? If they weren't qualified, they wouldn't have received clerkships on the Courts of Appeals. Perhaps Thomas actually believes one should be judged on his/her own merits and not where they went to school.

I think he's cute in a Noah Wiley meets Adrien Brody sort of way.

On a larger point, it's a shame that any mugshot Lat posts (let alone opines on) necessarily provokes baseless and uncivil commentary thereon.

10:12: I actually agree with you. I get the feeling that, despite his shortcomings, Thomas rails against the elitism of law schools. That's reflected in his dissent in Grutter. As for his clerks' careers being ruined, well, that's just asinine.

Hey, fanboy, it's Noah Wyle.

10:17: Because graduates of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. cannot accept the fact that somebody from a lower-tiered law school can do what they do.

"Consovoy, Evans, and Strawbridge all graduated first in their class."

So did Mascott.

I guess its early Fridays in Scalia's chambers. And no Saturdays. What a life!

10:21...

It would shatter their world view. I mean, they went to HYS!!! They MUST be better.

He is pretty cute.

Oh, and did you know that ONE of Clarence first FORTY clerks was an African-American. No affirmative action going on in those chambers!

10:23 - 24/6 is better than the 9-5 desk job you have.

What's sad is that anyone (with enough money) can go to HYS and just graduate. No pressure, no worries. I'm glad we live in a society where just because daddy bought your way into a "name" you get the benefits without the work. Is it true that they don't even have classes at HYS, they just sit around, drink tea, eat scones, and blow each other? BTW, I was accepted to Yale but have to go local.

Uh, 10:10 wasn't being elitist - it was an ironic poke at Thomas's autobiography. If you all really followed the Court you would know this.

Accepted, why did you have to add that you were accepted to Yale? The first part of your post displayed a healthy disrespect for the HYS elitist bullshit so sickeningly on display with 10:10's post, yet you feel the need to say you actually were good enough to get into Yale, thus propping up the the elitism you seem to disdain. Why?

Wilmer announcement? More news please.

what are the lsat scores of those schools? yikes

I'm a liberal and Thomas' hiring choices give me more respect for him. It shows the potential for thinking outside the well-worn paths, and the courage to take a chance.

Accepted,

You are a putz. First, you make thoroughly exaggerated condemnations of the admission process - exaggerated to the point of whitewashing any underlying merit. Then, you call yourself "Accepted."

10:34...

10:02 was being elitest.

Thomas doesn't ask questions and he doesn't write opinions. So what do his clerks do? Seems like an easy gig to me.

"First, you make thoroughly exaggerated condemnations of the admission process"

Process is as follows...Daddy contacts HYS, asks how much, Daddy writes check for stated amount, kid is accepted.

"Accepted, why did you have to add that you were accepted to Yale?"

Come on now, how easy would it have been to just say "he must have been denied access" See, I stopped that before it started. My comments were no more full of Sh!t than any of you stating that HYS is better than anywhere else.

HYS isn't any better than any of the other law schools. It depends on the person not the school. The sooner you guys realize this the better off you will be.

I'd hit it.

Cute, I suppose, but not sexy. Isn't anyone attracted to a bit of danger? This guy looks like he grooms show dogs for a living.

"Thomas doesn't ask questions and he doesn't write opinions. So what do his clerks do? Seems like an easy gig to me."

True, Thomas doesn't ask questions, but he doesn't write opinions??? What??? In the 2006 term, the Court penned opinions in 75 cases. If equally split amongst the 9 justices, this would work out to each writing 8.33 opinions each. Thomas wrote 8. Are you really chastising him for not writing that last 1/3 of an opinion? Or are you bothered that he doesn't feel compelled to write megatons of concurrences and dissents?

@Accepted

"HYS isn't any better than any of the other law schools. It depends on the person not the school. The sooner you guys realize this the better off you will be."

Is everything you write complete horsesh*t? I didn't go to HYS, but I'm not delusional enough to believe that there's no difference. And as far as Daddy writing a check, have you checked the stats (GPA, LSAT, etc.) for those accepted to HYS?

If you were in fact accepted to Yale and went local, you are a moron. Don't spew your self-induced bitterness on us.

Accepted,

Does daddy also cut a fat check to LSAC, getting his kid an 170?

Accepted, if you were in fact accepted to Yale, why didn't you just take out the loans and attend? I went to Stanford and by no means did my disabled, unconnected father make a call to the admissions office to secure me a spot in my class - I earned it. Your bitterness only makes you seem more petty and immature in the eyes of people who read your posts. And even as a Stanford grad, I have no doubt that someone who clerks for Thomas will be a formiddable, talented attorney when he or she enters practice.

by "local" Accepted clearly means he went to UVA, Mich, or NYU

I don't really think it should matter if Thomas hires from non HYS and T14 schools. If you are the valedictorian at a tier one or two school, and then clerk for a prestigious circuit court judge, you are certainly qualified to clerk for the SC. Remember, if you are valedictorian of such a school, you can almost certainly transfer to CLS or above. That Thomas hires those that choose to stay at their lesser schools is laudable.

What is not so laudable, however, is the strict ideological testing that Thomas conducts for his clerks. While other justices are more forgiving of disagreements of opinion, Thomas apparently prefers true believers--albeit smart ones. (This info comes from The Nine, so I claim no credit for its accuracy, but it seems legit.)

PS - That clerk has dreamy eyes.

11:26...

Justices from the other end of the spectrum are notorious for doing the same thing. It happens, and it sucks. But Thomas isn't the only offender.

11:30 - I don't disagree. I don't really know much about Supreme Court hiring practices, and am just relaying what Toobin says in his book. The strict ideological tests are indeed disheartening. The sense I got from the book wasn't that Thomas wasn't the only one who had this occur, but was merely the most strict about it.

10:34 and 10:53: I re-read 10:10 and agree it's clever sarcasm poking fun at Thomas's book. Apologies to 10:10.

Anonymous 11:30am,
Thank you very much for your disclaimer of credit for the statement about the way Thomas hires his clerks. I would otherwise indeed have been inclined to award you credit for the discovery.

11:36 - pretty sure Toobin's book's been thorougly debunked in various circles for its ideological slant - i.e., acting as if Thomas is the only one to do this, when they all do.

Let's face it kids-Supreme Court clerks are one of the most prestigious jobs available and should be staffed with the most prestigious grads. I really don't care how tier 4 guy fared against his classmates, comprised mostly of sub-150 LSAT scorers and those that managed to eke out a 3.0 at Directional State U majoring in criminal justice. The vast majority of HYS kids accomplished far, far more in their lives and admission to these schools is living proof. "But, but, he BOUGHT his way into school!" you reply. OK, then this person will underperform his peers and finish in the bottom quartile, knocking him out of clerking opportunities.

You can't aim for the top and expect to get there by attending a shit school. Prove yourself by outperforming your peers that represent the top 1% of society's intelligence. For what its worth, I attend a non-HYS top school and I don't think many clerks should come from my school, absent compelling circumstances. I personally think clerking is a waste of time, but if I wanted to be a SC clerk, I certainly don't qualify.

12:35,

While short posts fly below the grammar cops' radar, if you are going to rant, you'd be well-advised to adopt a style less evocative of "Kids Say the Darndest Things."

"Supreme Court clerks are one of the most prestigious jobs available..."

Very true.

"... and should be staffed with the most prestigious grads."

I disagree. They should be staffed with those best suited to do the job. Most prestigious does not always equal best suited to do the job.

Hot, Jewish, observant, successful... is he single? If only he were clerking on the other side of the fence... .

I enjoy kicking the living shit out of elitist scumbags....

Wow. Scalia really does only hire dudes, doesn't he? Unless Jameson's a woman.

"The vast majority of HYS kids accomplished far, far more in their lives and admission to these schools is living proof."

Hilarious. Great flame, made me laugh out loud at work.

god, he's hot. And smart. Too bad I'm a German-Catholic....

All the smart lawyers in the entire U.S.A. only go to 2 schools, rights? All these T6 trolls, should give me a break. I have met plenty an idiot (maybe they study hard, but they are still idiots) from my T6 law school and a few brilliant lawyers from TTT schools.

"god, he's hot. And smart. Too bad I'm a German-Catholic...."

Too bad you're a guy too. Let's keep your homo erotic desires under control please.

I wanted to go to HLS, but all three said they didn't have room for me....

I meant HYS . . . . stupid fat fingers.

Orthodox Jewish Clerks With Catholic Judges!!!!

Jameson Jones is a male, and is happily married to a woman. So with the recent exception of Rachel Kovner, no, Scalia doesn't seem to accept women.

And Spinowitz is married... http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=214875

The picture is fairly accurate, but Moshe is married, so give it up.

does Jameson have a wide stance?

this guy is super hot!

Commenters here are missing the point re: Thomas's clerks. No one is claiming that Thomas's clerks are not smarter than the average student at HLS or even Yale. They may be smarter than me, for all I know. But what is preposterous is to claim that students from GW, Creigton, etc. are as smart as, say, the top 15-20 or so students from HLS/YLS, who are actually the ones who get the SCOTUS clerkships.

And even if in theory it were the case that you had one person at, say, Creigton who happened to be supersmart, no one would be able to tell looking at his academic record because he never got to compete with the very best. If 1 out of 50 students who are #1 at a T3 is SCOTUS caliber, how do you distinguish him from the other 49 students who are also #1 at the T3?

"no one would be able to tell looking at his academic record because he never got to compete with the very best."

Yeah, but thankfully, there are other factors. Like glowing LORs from professors that say, "He's the real deal"... like all-time-high GPAs... like clerking for prestigious COA judges who also recommend you enthusiastically... like working at an elite firm... so yeah, I guess "valedictorian at a top-25 law school" is "constrained" in some ways, but no more so than, say, the "pass" grading system limits the comparative value of Yale students. There are other means of quality.

That, and if you're a good interviewer and not an insufferable boor or pretentious prick, there's probably a high value of good chambers at the sacrifice of a single "point" in the prestige scale.

Every person I know who went to HYS, regardless of their performance (often not even measured) in law school, fully believes that they would've been at the top of their class had they gone to a GW or a UConn. That is bullshit.

that and having dreamy green eyes i could get lost in

I doubt HLS grad (2:47) actually went to HLS.

As 2:54 notes, side-by-side comparisons of transcripts aren't the only data available. Many of these people have professors who were COA/Supreme Court clerks, and they worked for COA judges who've employed lots of HYS grads. Those people can tell the Justices whether these people have what it takes.

What happened to the clerks from last semester? What does a former SCOTUS clerk do afterwards?

The gene pool just ain't fair....

HLS Grad writes:

"They may be smarter than me, for all I know."

You sound like if they were, you'd be astounded and disappointed.

HLS Grad wrote:

"They may be smarter than me, for all I know."

Was the misuse of "me" a sly bit of self-effacement? Or were you inadvertently making clear how likely it is that "they" are actually smarter than you?

1:08 - what world are you living in where gaining admission to a top 3 law school is not an accomplishment worthy of praise? Putting aside legacies (very small amount of people), those that do this are smart, accomplished people. Period.

And my God, there are so many insecure TTTs on this site. Yes, the bottom 90% of HYS could go to any tier 2/3/4 (maybe a good chunk of tier 1) and blow up the curve. After all, they have been performing at a higher level than TTTs all their lives. They (most likely) did better than you in high school and got into better colleges, where they still got higher GPAs than you. They kicked your ass on the LSAT. They will graduate and get better jobs than you. Deal with it.

I must reiterate that I am not HYS and probably would have been shut out entirely had I applied there. But I can securely say that the vast majority of them are objectively smarter than me, despite my top performance at an excellent school. And yes, your anecdotal evidence of "this one HLS grad I met was dumb" does not prove otherwise.

There are people who turn down T6 for TTT for family, etc. reasons. Many thought that they would be the "big fish" in their schools. Many were not.

The underlying presumption of many of the comments is that law school admissions is somehow scientific and a proxy for intelligence, which it clearly is not. It is as random as who does and does not get a clerkship. All this shit is to a large degree random. Accept that instead of patting your back for getting into x school, and feeling the need to downplay the achievements of others from other law schools. Transfer students tend to do better in the higher-ranked school that they transfer into than their original schools. The shit makes no sense unless you concede that there are some serious flaws with law school admissions.

"Yes, the bottom 90% of HYS could go to any tier 2/3/4 (maybe a good chunk of tier 1) and blow up the curve"

So says the bottom 90% of HYS... and often, they'd flop the same way. Look, getting a 4.0 at some state college isn't a big deal (and, gasp, HYS accepts plenty from them). Getting a 172 on the LSAT is a bigger deal. But, for some reason, perhaps blowing up the curve with objectively, and consistently, excellent essay exams (which kinda reflect, you know, writing skills applicable in stuff like, you know, lawyering) is a greater achievement than blowing up the LSAT and sliding an application to Harvard.

You're buying the draft pick; I'm buying performance of the pick.

"The underlying presumption of many of the comments is that law school admissions is somehow scientific and a proxy for intelligence, which it clearly is not."

It's actually a decent proxy. If we define intelligence to mean "that thing IQ tests gauge, also known as 'g,'" then concede that the LSAT is a very heavily g-loaded test, and further that law schools base admissions largely on the LSAT, it will follow that there is statistically significant correlation between law school admissions and intelligence. Go sit in a corner.

4:22: Okay, buying your highly shaky logic, I fail to see a link between LSAT scores and performance in law school, which is what laurels like clerkships are based on. Intelligence is as intelligence does.

>>>>After all, they have been performing at a higher level than TTTs all their lives. They (most likely) did better than you in high school and got into better colleges, where they still got higher GPAs than you.

No. They went to colleges, often took easy courses, did pretty well in those easy courses, and hit a home run on the LSAT.

Law schools don't measure legal ability in their admissions processes; they measure GPA in unrelated courses and LSAT.

There's no question that the LSAT is an excellent, though imperfect, predictor of law school success. But to herald the achievements of law students on admission to HYS alone is silly.

4:22 - Your logic is absurd. Saying "intelligence" = IQ tests = g means nothing if your next step is to "concede" that the LSAT measures aptitude---regardless of how you choose to label it. There is much debate over whether the LSAT measures legal aptitude, a nebulous concept at best. If there were some consensus on how well the LSAT predicts success in law school (or the legal community in general), few people would object to the next logical inference: that schools that accept applicants with higher LSAT scores will have smarter students. Your casual glossing over of the most important analytical link belies your claimed correlation, assuming you did well on the LSAT. (Incidentally, the broader point you attempt to make with your pseudo-mathematical proof might actually be right, but not for the limited reason you espouse. That LSAT plays a large part in the admissions process is not open for debate. However, undergraduate GPA, a fairly reliable indicator of academic capability, as well as recommendations and work experience contribute to an overall assessment of an individual's "intelligence.")

He just gets hotter the farther down (the page) he goes.

he's also an excellent cook!

4:54,

The LSAT is, unequivocally, the best available predictor of law school performance, far superior to UGPA. That's been established so clearly, I really didn't expect anyone to find the point contentious, but feel free to google Sander, Henderson or, if you are lazy, LSAC.

Further, the LSAT is indeed a g-loaded test. Google the idea, or check out the any number of papers by Herrnstein and Murray, (or their disciples).

So, what would be a good score on the LSAT for someone that walked into the test cold, not having ever seen the layout of the test, not having prepared in anyway for the test, didn't even know what types of questions would be asked or anything.

160 would be a *good* score under those circumstances.

An Orthodox Jew with blue eyes? Qui aurait pensé?

he has lovely blue eyes.

you mean "Qui l'aurait penssé." You are an intellectual midget.

Thomas's clerk for 2008, Claire Evans, was accepted to UPenn for law school, but decided to go to Rutgers on a full scholarship. She was at the top of her class at Rutgers-Camden. She's only been out of law school for 5 years. After her short clerkship with Chertoff, she gulped from the neocon trough to get jobs at DOJ and the Solicitor General's Office. She's a bright woman, but I don't think she's any brighter than other persons who would qualify for a SCOTUS or COA clerkship. The key for her was, and is, Chertoff. A total neocon. She used political connections to get the clerkship with Thomas.
Other than that, her background is rather ordinary.

Not only is Moshe married, but --take it from someone who knows-- he is most definitely NOT 5'11" So, give it up all you gals and /or fellas. Very bright and accomplished, though. Which, I suppose, is ultimately what counts.

Spinowitz looks like Brian Cashman, GM for the Yankees