On Monday, November 16, we attended an interesting talk by Judge Gerard Lynch, formerly of the Southern District of New York and now on the Second Circuit. He spoke before the Regis Bar Association, a group of lawyers and law students who are graduates of our shared alma matter — Regis High School, an all-boys Catholic school run by the Jesuits, located here in New York.
As one would expect from a federal judge, especially one in a high-powered city like NYC, Judge Lynch has an amazing résumé. He graduated first in his class from Regis, first in his class from Columbia College (1972), and first in his class from Columbia Law School (1975). He clerked for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the Second Circuit, followed by Justice William Brennan on the Supreme Court. Prior to his appointment to the district court in 2000, Judge Lynch was a law professor at Columbia, worked in private practice (at a firm that would later become part of Covington & Burling), and served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the legendary U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District.
In September, Judge Lynch was confirmed to the Second Circuit by a vote of 94-3. He was the first Obama appointee to be confirmed to a circuit court.
Judge Lynch began his remarks to the RBA by discussing his background. He explained that he came from working-class roots and was the first in his family to graduate from college. He also noted that government lawyers and judges don’t make very much money: “As a public servant, first-year associates at large law firms have generally made more than I have,” he observed, before adding: “Thanks to the recession, that’s changed.”
(A federal district judge, which Judge Lynch was until his recent elevation, earns $169,300 a year — a bit above the New York starting salary of $160,000. As a circuit judge, he now earns $179,500. If Judge Lynch were to become Justice Lynch — he is sometimes mentioned on Supreme Court shortlists, although being a 58-year-old white male doesn’t help — he would earn $208,100, as an associate justice. Despite many years earning a government salary, Judge Lynch has done well for himself; his financial disclosures reveal a net worth of $1.6 million, with zero debt.)
Judge Lynch described being a trial judge as “the greatest job you can have.” Find out why, after the jump.
Judge Lynch identified several reasons supporting the awesomeness of being a federal district judge:
- Your relationship with the lawyers: You get to know the lawyers who appear before you, and you can follow their professional development over the years. (Judge Lynch suggested that circuit judges seem to be more removed from the bar.)
- The jury process: “I think it functions beautifully,” Judge Lynch said of the jury trial system. It’s amazing to watch people from different backgrounds come together to do serious work. Did you hear that, jury critics?
- The human drama: The courtroom is like “a little theater,” according to Judge Lynch (an avid theatergoer himself; we compared notes on a few productions with him at a Regis Bar Association event two years ago). Litigants and witnesses appear before you and tell you their stories. To use the language of hip-hop — Judge Lynch has presided over a number of matters involving music stars, including Eminem and Lil’ Kim — your job as a trial judge “is getting all up in people’s business.” (These words, uttered by the bespectacled and academic-looking Judge Lynch, generated laughter.)
- The power: As a district judge — in total control of the proceedings, not just one vote among three on an appellate panel — you have a great ability to determine the actual outcomes of cases. Only a fraction of cases get appealed, and only a fraction of those cases get reversed. For most cases, the district court gets the last word.
(Judge Lynch said he has handled about 3,000 cases and issued 900 opinions during his nine years on the district bench. He has been reversed in only a dozen cases or so, according to his Senate questionnaire (PDF) — and that’s counting Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, discussed below, in which the Supreme Court reversed the Second Circuit’s reversal.)
Judge Lynch discussed the virtues required of trial judges. He identified two: craftsmanship and decisiveness. On the former, he noted that as a federal judge, nobody requires you to show up to work. There is surprisingly little supervision, even from your chief judge, and you enjoy life tenure anyway. So, for the federal judiciary, you’re looking for “self-motivated workaholics” — people who care deeply about the craft of judging and opinion writing, who won’t take advantage of the shirking opportunities offered by the federal bench.
Judge Lynch then turned to the issue of Supreme Court appointments. He expressed disagreement with scholars who have urged the president to appoint justices who are very young and very liberal, to adopt a strategy employed successfully by conservatives (e.g., John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas). Might this be viewed as a subtle effort by Judge Lynch, a 58-year-old white male not known for being a radical-left judge, to advance his own Supreme Court candidacy?
There are at least two reasons why President Obama shouldn’t go for the young and the liberal, according to Judge Lynch. First, there is the value of experience, both in practicing law and in judging, and this can only be acquired over time. Second, on the issue of ideology, it’s hard to say what or who will be considered “liberal” or “conservative” forty years from now. The issues change over time, as do the players. E.g., Felix Frankfurter, appointed to the Court as a liberal but ultimately ending up as a conservative.
What about the E-word — “empathy”? Judge Lynch offered a defense of empathy as a value, which he described as a critical capacity for a judge. To facilitate the resolution of disputes, you need to understand the parties’ wants and needs, and where they are coming from.
Then Judge Lynch took questions from the audience. One questioner asked why judges don’t want to try cases anymore. Judge Lynch turned the query around on the questioner: Why don’t lawyers want to try cases? So many cases settle on the brink of trial, perhaps because lawyers are afraid of (1) the unpredictability of juries and (2) attorneys’ fees (which is why the city of New York settles so many cases; even a nominal settlement may require the city to pay huge legal fees to the plaintiff).
The next question asked about the landmark case of Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, in which the Supreme Court tightened up pleading standards in antitrust cases (and, arguably, in civil litigation more generally). The questioner asked Judge Lynch, who handled the case in the trial court, if he had a sense of how important the case would eventually become.
Judge Lynch said he had no idea that the case would turn out as it did. He did say that his favorite aspect of the matter was that “I got reversed by the circuit, but then the Supreme Court reversed them — trial judges love that!” As for the SCOTUS decision itself, Judge Lynch said that it will give district judges more leeway or discretion to dismiss what they see as bad cases (which could be good; after a while, trial judges get a good sense of which cases are weak and which ones are strong).
We asked Judge Lynch about the clerk hiring process. He explained that, due to the vast number of applications, he and his clerks can’t look at most of them. There’s incredible competition — not just among the applicants but among the judges, due in part to the Law Clerk Hiring Plan, which causes everyone to move at the same time.
Judge Lynch talked about how one year he set up an interview with an applicant at 9 a.m. on the first day interviews were permitted under the Plan. At 8:50 a.m., she called chambers to say she had accepted another clerkship, after an interview that had started at 8. Judge Lynch’s clerk said: “Next year you should start interviews at 7!”
(One response of many judges to the insanity: hire people who are a few years out of law school, and therefore not governed by the timetables of the Law Clerk Hiring Plan. Given all the deferrals and layoffs taking place in law-firm land, such candidates are not in short supply.)
As for the credentials he looks for in clerks, Judge Lynch aims for the top. He focuses his clerkship application review on candidates from a selection of top schools. He had these comments (offered with a slightly humorous edge, but not completely in jest):
I’m an unabashed elitist. My clerks are largely liberal, big believers in due process. I tell them: there is no due process here. Nobody has a right to this job. We need to find someone who will do good work.
Judge Lynch added that many candidates from outside his list of top schools would do good work, of course. His decision to focus on just a handful of leading law schools is aimed at streamlining the hiring process and making it more efficient. He offered this colorful formulation:
If you’re Pete Sampras, you can afford to date only supermodels. You set up this [admittedly arbitrary] rule, but sooner or later you’ll find a supermodel who is smart and nice too.
To put it another way — and this is not Judge Lynch’s analogy, but our own — judges hiring law clerks are looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The haystack of fantastic clerkship applications from, say, the top 14 law schools — or even the top five, if you’re a judge on a particularly desirable circuit or district — is already huge. Is it therefore truly necessary to review every application from every law school?
(And keep in mind that there is a “safety valve” here. Most judges who focus on top schools in their clerk hiring will consider truly outstanding applicants from other schools if the applicant is recommended by someone they know personally and trust.)
It should be noted that Judge Lynch isn’t the only jurist who takes this school-focused approach to law clerk hiring. On the other side of the aisle, Justice Antonin Scalia was even more frank. Here’s what he said in a talk at American University’s Washington College of Law:
[Justice Scalia] turned to a discussion of the student’s chances of obtaining the ultimate credential in American law, a clerkship with a Supreme Court justice. Not good, he said.
“By and large,” he said, “I’m going to be picking from the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. If they come in the best and the brightest, they’re probably going to leave the best and the brightest, O.K.”
Some might take offense at the Justice Scalia / Judge Lynch approach to hiring clerks, which is focused intensely on educational pedigree. But they’re just doing what many other judges do. Don’t get mad at them because they’re more honest about it.
In any event, even if you have an excellent academic record at a highly ranked law school, you’re not guaranteed success in the clerkship search — at least not in this market. Clerkship applications are up 66 percent this year, as law school graduates and young lawyers turn to the federal government from refuge from the economic storm. Good luck to all in the hunt.
Want to be on the 2nd Circuit? Maybe Don’t Ask [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]
On the Bench and Off, the Eminently Quotable Justice Scalia [New York Times]
Clerkship Applications Up 66 Percent From Last Year [Blackbook Legal Blog]
woah … that’s a long post
Lat seems to specialize in the long posts nowadays:
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/11/federalist_society_annual_dinner_2009.php
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/11/the_heller_ehrman_art_auction.php
Everytime I read this site I have to go to the bathroom.
It’s November, so the hiring process is basically over. Kind of a weird way to end an otherwise interesting piece.
4 – True, except if you hire graduates rather than 3Ls (which more judges are starting to do to avoid the scramble).
“amazing résumé”? Going to only the second best law school in New York isn’t that impressive. Guys at my high school used to do that all the time.
6 – But then he became one of The Elect, by clerking for Justice Brennan. Suck it, Harvard and Yale grads!
Howard, Smith & Levin > CBNY
Hi Lat. Thanks for thoroughly explaining the meaning of “needle in a haystack” to all of us retarded non-T14 students. I never understood the logic of the practice of anyone preferring to hire from the most prestigious schools possible, but now I get it!
7. Right. How many non-HYS law degrees on the court again? 2? 1.5?
Thanks for playing.
Scalia was a spoiled brat as a child and it shows through to this day.
9 ftw
I agree w/ 3. ATL makes me want to shit.
9 – Bitter much?
xoxo,
YALE SECURE
3, 13 – Guess you must be constipated, since you are reading and commenting here.
Great post.
This is why I started reading ATL to begin with.
Isn’t Pete Sampras married already?
$1.6 million net worth at age 58 with a resume like that? TTT.
Methinks someone has a crush on Sweet Pete Sampras.
“[A]lthough being a 58-year-old white male doesn’t help ….”
That’s called ageism and racial discrimination. Not funny. Not acceptable. Not ever.
Nice Chicago slam Lat.
you mean Cooley students dont clerk for the SCOTUS?
I guess they end up clerking at Albertsons instead (ZING)
Lat went to an all boy Catholic high school? That explains so much. Those pedophile priests turned Lat into the prissy, elitist prick he is today. I’m 97% sure Lat would give a blowjob to anyone who (i) graduated from a T14 school, (ii) got a federal clerkship, or (iii) is/was a federal judge.
21 – I don’t see any reference to Chicago here. Do you have a chip on your shoulder?
Scalia can go to hell. The man has not done a damn thing right in all his years on SCOTUS. But being a prick is pretty much a requirement for being a conservative, so it really is no surprise when he says it.
Lat, stop being so lazy. Don’t just type up your notes from these meetings. Do some self-editing and cut these posts down by 2/3. No wonder you didn’t cut it in big law.
You can tell exactly who goes to lower ranked schools here…
David,
Judge Lynch still teaches at Columbia Law, as far as I know. I had him for Crim Law in 2007 – awesome class. Also, that pic is horribly outdated.
Irony: all of the idiots who believe Ayn Rand’s idiotic views on exceptionalism and the supposed idiocy of 99.99% of the world don’t realize that she never went to a decent college herself, and died a penniless failure.
“law school graduates and young lawyers turn to the federal government from refuge from the economic storm”
how hard is it to get fired from a legal government job, short of doing something criminal or insanely ridiculous? i.e., how mediocre or poor must your performance be?
24. Uh, I saw it. Then again, I went to Stanford. It’s the reference to “top five.” HTH.
31 – I don’t think any disrespect to Chicago was intended. U. Chicago does better at clerkship placement than Columbia and NYU (and sometimes even Stanford).
26 – Biglaw values thoroughness, to the point of mind-numbing detail. Have you ever written up an interview memo or a deposition summary?
I’m guessing that you are a 2L somewhere. I doubt you work in Biglaw (as in Am Law or Vault 100). At best you work at a mediocre regional firm.
How is this a defence of elitist? Sancimonious prick selected by other sancimonious pricks gets in school with a bunch of sancimonious prick. The most sancimonious prick rises to the top to be selected to clerk by yet another sancimonious prick. Actually sound similar to inbreeding which as we all know yields retards. The Pete Sampras analogy fails unique tennis talent and good looks does not equal another useless drone graduating at the top of his sancimonious prick school. Besides Russian billionaires get all the best pussy and they are just smart thugs.
So what? Who cares?
34 – In English, please.
10: Hell, at this point, it’s pretty much just Harvard and Yale — SLS lost its two Justices with Rehnquist dying and O’Connor retiring:
HLS: Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer
YLS: Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor
CLS: Ginsburg (and she transferred there from HLS)
Northwestern: Stevens
Is this judge gay? Lat usually doesn’t get this long winded unless the dude is gay. “Openly gay Judge! Go team!”
great post. very informative.
31 – It would have to be “top seven” to include Chicago, due to the tie with Berkeley, and that doesn’t have the same ring as “top five.”
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/04/us_news_2010_law_school_rankin.php
40: To be fair, no one really thinks Berkeley is T6 despite whatever shakeup USNews is trying to create this year to sell magazines. A school with that bad of LSAT scores should be toward the bottom of the T14, and given its recent tuition hikes, I wouldn’t be surprised if its student body weakens in future years.
36 –Sanctimonious prick
I must admit that I’m a little uneasy about this elitism in law clerk hiring. It’s sounding dangerously close to a meritocracy
Instead, law clerks should be chosen like Supreme Court justices. As Lat pointed out, Judge Lynch (mob) will probably never get the SCOTUS nod because he’s a “58-year-old white male.” Too much experience, too much whiteness, too much maleness.
Thus, law clerks should be hired in proportionate numbers from each law school tier. I trust enlightened, progressive judges will not mind bringing a little more diversity to the judiciary by hiring moar TTT clerks. Enjoy!
LAW CLERK EQUALITY SECURE
29,
You fail at dissociating the argument from the speaker. By your logic, only the best athletes would make the best coaches but people like Pete Carroll and Urban Meyer prove otherwise.
Can you have a t-20 skew for the left-coast
types–who would rarely venture North past
Santa Barbara–for the frigidity and very ugly people?
Of course Europa does not count.
Don’t go all Edmund on me and maintain
there is logic because of the tradition–gets very circular very fast.
As a former SDNY clerk to a judge who also loves being a trial judge, I think Judge Lynch is right on the money about how amazing it really is. I clerked on the COA afterward (in a “good” circuit) and while the work was interesting, it just didn’t compare to being in court every day, watching the lawyers, discussing their performances and the merits of each case with my judge. I loved the unpredictable and exciting nature of being an sdny clerk and it helped me realize that I wanted to to be a trial lawyer. I think people really sell a district court clerkship short. In many cities (obv including sdny/edny), it can be more enriching and fulfilling than a COA clerkship.
agree with 46, but don’t say “my judge,” it’s so douchey.
So federal judges in New York City only consider the brightest students from the best law schools for their law clerks? Who the fuck knew?
Seriously, this site is becoming retarded.
46 – Man, I wish I clerked on a “good circuit.” I only clerked for a piece of shit COA. I look at myself everyday in the mirror and I see failure. I drink a lot now. Good bye.
ATL
Can we get a story about how a bunch of people ran a scheme, getting intelligent, wealthy individuals to give up information to Danielle Chiesi? I mean, I am no billionaire. I am no CEO. I could not be convinced to do anything for that.
http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2009/10/17/news/photos_stories/cropped/danielle_chiesi–300×300.jpg
I put in two years clerking on a district court and now I’m clerking for a judge on the COA. There is no comparison – the COA is boring and too academic. Breathing this rarified air might be nice for my resume, but not for my training. I can’t wait to get out of here and into a courtroom again.
More political sleaze…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aO94CZjHKCJs&pos=14
This judge would be much better if he included the following elements in his opinions:
1. 2 x fully loaded F-16s
2. 1 Air Force Pilot captured by a racially sterotyped middle east country.
3. 1 son of said captured pilot, who possesses supernatural piloting skills, and a unparralled determination to rescue his father.
4. 1 outspoken african-american Air Force Reserve pilot.
5. A misfit gang of teenaged air force dependants.
6. 1 HADES bomb.
7. 1 heavily accented, chainsmoking middle eastern dictator/fighter pilot.
8. 1 Air Force pilot by the name of Maj. Dwight Smiley
9. 1 Bluebird Tanker
10. 1 Show trial for said captured fighter pilot.
11. A bunch of firecrackers to distract the Air Force while said misfit band of misfit teenagers steals said 2 x fully loaded F-16s.
12. 1 Knee-board mounted tape recorder.
13. Lots of kick ass music.
If this judge would only include these elements in all his opinions there is no doubt that all casebook makers would include his opinions.
46 – a “good” circuit is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. You have not a clue.
I AM MORE ELITE THAN YOU ALL!!!
- Princton B.A., MIT M.S., YLS J.D., Oxford J.S.D., and Tubingen PhD.
Pete Sampras looks like a Barbary ape.
COA and District are very different — each is right for a different type. Future academics/appellate lawyers/intellectual types will like the COA’s ability to study issues in depth and won’t mind the isolation as much. Trial lawyers/litigators/people who like hustle and bustle will appreciate the district court more. For me the choice was pretty easy.
-sdny clerk.
Pretty impressive credentials 54, but apparently you still can’t spell “Princeton.”
It’s a D.Phil at Oxford, douche.
And officially it’s an “A.B.” degree at Princeton, dumbass.
“Some might take offense at the Justice Scalia / Judge Lynch approach to hiring clerks, which is focused intensely on educational pedigree. But they’re just doing what many other judges do. Don’t get mad at them because they’re more honest about it.”
David, that’s like you telling your boyfriend you’ve been cheating on him for years, and then getting huffy because he’s mad at you for telling the truth.
Do you honestly think people are mad at elitist judges because they tell the truth? People get mad because they’re good law students who want to get a fair shake. I know more than a few people who got into Harvard but decided to go to law schools closer to their families. Should they be punished because they don’t let their ambition get in the way of their values?
60 – they’re not punished. Everyone knows how the system works. If they wanted the COA clerkship so badly, they should have priced that into their decision. Considering these are HLS level students, I’m sure they did and acted appropriately.
60 — yes. Too many people focus on family or geography or other things other than getting the bes education and maximizing their income revenue potential. I’ve moved all over the world in search of jobs, away from my family, and am tired of subsidizing folks who won’t leave Podunk. This world rewards the rugged individualist. Remember that, and you’ll go far.
HLS students don’t always act appropriately. Harvard students set fire to things when drunk, just like the plebes. I have far more respect for those who come from humble means and make it to a top tier school than people at HYS who went to the best private schools Daddy could pay for, had SAT and LSAT tutors, never had to work through high school and college to help pay their family bills, etc.
Harvard, Yale, or Stanford doesn’t equal highest acheiver, best, brightest, or even competent (thanks to legacies). If you want to find the best out there, find someone who has faced adversity yet risen far above it.
Scalia is an idiot to say that you can’t make a Sow’s ear out of a silk purse, referencing that if someone goes to Harvard or Yale, they must be the best, and they will do well in life. What a joke. So long as Princeton Law keeps scoring points in the US World News Surveys, this world will be stuck on the name of the institution authenticating its students, not the abilities of said students.
60 — yes. Nothing is free — especially luxuries such as self-defined, vaguely-enforced “values” in this profession. Ask anyone in Biglaw.
Also, no one gives a shit about someone who goes to an inferior school because of “family.” That was a choice, live with it.
@63 — Crafting awkward, presumptive arguments like that is likely what kept you out of decent educational institutions in the first place. Now your ignorance defines you.
Go look at what percentage of your intellectual superiors qualified for financial aid. If that is beyond your talents, try putting, say, “Sonia Sotomayor” into Google.
I only hope your TTT dwellings kept you far away from real legal work.
63: there are a few problems with what you said, but I’ll just point out two. Drop the 1960’s old-boy’s club stereotype and meet some actual students. There are many students at HYS that have faced adversity and risen far above it. Many.
You also assume that you need to rise above adversity to be the best and brightest. That’s a quaint sentiment, but it’s just not true–particularly as any metric for the intellectual candlepower that these judges look for.
34: Retard or Best Troll Ever
YOU BE THE JUDGE
David,
As a product of the jesuit HS and University system, I have a question for you. Granted that I did my fair share or drinking and smoking back then, but I don’t recall the class where I was instructed that male on male intercourse was acceptable. Please advise. Thx.
66,
I know there are students at HYS who have faced adversity, and I think they deserve to reap the benefits of it. Props to them.
I should have said that attending HYS doesn’t automatically equal best, brightest, etc. No doubt, some of the best minds on the planet come from these places. However, I think that someone who came from a very poor, uneducated family, and made it to a high quality law school has accomplished more than someone who is 5th generation Harvard who got to reap the benefits of family wealth and connections.
To 65,
Though I am utterly incompetent, I still drag my knuckles on my way to do legal work every morning. You should be ashamed that idiots like me who lack a HYS degree are allowed to do “real” legal work. At least 66 offered a decent reply to my post. You on the other hand can’t deal with the fact that Scalia, who you likely idolize, said one of his very best clerks came from Ohio State, a school which I am sure you laugh at. Keep hiding behind your pedigree and likely Daddy’s money.
Yours Truly,
63
hat’s the prob with all of the young lawyers…they think they are so privileged and don’t see past the dollar signs…and they think they are better than the rest because they survived a cut…take a look around, the drones who are left aren’t smarter than the ones that were cut, just lucky…and the sad thing is, as someone who lived through two significant downturns, the luck of the lucky ones will run out. perhaps it’s time for a new firm model since the current one doesn’t work and leaves people with low morale (that’s with or without the extra $) and likely leaves people behind who won’t be trained as well as they would’ve if these TTT firms kept their seniors around and shared the wealth a bit more…anyway, there are two types of people in this world, one morons, the other the enlightened…no point preaching to either, though I would rather be in the latter group and I’m afraid most of the ones on this site fall into the former category
Lynch is an exceptionally good judge.
We need to bomb the Jesuits back to the stoneage!
-DOJ Secure
63/69,
I get what you are saying and sympathize (I went to WCL, Scalia was right, but rude), but I can’t get too mad about “elitism” in federal judges. There are plenty of people who bought their way into HYS using Daddy’s money, but there are also a good chunk of people who got there on merit despite adversity. I trust that most judges can distinguish between the two and will pick the achiever over the entitled brat.
Besides, it’s not as if those of us who didn’t go to top tier law schools are completely foreclosed from these opportunities. A number of my classmates acquired COA and federal district clerkships. Yeah, they had to work harder at school and obtain a few years of work experience first, but it is doable. HYS grads just have it a bit easier right after graduation.
Lat are you gay? I have read several of your posts now and I get the distinct impression that you are a homosexual. Please confirm.
-Society for a Better America
um isn’t the expression that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? scalia seems to have gotten it backwards. shocking.
Judge Lynch be bringing sexy back!
And, yet, very highly-ranked students from lower-ranked schools clerk for SDNY/Second Circuit. Not a ton of them, of course, but it does happen. Lynch is just being lazy in his hiring process. It’s his prerogative, but it is just being lazy.
And a federal judge comparing oneself to a once-in-a-generation, world-class tennis player is just obnoxious. Bitch, please. Is everybody who went to Regis this tiresome?
An elitist moron. There are plenty of hard-working, well-accomplished applicants from non-top 15 schools. The judge’s refusal to even consider them, with his nonsense Pete Sampras analogy, only accentuates his myopia and ineptitude.
Elitism like that only contributes to the single-mindedness in the upper echelon of the courts. Continually pulling people from the same place does not yield diversity. Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me…
REGIS NERD!!!!!!!!
79, you silly racist. A group is diverse as long as you got people of a darker skin color sprinkled in there. All white people think alike, and differently from all black people, who all think alike. That’s the only way to get diversity.
I believe this genius meant to say that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, not a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.
Moron.
75 and 82: Too dumb to live or not so subtle trolling. You be the judge!
On the off chance that it is the former (both groups are well represented on ATL), read the next sentence and the reason for reversing the idiom should be clear.
I agree with 26. Lat, you have basically committed every lazy error possible in your lead-in to this article. Starting with “On such-and-such date” is an easy crutch for a writer who doesn’t want to distill any essential message for the audience, and it prefaces what amounts to a transcript of the proceedings at the fascinating meeting of the Regis Bar Ass’n.
Please. Just because you have a huge audience doesn’t mean you should victimize your readers with 2000 rambling words pandering to your favorite alum of your high school. Don’t couch your celebration of some judge’s “awesomeness” in a dry recitation of the facts. You do us a disservice by abandoning your ascerbic humor.
Typical liberal elitist. TTT’s are good enough for others, but not his law clerks.
/s/ Typical liberal elitist who only hires good lawyers
No you idiots. Scalia is saying that the students at the most selective law schools (silk purses), even if they don’t receive the absolute best education, are still unlikely to get turned into idiots (sow’s ears). He’s turning the expression around. On purpose. Where is the freaking reading comprehension on this board?!
Judge Lynch’s salary comes from federal taxes. Who pays those taxes? Everyone–elites and regulars alike. To arbitrarily cut off consideration to T14 schools for a taxpayer-funded position like a clerkship cannot be justified. Very good law students graduate from mid-level but still respected law schools every spring. Many are probably more intelligent than Judge Lynch. Congress needs to address hiring practices like Judge Lynch’s.
@ 23. What a crappy thing to say. You should be ashamed.
@ 29. Really? I didn’t know that. I always found her to be a little too willing to gloss over ambiguities. Her characters were painted in primary colors, without ANY nuance.
@ 78. Yes, but. While there are many competent lawyers-to-be from mid-level law schools, I’ll winnow down my to-review list by employing some arbitrary cut-offs. I might miss some stars, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.
If I get nominated (not terribly likely, but still possible I think), I’ll probably only carefully review applications from kids at my law school. It’s the devil you know. I’m sure the other students would make great clerks, but you have to make surmises from imperfect data.
ET!
Lifetime tenure for federal judges has done a great disservice to this Country. This judge illustrates that. No one is watching him to make sure he does his job? He admits to hiring practices that are fine for the private sector but entirely inappropriate for a public position? Too often, federal judges treat their jobs as a means to endulge their fantasies and execute a personal agenda. No wonder the turnover is close to non-existent. If the President can be limited to 8 years why can’t a federal judge be limited too?
The defense of elitism is a strawman. The problem isn’t meritocracy or judges having high standards. The problem is that judges assume the bottom 1/4 of a top 5 school is better than the Top 10% of the remaining top tier. The haystack wouldn’t be so damn big if they didn’t look at every application just because of the school it originated from, and instead applied consistent standards.
More public servants who care about the law (like Judge Lynch) and far fewer d-bags (like the complete a-holes on this list who have nothing better to do than discuss what law school they went to — “T14!!” “T5!!”) would make the world a better place.
These comments are nothing more than bitching, moaning and name calling (anonymously, of course…). It’s like reading a transcript of a lunch conversation at a retirement home in Florida.
Lat’s post was a fair and accurate recitation of the night’s events…an event that 99% of you d-bags did not attend.
91, most of the folks who pusue public service are losers. They suck dicks, eat shit, and want everyone else to think they’re something special. Judges are the worst of the lot.
It is typical that a guy who has spent an entire career suckling at the public tit equates getting into a top law school with being “the best and the brightest.” The best and the brightest don’t go to law school, any law school. They found their own companies, often after flunking or dropping out of undergrad (a la Bill Gates).
There is no field in America that places as much emphasis on prestige as lawyers. This is because people in other professions have recognized what should be blindingly obvious, that there a myriad of reasons unrelated to intelligence that explain the vagaries of a person’s life path. There are geniuses at community colleges and mediocrities at the best schools in the country.
While I went to a relatively “elite” law school (Penn), some of the best lawyers I know went to regional third tiers. Their reasons for attending low-ranked schools are many and diverse. Some, it’s true, had less-than-stellar undergraduate records. But who among us hasn’t known a brilliant person who matured late? Others could have gone to elite schools but didn’t want to uproot their families. Still others thought a free-ride preferable to a $200K debt.
It is indefensible ignorance to pre-judge a person because of where they went to school. Judge Lynch is an intellectually lazy bigot.
33,
You’re joking, right? Interview memos and depo summaries? Nobody ever reads those. That’s busy work that is given to junior associates whom partners do not trust to do actual legal work–like actually take the depo. Good luck you get a little more senior and can no longer bill for secretarial work.
26
93 is the best comment I have read on this web site in quite some time.
I agree – 93 is a great post.
93 is a great comment about life and the legal profession in general, except for the idiotic part where he concludes that judge lynch is an intellectually lazy bigot. Bigot? Judicial clerkships are not a fairness issue, a civil rights issue, a prejudice issue, etc. They just aren’t. Yes, people that go to the top schools have more opportunities to be judicial clerks. That’s how it is and there’s nothing wrong with that. Do the Dallas Cowboys have to invite Division III college players to training camp out of fairness- after all, I’m sure there have been some DIII players who’ve done ok in the nfl, but the real world has finite resources, chief among them, time. And if Judge Lynch prefers to spend his time working on his decisions, hanging out with friends, gambling or banging hookers, that’s his choice- he doesn’t have to spend time poring over the resumes of third tier grads because to not do so would make him a bigot. Its like complaining that its not fair for rich people to get to live in the bigger mansions with swimming pools, other people would like to live in them too. You can have a great career and be a great lawyer from any school, but this complaining about clerkship interviews in terms of bias, discrimination, etc., is just stupid.
-mid-tier grad who had very little chance of getting a good clerkship, might have enjoyed it, but is doing fine anyway
97 – he’s a public servant paid with your tax dollars. He cannot just do what he wants. There should be an established process for hiring clerks that is fair and impartial and calculated to get the best clerks. His process is not that.
And to top it all: he’s a millionaire!! Talk about sucking at the public teat!
97 – Bad analogy. If someone walked in off the street, no college ball at all, and they could run a 4.1 40 and rep 225lbs 30 times, NFL teams would be fighting over who got to see if he knew how to catch a ball or tackle.
Pro sports are merit, period. And no, one’s performance in undergrad – or choosing to go to a grade-inflating undergrad – is not a merit factor.
yes, federal judges should be term limited just like the President. 8 years. There won’t be any lack of well-qualified lawyers and law professors ready and willing to serve.
99 – “If someone walked in off the street, no college ball at all, and they could run a 4.1 40 and rep 225lbs 30 times, NFL teams would be fighting over who got to see if he knew how to catch a ball or tackle.”
NFL teams wouldn’t be fighting over the kid because they would never know if he can run a 4.1 40 or rep 225 30 times. The kid would never see a coach because teams don’t waste their time watching 40s for anyone who comes in off the street and claims to be fast. If you don’t believe me, call up your local NFL team and ask for a tryout.
98- ok. As a paid public servant, I’d prefer judge Lynch spend his time judging, and streamline his clerk hiring process by focusing on the top schools, rather than making him search for that diamond in the rough over in some fth tier craphole. There already is an established process for finding the best clerks and Judge Lynch is using it.
Running a 4.1 40 and rep 225lbs 30 times has fuck all to do with football ability. LMAO @ the draft being a meritocracy.
Instead of choosing clerks from T14 schools, judges should just choose clerks who perform well on a standardized exam which tests reading comprehension, logic, and analytical skills.
I’m just curious as to when the T-14 “best and brightest” are going to figure out they went to school to figure out how to work for someone else.
The truly brilliant person shouldn’t want to be a lawyer. They should want to hire a lawyer.
- Law Grad headed to London Business School
Do lawyers even bother to read the Constitution anymore? I’m looking at you 89 and 100.
103 – I think what the post was getting at is that someone who is clearly faster & stronger (4.1 with a lineman style benchpress would be super human, if you dolts knew anything about sports) than anyone who went to, say, Florida, (or anyone on your roster for that matter) is at least going to get looked at.
Hell, look at Randy Moss. All sorts of legal and discipline issues, played for that football powerhouse Marshall (after being kicked out of D-I programs) and no shortage of people willing to pay him money.
I’d be interested in hearing the argument that pro sports isn’t about merit.
107- likewise, if you go to a TTT school, but write the best law review article of all time, displaying legal acumen not seen since Justice Marshall, you’ll get looked at for some clerkships. That doesn’t mean that every judge now has to interview every other middle of the pack student at your school.
That wasn’t much of a defense, David.
Some of the comments on this thread aren’t too closely grounded in reality.
Take, for example, the notion business executives have a greater claim than lawyers to being “the best and the brightest.” The executives of Madoff Investment Securities, Stanford Financial Group, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, RBS, Merrill Lynch, General Motors, Chrysler, CIT, Thornburg Mortgage, Colonial BancGroup, Nortel Networks and the like are “the best and brightest” our society has to offer? Really? If that’s what you want to believe, you are free to do so. Lots of other people did too — one of the reasons our economy is in the toilet.
The notion that law students at Yale, Harvard or Stanford are indolent dullards admitted solely on the basis of legacy connections, and that those at other schools who succeed despite adversity are better qualified? Yale, Harvard, Stanford and other top-ranked schools recognized more than a generation ago that admission should be based on merit rather than connections, and that students who succeed despite adversity deserve consideration. Most of the students admitted to those schools have exceptionally high undergraduate GPAs and LSAT scores, earned by working as hard as possible in college. Per LSAS, the median undergraduate GPAs of Yale, Harvard and Stanford Law students are 3.90, 3.88 and 3.87 respectively, and the 75/25 LSAT scores of students at those schools are 177/169, 176/170 and 172/168. Many of the students at those schools came from families of modest means, went to public schools, and got where they are now by working harder than everyone else. Some of them are the first members of their families ever to graduate from college.
Can students at other schools, including students who have come up the hard way, work hard and become highly competent and successful attorneys who represent their clients effectively? Of course they can. There’s nothing magic about Yale, Harvard or Stanford — they’re just exceptionally strong schools. There are many other law schools in the country which offer high quality legal educations. Does that mean that Yale, Harvard or Stanford students are always less well qualified as clerkship applicants than students from other schools, or that graduates of those schools are always lazier and less well prepared than other attorneys? If that is what you wish to believe, you can think whatever you want.
Are federal judges, as public servants, obligated to give the fullest and most thorough consideration to all clerkship applicants from all schools? Most federal judges have fairly high caseloads, and we expect them to manage their dockets efficiently. When exactly are they supposed to find time to read slowly and carefully through all of the details of every single clerkship application and resume they receive? What makes you think that they have unlimited time, stamina and staff resources to do so?
Given the rapid decline in hiring by private sector law firms, wading through piles of clerkship applications has become a growing challenge for federal judges. There are roughly 1,244 federal judicial clerkships nationwide. According to an article ATL linked to a few days ago, during the past five years the number of applicants for federal clerkships has more than doubled, and the number of applications for clerkships has more than tripled, from 4,902 applicants and 94,963 applications in 2005 to 10,722 applicants and 401,576 applications in 2009. During just the past year alone, from 2008 to 2009, the number of applicants has increased by 42 percent and the number of applications has increased by 66 percent. This year, there are an average of 322 applications for each clerkship.
With 10,722 applicants vying for just 1,244 clerkships, it should be evident that the majority of applicants will be unsuccessful, regardless of how well qualified they are. Crunch the numbers yourself — fewer than 12 percent of applicants will land a clerkship this year, which means that more than 88 percent of applicants will be unsuccessful.
Given the huge numbers of applications for a small number of jobs, is it really surprising that federal judges wishing to select the most highly qualified applicants will focus on candidates from those schools that they consider, for good reason, to be the most highly competitive?
The real unfairness here is not that federal judges, faced with an avalanche of applications for a tiny number of jobs, may take some short cuts in winnowing down the list of applicants. It is that the private sector business leaders of our country have collectively failed us, by making reckless decisions that have damaged our economy so badly that there are far too few jobs to go around for those willing to work — not just for those who will graduate from law school this year, but for everyone in our society. With nationwide unemployment standing at ten percent or higher, the evidence that the private sector has failed, and failed badly, is incontrovertible.
If what you want to do, in the middle of this national economic debacle caused by the fecklessness of business leaders, is complain that judges give too much deference to law school reputation in hiring clerks, whine all you want.
93 makes some decent points but this conclusion is just retarded: “It is indefensible ignorance to pre-judge a person because of where they went to school. Judge Lynch is an intellectually lazy bigot.”
It is completely defensible and would be uncommonly dumb to wade through 1000’s of resumes from TTT students. Even if there is a diamond in there, it would be very difficult to find based on a piece of paper and a brief interview. Do you propose some sort of TTT Olympics to find the one student who really is better than the top of HYS? There are already plenty of more than capable people at elite schools without engaging in such nonsense.
- A grad of not a truly elite school
He was my crim law prof at Columbia. Gave me a G. What a prick
63/69
You are confused.
Again.
I still hope you are kept from intellectual work for the sake of your clients…not because of the pedigree of your degree, but because of your demonstrated stupidity. You base your arguments on ignorant assumptions, then — when pressed — thinly mask your intellectual flailing with what I am sure passes for “sarcasm” and “wit” in your mind. For the finish, you gamely introduce further ignorant assumptions. Bravo!
When people talk about too many lawyers in the profession, rest assured it is you they are thinking of.
65.
Can someone please expose partner emeritus?
Anyone know who he really is?
Who is PE?
Didn’t someone reveal recently that PE was a student at Fordham?
110: Nobody’s maintaining that federal judges aren’t busy or don’t have heavy caseloads. However, many federal judges (including in SDNY and the Second Circuit) do consider applicants from lower-tiered schools – numbers 1-3 in the class at Cardozo or UConn or wherever who are more likely than not headed to top firms, on Law Review, etc.. You’re not talking about that many extra resumes to sift through. I’m not imposing some moral judgment on judges like Lynch who elect not to do that, but it’s not as though it’s some insurmountable task. Moreover, it’s just a method of sifting through resumes – it’s disingenuous to maintain that it’s the only way of getting good clerks (something Lynch himself doesn’t maintain, though many posters have).
I hope you edit the article since Regis doesn’t have class rankings.
107, the Randy Moss-like law students who are such outliers in their brilliance generally manage to shine through even at lesser schools. See, e.g., Jeffrey Sutton.
To use your sports analogy, NFL teams have lots of money and lots of scouts, and it can be worth their time and resources to find the talented wide receiver hidden away at a D-III school or the track star who could be turned into a great kick returner with a little bit of coaching, or the person with no experience at all who has such insane physical gifts that he should get a chance.
But what do you think they’d do if they had no scouts at all and no recruiting budget, and all recruiting and draft selection was done by the head coach? Most likely, the head coach would talk to people he knows and trusts, and spend most of his time scouting the top college programs.