Supreme Court Clerks

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 8.5.07: From Russia with Love

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LEWW logo.jpgBefore we begin, a nod to one of the best wedding write-ups we’ve seen in a while, and for once (just once) we’re not being the least bit tongue-in-cheek. Joanne Handler and John Rau III didn’t make our final three this week, even though John has a law degree, but . . . wow. They are 50-year-olds (very attractive 50-year-olds) who dated for a year in college and then broke up when he transferred to another school. John married someone else, but Joanne stayed single, still pining for John:

“I never forgot about him, because he was the love of my life,” Ms. Handler said. “For 30 years, I was never in love with anyone else. I had long-term boyfriends, but I could never get married because I could never love anyone the way I loved John Rau.”

But this three-hanky chick flick has a happy ending. The spinster librarian (really!) received a call from the recently divorced John in 2005:

“I was shaking with joy when John called,” Ms. Handler said. “For 30 years, I knew that we were meant for each other, that he was the perfect man for me. I knew I was right.”
So did Mr. Rau.

Beautiful. [And now we'll pause while everybody Googles their college crush -- and their spouse's.]
But back to what this column is really about: raw, choking prestige.
Here are our three finalist couples (all lawyer-lawyer pairings):

1. Nicole Lipman and Michael Ellis
2. Alison Sclater and Wells Dixon
3. Sofia Yakren and Boris Bershteyn

More about these couples, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 07.22.07: Seeds of Love

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Legal%20Eagle%20Wedding%20Watch%20NYT%20wedding%20announcements%20Above%20the%20Law.jpg
Apart from our three finalist couples, there isn’t much to highlight for you this week: just some minor WGWAG action, and, in the Vows column, a nice shout-out to LEWW’s temporary home city.
So without further ado, we bring you our fabulous finalists:

1. Nykeesha Davis and Chad Peterman
2. Deborah Bernstein and David Foster
3. Ellen Bradford and Todd McIntosh

More about these couples, after the jump.

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Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: OT 2008 (Update #3)

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Supreme Court hallway Above the Law Above the Law Above the Law.JPGAbout a month has passed since our last post about Supreme Court clerk hiring for October Term 2008 (not OT 2007, whose clerks started just this month, but the following one). We were reminded that we hadn’t written about the subject in a while after we received this email:

“I heard that some dude from Calabresi just got hired on the court, then some other dude from Yale, but I can’t remember who he clerked for.”

Considering the frequency with which Guido-maniacs and Yalies troop off to One First Street, this is about as helpful as saying that “I heard someone with a law degree got hired to clerk for the Court.”
Despite the vagueness of this information, we’re sure we can get to the bottom of things — with help from you, our loyal readers.
Please check out the latest version of our list of OT 2008 law clerks, which appears after the jump. If you have more SCOTUS clerk hiring news to add, or a correction to anything on the list, please email us (subject line: “Supreme Court clerk hiring”).
We aren’t expecting to get that much hiring news this time around, since the Supreme Court Term is now over, and the justices are all traipsing around Europe (or New Hampshire). But we’re thinking we might hear about hires that were made some time ago but haven’t hit the rumor mill yet. For example, who is the mysterious fourth Thomas clerk for OT 2008?

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Deb-acle!

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Legal%20Eagle%20Wedding%20Watch%20NYT%20wedding%20announcements%20Above%20the%20Law.jpgLEWW salutes Laura Marshall Worth, a direct descendant of Chief Justice John Marshall, who celebrated her wedding last weekend. Laura wasted a great law-school admissions essay and became a teacher, so this hat-tip is all she gets.
Here are our three lucky finalist-couples:

1. Rebecca Ingber and Anton Metlitsky
2. Alexandra Flood and Samuel Alcoff
3. Devon Powers and David Bennion

More about these couples, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 7.8.07: Seven on Earth

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LEWW logo.jpg
We’re posting this on Friday the 13th — hardly anyone’s lucky day. But last Saturday was 7-7-07, and couples all over the world rushed to the altar (and the gambling tables) to take advantage of the auspicious date.
And sevens weren’t the only thing we saw multiples of in the NYT weddings section. We’ve got four grooms this week, and all four are named John!
If that gives you chills, just wait till you check out their credentials.
Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Zina Gelman and John Bash III
2. John Alexander and John Lipsey
3. Anne Ho and John Griggs III

More on these couples, after the jump.
[Bonus wedding note: Check out this correction and ponder how annoyed this bride is.]

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Our Apologies to All Former Policy Debaters (Except the Creepy Ones)

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In a recent post about Peter Barta, the Legal Aid lawyer who allegedly videotaped his female colleagues as they were getting undressed, we ranked on policy debaters.
Maybe we should take it back. From a highly informative reader email:

John Hughes John M Hughes debater Abovethelaw Above the Law blog.jpgNot all former policy debaters are creeps. Here’s a list of former policy debaters who are current or future legal rock stars:

Justice Samuel Alito, Judge Merrick Garland, Larry Tribe, Louis Kaplow, Erwin Chemerinsky, NYU President John Sexton, Jonathan Massey, David Boies, Tom Goldstein, Rebecca Tushnet, Annie Kastanek (OT 2007/Kennedy), and John Hughes (OT 2005/Thomas; pictured at right, captured in mid-debate).

Former policy debaters, please accept our apologies. We did extemp and L-D debate in high school, and we generally viewed C-X debaters with suspicion. They struck us as kids who talked reallyreallyfast, warning constantly of nuclear war. But maybe we were wrong.
To paraphrase the “ignorant tipster” from the Oona O’Connell story: “We feel kind of bad that we prejudged them. Sorry to sound like an afterschool special. But you know what? Perhaps we learned a lesson today. Good on you. ‘The more you know.’”
Earlier: Reading the Bartameter (Part 3): What Is Up With Those Policy Debaters?

Supreme Court Clerk Bonuses to $250K?

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100 dollar bills clerk clerkship bonuses Abovethelaw Above the Law legal tabloid.jpgIn our recent New York Times op-ed piece praising lavish signing bonuses for Supreme Court clerks, we wrote that the bonuses “are expected to reach $250,000 this year — paid on top of starting salaries approaching $200,000.”
Some people have inquired into the factual basis for our statement. As it turns out, we did some actual reporting to support it. The reporting never made it into the final op-ed piece, but we’re happy to provide the details here.
If you’re curious, read the rest of this post, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 06.25: Animal Attraction

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Legal%20Eagle%20Wedding%20Watch%20NYT%20wedding%20announcements%20Above%20the%20Law.jpgIt’s fitting that on this, the last week of the Supreme Court term, LEWW is considering a major test case. The issue: One couple has a Rhodes Scholarship, one has a SCOTUS clerkship, and one has two YLS degrees. How do we rank them?
Throw in a divorce, a famous grandparent, a couple of PhDs, a blog, three Courts of Appeals officiants, and a dash of “flava“, and we’ve got lots of credentials to chew up and spit out.
Here are the candidates:

1. Jean Galbraith and Jeremy Tobacman
2. Damara Crawley and Kevin Chambers
3. Catherine Roach and Joshua Chafetz

Read on to see which couple will emerge with the sweaty flush of victory!

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Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: OT 2008 (Update #2)

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Supreme Court hallway Above the Law Above the Law Above the Law.JPGHere’s a quick follow-up on Wednesday’s post, reporting on Supreme Court clerk hiring for October Term 2008. That’s not the Term whose clerks will start showing up for work next month — the October Term 2007 clerks are listed here — but the Term after that.
Interestingly enough, the two justices thought most likely to leave the Court next, Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, are both done with their clerk hiring for OT 2008. And we also hear that RBG has hired at least one clerk for OT 2009 — very CT-esque of her to hire that far into the future.
Thanks to everyone who submitted SCOTUS clerk hiring info, by email and in the comments. We’ve folded them into our evolving list of OT 2008 law clerks. Check it out, after the jump.

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Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: OT 2008 (Update #1)

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Supreme Court hallway Above the Law Above the Law Above the Law.JPGThe Supreme Court hasn’t yet finished up for October Term 2006 (which should end tomorrow). The law clerks for October Term 2007 will start arriving next month. But many of them have already started hiring clerks for October Term 2008.
We reported on some of those hires back in this post. And now we have more to add:

1. Conservatives hoping for his retirement will be disappointed. Rumor has it Justice John Paul Stevens has hired all of his clerks for OT 2008. The only one whose name we have, however, is Lindsey Powell (Stanford 2007 / Garland).

2. Justice Antonin Scalia has hired Jameson Jones (Stanford 2007 / Sutton). Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a judicial superhottie, is turning into quite the feeder to his former boss.

3. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has hired at least one clerk for October Term 2008 — Miriam Seifter (Harvard 2007 / Garland) — and perhaps more.

So in terms of OT 2008, Stanford Law School and Judge Merrick B. Garland are off to a good start.
If you have more SCOTUS clerk hiring news to add, please email us (subject line: “Supreme Court clerk hiring”).
A list of OT 2008 law clerks thus far appears after the jump.

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Supreme Court Clerks: Where Are They Now?

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Supreme Court hallway Above the Law Above the Law Above the Law.JPGIn 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]

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Todd Peppers and Artemus Ward on SCOTUS Clerk Bonuses

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These guys wrote the book — actually, two books — on Supreme Court clerks.
So what do they think of outsized Supreme Court clerkship bonuses? Check out their views over at the WSJ Law Blog.
P.S. Now we’re up to number 16!
Supreme Court Clerks $250,000 Clerkship Bonuses. Discuss. [WSJ Law Blog]