One huge question that we never seem to really pose to law students is: How do you know which judge to clerk for? The reason is that your school and the legal society at large has come to the conclusion that a prominent clerkship with any judge is a good clerkship, and thus you should apply to every judge so long as they are on a certain bench. (For example, so long as they’re a federal judge or a State Supreme Court Justice.) I will have a later post regarding whether you should limit yourself to only prestigious clerkships (you can guess my answer: no), but for now let’s dispel the myth at all clerkships on a certain bench regardless of the judge are the same.
Clerking for certain judges will be great for your personal and professional growth and clerking for others will not. Here’s how to figure out who to clerk for.
First and foremost, you want to narrow down a list of which benches you want to apply to based on the type of court and location. For example, say that you’re willing to apply to any circuit court of appeals clerkship, federal district court clerkships only in certain cities and states, and state supreme court clerkships only in certain states. (For example, I hate driving and don’t own a car. For that reason, I did not look up judges in the LA area because I knew I would never move to LA even for a great clerkship.)
If it were me, I’d make an excel spreadsheet with at least three tabs – one for each type of court – and then within each tab I’d start looking up the judges on each bench, separating them out by location/bench. For example, if you are willing to apply to any circuit court of appeals clerkship, you’ll need to list out the 1st through 11th Circuit as well as the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and then go to each court’s website to get a list of judges. (I would also advise adding a tab to mark whether a judge is Senior or Active – more on that later.)
I would then do the same for district courts, the state supreme court, and any other court you’re considering like the state court of appeals. Depending on how many benches you’re considering applying to and how cluttered your spreadsheets become, you may want to break this down into more tabs.
Now, onto researching the judges. First and foremost, for any federal judge I highly recommend looking them up in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary (“AFJ”). The AFJ gives short, useful profiles of judges compiled through anonymous interviews with local practitioners. I found it incredibly helpful to determine key pieces of information, like whether the judge was considered neutral versus biased in any way, whether the judge had a calm or aggressive temperament, and whether the judge was well respected in the community. The AFJ should be available for free if you have Westlaw or Lexis access through your law school.
From there, I would also look up decisions on certain types of cases (for me, employment discrimination and other civil rights cases) to see if I felt the reasoning provided was thorough and fair. I don’t recommend going too nuts here – looking up even a handful of opinions per judge would be a lot. However, it can definitely be worth it if you would have difficulty clerking for a judge whose legal ideology is at odds with your own.
I don’t believe there’s a state court version of the AFJ, though some states – like Colorado – provide retention elections for judges. While I can’t speak to how it works in other states, in CO we get a bluebook in the mail that essentially mirrors the AFJ. You can find online copies of those profiles here: http://www.coloradojudicialperformance.gov/. If you’re looking to apply in a different state, I’d look online to see if you have something similar.
And of course, I’d look into their written orders as well. For both state and federal judges, you should be able to access written orders narrowed down by judge on both Westlaw and Lexis. State trial court judges are the hardest to find since those are rarely published online, but appellate and supreme court orders by state judges should be easy to track down.
Personally, I think clerking for a judge who is considered to have a bad temperament or who is not well respected in the community would be worse for your happiness and wellbeing and a neutral for your career. And if you have fundamental ideological differences with a judge, that can also make things very difficult as you clerk. For that reason, I recommend doing some research before applying and narrowing down your list versus sending out applications to every judge on OSCAR. It’s more work, but it will pay off in the long run.