Advocating for Law Clerks and Holding Judges Accountable

Law schools advise students to "do their research" before applying for clerkships. But what research are students going to do, when so little transparent information about judges as managers and clerkship experiences is accessible to them?

It is particularly important for law clerks – new attorneys who spend a year or two working for and learning from judges – to identify judges who will be supportive bosses, considering the outsized influence that a judicial clerkship, and a relationship with a judge, have on future career success. Furthermore, the federal judiciary is exempt from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and workplace protections and judicial accountability mechanisms are inadequate in both federal and state courts, meaning law clerks have limited avenues for redress when they are mistreated by the most powerful members of the profession – judges.

This course, presented by Aliza Shatzman, Attorney at The Legal Accountability Project, explains the characteristics of judicial clerkships that make these workplaces particularly conducive to mistreatment in the worst circumstances. This course explains how the lack of diversity in the clerkship pipeline has larger implications for fairness in judicial decision-making and the future face of the legal profession. It also highlights how various stakeholder groups, including law schools, legal employers, bar associations, and members of the judiciary, can improve their messaging, programming, and attitudes toward judicial clerkships in order to help ensure positive clerkship experiences.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the characteristics of clerkships that can make them particularly conducive to workplace mistreatment in the worst circumstances, as well as the workplace policies and legal protections that should be implemented to ensure safe workplaces and legal redress for law clerks and other judiciary employees, as well as accountability for judges who engage in misconduct
2. Review how the lack of diversity in the clerkship applicant pool and judicial chambers creates a larger pipeline issue - a lack of diversity in the upper echelons of the legal profession, including the judiciary – and identify and implement concrete solutions to correct this
3. Break down how various stakeholder groups - including law school professors, clerkship directors, and deans; legal employers; and members of the judiciary - contribute to problematic clerkship culture and messaging, and identify and implement concrete changes  
4. Discuss ways that law schools, legal employers, bar associations, and the judiciary can work together to ensure positive clerkship experiences, while supporting law clerks who experience mistreatment in their workplaces 
5. Analyze how every attorney – whether you clerked or not, whether you appear before judges or not – is affected by the lack of accountability and lack of diversity in the judiciary, and identify and implement concrete solutions to correct these injustices and inequities for the next generation of legal professionals