Georgetown Law's Dori Bernstein in 2016 speaking with authors of Supreme Court-related books. (Photo: C-SPAN)

Dori Bernstein, director of the influential Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center, is stepping aside after nine years of organizing and participating in hundreds of moot courts for veteran and neophyte high court advocates alike.

Bernstein said she will continue at Georgetown teaching a clerkship practicum for law students and taking on other activities, but she is leaving her institute role to spend more time with her aging parents in Connecticut. Georgetown is seeking applicants for a new director.

“I really love the program, and the job was a blast, but the schedule is somewhat relentless when the court is in session,” she said in an interview. “I just need to be able to drive up to Hartford and hang out for a week or so, when I feel like it.”

In addition to moot courts, the institute, led by executive director Irv Gornstein and faculty director Steven Goldblatt, also puts on briefings and panel discussions about the Supreme Court and hosts what has been dubbed the annual end-of-term “prom party” for court practitioners.

The institute has become an almost essential go-to destination for the Supreme Court bar. For lawyers who learn that the court has just granted certiorari in their case, their first or second phone call is to the institute for first dibs on scheduling a moot court.

In the current term, the institute mooted lawyers for one side or the other in 70 of the 71 cases argued. It would have been 71, but one recalcitrant lawyer prefers his moot courts to take place in Chicago. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said the institute is “a tremendous service to the court,” and other justices have said the same.

“Dori is largely responsible for the Georgetown Institute's central role in Supreme Court practice. It's hard to imagine doing a moot court at the Institute without Dori there,” said Paul Weiss partner Kannon Shanmugam, who mooted all four of the cases he argued this term at Georgetown.

Kannon Shanmugam speaking at The Federalist Society's s 2018 National Lawyers Convention in 2018. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

Bernstein, who clerked for Ginsburg when she was a circuit court judge, was a litigator for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before coming to Georgetown.

“Dori is one of the best lawyers in Washington, period,” said Roy Englert Jr., partner at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber. “She is brilliant but always uses her brilliance to bring out the best in others, from the profession's youngest aspirants to its most accomplished practitioners.”

A highlight of her job, Bernstein said, was occupying “the front row seats to see the best legal talent in the country. I'd already spent my career as an appellate litigator, and I kept thinking, 'Wow, it would have been helpful if I did all these moots before I started arguing cases.'”

Without naming names, Bernstein added, “Oh my god, there are some [advocates] who are just astonishing.”

But the logistics of organizing moot courts and recruiting five lawyers to serve as “judges” for each one became something of a grind.

“Every year for at least the last three years we've gotten the court's February [argument] calendar on December 23rd or 24th,” Bernstein said. “And that means I would spend the next couple of weeks where the school is shut down and we're all supposed to have the time off, and I'm spending it trying to get ahold of everybody to get scheduled. It's like the clock is ticking.”

But Bernstein was not just an event planner. She sometimes recruited herself to be a moot court judge, and helped advocates in other ways.

“I remember her pulling me aside when I had a slew of back-to-back arguments and telling me I had to take better care of myself,” Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal said. “She was like this with every student and every advocate. And she was a phenomenal mooter and thinker. I would always request her for every single moot.”

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