King & Spalding partner Paul Mezzina.

Last week, King & Spalding partner Paul Mezzina returned to private practice after spending last year clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. The stint was not the first, nor even the second time Mezzina had clerked for a Supreme Court Justice. In 2013, he clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and four years prior, Mezzina clerked for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The National Law Journal spoke with Mezzina about the differing work-styles of each of the three jurists and the value that multiple clerkships bring to private practice.

The interview has been edited lightly for clarity.

We all know that a Supreme Court clerkship is hard to land, as are clerkships on the D.C. Court of Appeals—so how did you land three of them?

Well, in the first place I've been incredibly lucky. There are so many talented lawyers who would be fantastic Supreme Court clerks who do not get the opportunity, and a lot of it really does come down to luck. When I was in law school I didn't see myself as a future Supreme Court clerk. But I worked really hard, and I was fortunate that Justice Kavanaugh—who was judge Kavanaugh then—hired me to clerk for him on the D.C. Circuit. I learned a lot from that experience, and I kept on learning in private practice.

I went to King & Spalding, and I got to work with some terrific colleagues—people who really cared about helping me become a better lawyer—and that experience helped me get a job with Justice Scalia when I was five years out of law school. I then went back to King & Spalding, got a lot more experience litigating cases and made partner. So when I heard that Justice Gorsuch was looking for older and more experienced clerks to help him for his first couple of years on the court, I was fortunate to be in a position to do that. Part of the reason I could do it is that the firm supported me, and I knew I would have a home to come back to.

From your experience, what is the value of multiple federal clerkships?

One thing that was very neat about having done two Supreme Court clerkships five years apart is that it gave me a chance to see the court changing and evolving.

The first time I clerked back in 2013, Justice Kennedy and Justice Scalia were the two longest-serving justices, and both of them were incredibly influential. When I went back five years later, their places had been taken by Justice Gorsuch, who was in his second full term on the Court, and by Justice Kavanaugh, who was in his first term. So I had the opportunity to get a sense of how the court might operate differently with these new Justices. I got to see that it's a lot more complicated than the sound bites you might sometimes hear about the new "conservative majority."

For example, did you know that in the closest cases, where the Justices were divided 5-4, there were 10 different majority coalitions? I was fortunate to get some idea of how the court is evolving and where it might be headed in the future. Those are insights I can now bring to bear for my clients.

Have you argued in front of the Supreme Court? What does your private practice look like, and how has your clerkship informed it?

In general, I work with my colleagues to try to help our clients who are wrestling with really difficult and complicated legal issues at whatever stage of the process those issues come up. Sometimes that means working with a client who's involved in a dispute or investigation that hasn't made it to court yet; sometimes that means helping clients deal with a regulatory agency; sometimes it means writing dispositive motions in trial court or helping try a case; and sometimes it means litigating a case on appeal.

I haven't had a chance to argue in the Supreme Court yet, although I have argued in a number of federal circuit courts. But I just enjoy tackling tough and thorny legal issues wherever they come up.

Tell me about how your experiences differed between the Justices, and how you think your perception differs from public perception.

I've gotten the chance to clerk for two really remarkable Justices in Justice Scalia and Justice Gorsuch. Those have both been amazing, and in some ways, different experiences. When I clerked for Justice Scalia, he had been on the court for 27 years, and he was a towering figure of the law. A big part of that job was being familiar with his views and past writings and applying them to new cases.

Now, by contrast, when I clerked for Justice Gorsuch—although he had been a circuit court judge for 10 years—he was just in his second year on the Supreme Court. There were issues that came before the Court that he had not already written an opinion about, and he was incredibly generous in letting his clerks work through those issues with him.

But I would say the similarities stood out more than the differences. Both Justice Scalia and Justice Gorsuch were passionately committed to the rule of law. They both work very hard to try and find the right legal answer in a case without regard to their personal beliefs as to what might be good policy. And both of them encouraged their clerks to think for themselves and not be intimidated by the robe.

They welcomed disagreements because they knew it was the best way to test their ideas. For a young lawyer, there aren't too many things that are more exciting than going to work every day and discussing and debating legal principles with a Supreme Court Justice. That's a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And what about then-Judge Kavanaugh?

There are probably more similarities than differences. But one thing I really remembered about clerking for Justice Kavanaugh is the writing process. There's obviously a lot of writing and a lot of back-and-forth in all of the clerkships. But especially for me as a pretty young lawyer at the time, it was a real privilege and a learning experience to work on an opinion with the then-Judge Kavanaugh. As a clerk, I would do an initial draft, then he would edit it and give it back to me and I would give it back to him. That process could go on for dozens of drafts, and every time, every iteration you could see it get better. That was just a fantastic way to learn how to be a better writer—by seeing that iterative process.

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