Recently, I had the privilege of speaking on a Federalist Society panel that included a number of former and current judicial law clerks at various levels of the state and federal judiciary. Now a decade removed from my own two-year stint in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, this panel provided me the opportunity to reflect back on the benefits of my clerkship. Whether you are a law student or young associate considering taking one on, or a hiring partner deciding between associate candidates, consider these five benefits that a lawyer with clerkship experience will have reaped.
Thinking Like a Judge
Hands down, this is the biggest professional benefit of a clerkship. Whether your judge assigns you to draft opinions or write memos to prepare for a hearing, you are forced to place yourself into your judge’s head, anticipating not just the potential outcome of the pending issue(s), but the sub-issues, legal or factual, with which he will wrestle, how he will approach and analyze those issues, and the reasoning that will lead to a potential outcome. You will benefit from the judge’s feedback, if not by, say, a post-hearing debrief, then by osmosis in the back and forth discussions you have with the judge along the way, or in the opinion-revision process (my judge, for example was very generous with the red pen which, though sometimes frustrating at the time, was invaluable to my growth as a lawyer). In that process with the judge, and in your position as a first-level reviewer of other lawyers’ work, you will gain precious insight into the types of unfavorable facts and issues that need to be fronted (and how best to front them), the styles of arguments and rhetorical flourish that work or don’t, and how to persuasively frame issues so the decision-maker is more likely to side with you.
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