SSC Clerk Taking Questions Forum

[Anonymous User]

OP here. The hierarchy is entirely judge dependent and also depends on what you want to do post clerkship. For example, my SSC Judge has sent clerks on to SCOTUS before and is extremely well connected politically. So if you want to leverage that clerking for her/him is way better than a random federal CoA judge. But conversely the SSC clerkship carries much less weight with elite lit firms than a random federal CoA would. So know your goals and proceed accordingly.

Other SSC in this thread. I gave tiers because asked, but I absolutely agree that the specific judge and practice goals are super important. I thought I had made that clear, but to the extent I didn't I agree with everything OP said here.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. The hierarchy is entirely judge dependent and also depends on what you want to do post clerkship. For example, my SSC Judge has sent clerks on to SCOTUS before and is extremely well connected politically. So if you want to leverage that clerking for her/him is way better than a random federal CoA judge. But conversely the SSC clerkship carries much less weight with elite lit firms than a random federal CoA would. So know your goals and proceed accordingly.

Respectfully, I question whether it's useful to talk about SSCt clerkships as if they are a single category of clerkship for career-advancement purposes, and I think a few statements in this thread are kind of misleading for the vast majority of them. In particular, to the best of my knowledge, there is only one current state Supreme Court Justice who fits OP's description (i.e., is a current SSCt. Justice and has had multiple clerks go on to clerk on the U.S. Supreme Court), and he's sui generis in multiple ways, including that the clerks who've gone on to clerk on the Court already had tip-top feeder clerkships and those feeder judges were the but-for causes for the SCOTUS clerkships (If it's who I'm thinking of- I know both of them.) So for the other 99.9% of people seeking a SSCt clerkship, doing so for SCOTUS value is not the right way to think about it. OP's judge, assuming it is who I think it is, is terrific and by all accounts as worthy of admiration as any of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices. But he's also a category one (and possibly two, as he has one newer colleague who may develop a similar reputation.)

Otherwise, I think your mileage will vary a ton depending on the state's supreme court. Broadly speaking, the benefits of clerking on the Alaska Supreme Court (tons of new state common law to be made), the NY Court of Appeals or the California Supreme Court (high prestige in states with heavy and important state litigation dockets), the Texas Supreme Court (which has no criminal docket), and the Delaware Court of Chancery (corps corps corps) will all vary depending on your goals and geographic and/or area-of-law ambitions, to say nothing of the many other courts I didn't mention.

I've had friends clerk on each of the above, and a number of others, and the experiences were far more different than "flyover circuit judge" vs. "feeder circuit judge" in terms of the workload, work substance, and expected benefits. The reason federal clerkships are so valued is that no matter who you clerk for, the broad substance, workload, and responsibilities are the same, so an employer knows precisely what skillset they're hiring. It's true that a clerkship with a handful of particular SSCt. Justices will have generic "prestige value" equivalent to non-famous federal judges (and even some famous federal judges), but the reasons are so particular to the judge that I don't think extrapolating out to all SSCt clerkships everywhere helps the unfamiliar reader/clerk aspirant, and may confuse.

Just my two cents. That being said, I think doing a SSCt, provided it's a good fit for your career goals and for a good judge, is a unique opportunity, because on many SSCts the dynamics of negotiation, compromise, and crafting new law are essentially similar to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that's a once-in-a-lifetime experience only a very small number of very lucky people get to have. It's pretty cool to see how the law sausage gets made when there's no one above you to reverse you.