Clerking for old judge Forum

[Anonymous User]

Should I be overwhelmingly concerned about clerking for an old judge—think like 75+ given that judge probably won’t be able to serve as a mentor/reference for that much longer? Should I only be applying to younger judges?

[Anonymous User]

No, you shouldn't be overwhelmingly worried. Older judges have longstanding networks spread far and wide. Also, I'd take an older judge who's a good mentor/gives a good clerkship experience over a crappy younger judge any day.

[Anonymous User]

I clerked for a senior status judge of roughly that age and it was a great experience. In addition to the large networks mentioned by a prior poster, senior status judges seem more likely to do cool things that give you experience outside of what you'd get from a typical clerkship, like sit by designation on another court or write a law review article or something. My judge, and many other senior judges of which I'm aware, also liked to take long vacations and give clerks some vacation time while away. YMMV on this, but my experience and that of my law school friends was that clerkships for older judges tend to be chiller than those with younger judges, even putting aside the reduced case loads taken by some senior judges.

[Anonymous User]

On a circuit court, clerking for a pretty active (think 75% caseload) senior judge is about the best clerkship imaginable. You will still sit often enough to have a great experience, you'll have more time to work on each case, and you won't have much (if any) en banc work, which sounds interesting in theory but was almost always a huge, inconveniently-timed time suck.

[Anonymous User]

I clerked for a senior judge in his 80s. Was a great experience. He was very active, sat by designation on multiple circuits, the clerkship hours were chill (9-5, unless you needed to work longer hours), and he was a great boss/mentor.

[Anonymous User]

This seems really case by case: O’Scannlain and Rakoff seem active whereas it’s hard to predict whether someone like Tatel will be. Probably a broad question since the Baby Boom judges are actually over represented / above life expectancy in the overall makeup nationwide. Statistically, it’s morbid, but I would expect to see a *lot* of seniors retiring or dying in office (and not all the quite old judges have even taken senior status and some are waiting for strategic political / successor reasons!).

[Anonymous User]

This is such a difficult and delicate issue. Once I got an interview for a Judge who was 85 at the time of the interview and would have been 87 at the time of the clerkship. Scalia had just died and so it was (understandably) a concern of mine that the judge might not be totally "there" or might not even make it throughout the full course of my clerkship, if I were to get an offer and accept. I spoke to a couple of folks from my school who had clerked for him and I tried to gently probe the issue, and one of them totally understood and responded constructively and the other one was totally offended and was insulted on behalf of the judge. The judge seemed fine during the interview and I actually didn't get an offer! Clerked for two other judges instead, one of whom was late 70s and the other of whom was late 50s.

[Anonymous User]

There's actually an opposite problem with clerking for very young judges (mainly those with young families). It's hard to extract the same amount of mentorship and attention from them when they're mentoring their literal children. They also aren't necessarily "tapped in" to the legal community like an older judge would be because they've only started to build their clerk network.

So it's hard to find the sweet spot, and I wouldn't let it deter you. The main point of these clerkships is the gold star and the lifetime income potential it'll give you.

[Anonymous User]

There's actually an opposite problem with clerking for very young judges (mainly those with young families). It's hard to extract the same amount of mentorship and attention from them when they're mentoring their literal children. They also aren't necessarily "tapped in" to the legal community like an older judge would be because they've only started to build their clerk network.

So it's hard to find the sweet spot, and I wouldn't let it deter you. The main point of these clerkships is the gold star and the lifetime income potential it'll give you.

I would say the main problem with clerking for young judges is that young DJs often work very hard hours because of the learning curve, but ymmv. I think the lack of network may be a downside for judges who are very, very young--say, those in their 30s--but on the other hand they'll be around for your whole legal career and eventually probably be extremely well-connected, so pluses and minuses.