Tracey E. George (Vanderbilt University – Law School), Albert Yoon (University of Toronto Faculty of Law), and Mitu Gulati (University of Virginia School of Law; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)) have posted What Judges Want on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The competition for obtaining a judicial clerkship is fierce. For a law student embarking on their legal career, it is one of the most consequential credentials that can be obtained. Yet, the process by which to apply to and obtain this credential is both strange and opaque. Each judge has wide discretion over how she fills the spots she has each year. And this is a government job. Drawing on interviews with 183 judges, we report on what judges say they want in a law clerk. Judges describe wanting someone who will be a lifelong family member more than an ideological ally. That is, a person who can immediately contribute to the work demands of judicial chambers, who will not be insufferable in a small room for a year, and who will bring their children to reunions twenty years on. On an individual level, these choices strike us as rational and justifiable. But systemically, if we were choosing to design a system that both provides judges assistance for their work and confers on law students a credential that helps determine who rises to the top of the American legal system, is this the system we’d choose?
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