Courtroom Careers: Law Clerks

Of all the people who work within the legal system, law clerks may have the most misleading job title. You might imagine a law clerk as someone who performs clerical duties like bookkeeping and making legal records, but that's not what a law clerk does at all. Rather, law clerks are lawyers or people knowledgeable about the law who help judges arrive at their official decisions. Many, many lawyers dream of becoming law clerks, and serving as a clerk to a Supreme Court justice is one of the most coveted positions in the entire legal field.

Law clerks help judges out throughout a trial. They will speak with almost everyone involved in a lawsuit or criminal case: the attorneys, the people who work in the courtroom, and members of the general public who come to watch the proceedings. They interview many of these people and try to get a sense of how they feel about a certain case. They review all documents and legal briefs that are filed in connection with a given case. They also research past cases to see how judges have ruled under similar circumstances-in fact, this is one of the most important duties they have. Many judges will ask their law clerks outright how the clerk feels the judge should rule. That's not to say that a judge will ever rule a certain way simply because it's the way his or her clerk feels the judge should rule, but the opinion of trusted law clerks often weighs heavily on a judge's mind when he or she's arriving at that all-important ruling.

Law clerks at the appeals court level, or appellate law clerks, have a special responsibility, because appellate judges are often the last people to rule on a certain case before, say, a defendant spends the rest of his or her life in jail or has to pay a large sum of money to a plaintiff. And so appellate law clerks are often involved in complicated research and very detailed legal matters. Sometimes appellate law clerks also help to draft legal opinions and other documents for a judge.

To become a law clerk, you almost always have to graduate from college and law school and pass the bar exam. Many law clerks are young; some judges like to employ bright young legal minds for a few years before they go off to practice law, feeling that young people bring a special energy and enthusiasm to the job. Other judges, however, prefer to hire law clerks who are older, people who have been tested in the courtroom and who will bring wisdom and seasoning to the position. And some judges will require a candidate to complete a year-long "clerkship"-a position that's kind of like being an apprentice law clerk-before that judge will hire the lawyer as a full-time law clerk. Also, many judges will only consider candidates who maintained an outstanding GPA in law school to become their law clerks.