Powerful Washington, D.C., law firms battle each other to snag law clerks who worked at the Supreme Court, with some offering thousands of dollars for these clerks to bring their experience and knowledge of the high court into their fold.
Signing bonuses for Supreme Court law clerks have reached a high of $500,000, a spokesperson for Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher told the Washington Post. The bonuses outpace the salaries of less than $300,000 a year paid to the high court’s justices and come as a result of decades of competition between Washington’s top law groups seeking any manner of advantages that could assist with arguing cases before the Supreme Court.
Jones Day, the leading law firm in the race to snag as many law clerks as possible, announced in December that it had added eight former Supreme Court law clerks to the firm as associates. The firm has recruited 86 high court law clerks since the October 2011 term.
The courting process for the clerks is not cheap. Several firms will treat clerks to expensive dinners at some of Washington’s most elite, fine dining restaurants or invite them to events such as a baseball game or a spa, according to the outlet.
Firms view the clerks’ knowledge of the Supreme Court as a valuable asset when attracting clients and see clerkships as an effective tool to filter promising hires, according to former Supreme Court experts, lawyers, and clerks. The clerks’ connections to the Supreme Court are often weighed the same as former aides of members of Congress: The time spent near influential officials and lawmakers is considered profitable.
“Their knowledge about how the court operates is invaluable,” said Neal Katyal, a former acting U.S. solicitor general who co-leads Hogan Lovells’s appellate practice. “Our clients love them.”
Clerks spend a year or two learning the ins and outs of the appellate field, coming into contact with petitions, drafting opinions and orders, discussing cases with their justice, and preparing questions for oral arguments. Carter G. Phillips, who helped create one of the first appellate practices and offered one of the first signing bonuses, told the outlet that a former clerk’s knowledge of the process could assist them greatly in writing successful petitions to the court.
“In a world where virtually every law firm — at least in D.C. — claims to have a Supreme Court practice, there is a continuing demand for former clerks because they understand the process,” he said. “They’ve been there.”
To avoid a conflict of interest, clerks are barred from working on any cases “pending before this court or any case being considered for filing in this court” for two years as a condition of their hiring. However, their knowledge of the top court is still put into practice, as most of their work is done in the appeals courts, which can require clerks to use the same research and writing skills that one would use in Supreme Court cases.
However, some critics have questioned whether the large six-figure signing bonuses will be sustainable for firms in the long term.
“I was quite surprised with $75,000. I was shocked with $150,000,” said Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, who studies the specialization of the Supreme Court bar. “It just boggles my mind.”
Lazarus said the firms mostly want to bring in revenue, as well as nurture “superstar” lawyers.
“That’s what the firms are about. They’re about making more money,” Lazarus said. “They’re doing it because they think it will lead to more clients. That’s the bottom line.”
The appealing signing bonuses to clerks also come when public trust in the Supreme Court is low. Polls show that the public views the high court as a place infiltrated by partisan politics instead of an unbiased judge of the law, particularly as several reports have revealed expensive trips and gifts given to conservative justices such as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito by GOP megadonors.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A Gallup poll released in September 2023 found just 41% of people approve of the Supreme Court’s handling of the job, and the signing bonuses may not help the cause, either.
“The court has taken such a beating in terms of the public perception of the court — some of the beating is self-inflicted — but this isn’t good for the court,” Todd C. Peppers, a Roanoke College professor, said of the bonuses.