On Justice
The Legal Accountability Project Blog
Balancing Competing Stakeholder Interests to Create Change
Absolutist thinking has long precluded change.
LAP is well-positioned to create real change because we are truly non-partisan, we work with everyone who’s willing to engage with us, and we offer a variety of front-end and back-end solutions to fix the clerkship system.
Pathways to Public Service
Doing justice. Providing a voice for the voiceless. Holding people accountable.
That’s why LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman aspired to become a prosecutor. Aliza focuses on these same values at The Legal Accountability Project: improving judicial clerkships and the judiciary, providing a voice for students and clerks, and holding judges accountable.
In this week’s Blog, Aliza offers advice to law students pursuing careers in public service.
Fixing Our Clerkship System
Is there a tension between critiquing the clerkship system and encouraging students to clerk? Aliza explains how LAP empowers more students to pursue judicial clerkships - while being mindful about who they clerk for, in a way they currently cannot.
How do students actually obtain information about clerkships?
How do students actually obtain information about judges as managers and clerkship experiences? Aliza explains the troubling ways in which information about clerkships is selectively shared with students.
Advocating for Disabled Law Students and Clerks
During Disability Pride Month, and every month, we should work to ensure that everyone can bring their full selves to the workplace, including to a judicial chambers. Diversifying the legal profession necessitates diversifying clerkship hires, considering the premium that legal employers place on clerkships. Increasing transparency and providing all students, regardless of their school's ranking or resources, with transparent information about clerkships is the best way to empower more diverse students to clerk.
LAP Summer Intern Reflections - Improving the Legal Profession for My Future Peers
LAP summer intern Caleb Aguirre reflects on lessons learned during his internship, where he had the opportunity to help improve the clerkship process and legal profession for future clerks - his future peers.
Finding the “right” clerkship
LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman explains the importance of identifying the “right” clerkship and how LAP’s Clerkships Database will help every student who wants to clerk, to identify the clerkship that’s best for them.
Diversifying Our Clerkship System
On Juneteenth, LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman explains why LAP’s Clerkships Database is the best way to diversify the clerkship system.
On Clerking
This June, rising third-year law students will indiscriminately apply for clerkships with as many as 50-100 federal judges via the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review (OSCAR) Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan. LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman offers some thoughts on clerking.