The Legal Accountability Project Celebrates One-Year Anniversary of Upending the Clerkship System
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
For Immediate Release
Contact: Aliza Shatzman, 267-481-2095, aliza.shatzman@legalaccountabilityproject.org
The Legal Accountability Project Celebrates One-Year Anniversary of Upending the Clerkship System
One year ago this week, judicial clerkship hiring changed forever. The Legal Accountability Project (LAP) launched our Centralized Clerkships Database (AKA “Glassdoor for Judges”), forever changing the face of clerkship hiring.
Many thought it couldn’t be done. A few thought it shouldn’t be done. But where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Since April 2024, LAP’s Clerkships Database has served nearly 2,000 clerkship applicants - law students and recent graduates - from more than 100 U.S. law schools. LAP’s Database currently contains more than 1,500 candid post-clerkship surveys submitted by former judicial law clerks nationwide about more than 1,000 federal and state court judges. This is the largest independent repository of clerkship information in the U.S., finally empowering applicants to do an informed clerkship search and to be empowered and discerning consumers of clerkship information and opportunities. LAP’s Database provides applicants with critical insights that their law schools either don’t have or won’t share with them.
LAP also serves five law review partners - Harvard Law Review, New York University Law Review, Texas Law Review, George Washington Law Review, and Southern California Law Review - as well as two law schools - Illinois Law and Catholic Law - whose journals or schools pay a reduced “bulk subscribers” rate so students don’t have to pay themselves.
The feedback from LAP’s key stakeholders - law students and recent graduates using the Database, as well as law clerks who submitted surveys - has been incredible. User feedback has only reaffirmed what we always knew: nationwide clerkship transparency is the solution to historically intractable problems in judicial clerkships and the judiciary.
Database users tell us that this is the best $40 they’ve spent, and that LAP’s Database is an “incredible,” “critical,” “much-needed,” and “long overdue” resource. Law clerks tell us they’ve never had a platform to share - or share candidly - before, and that they wish this resource existed when they were applying for clerkships.
And we’ve discovered that, for a subset of Database users who subscribed in order to find a second clerkship, but whose first experience was negative, they have found comfort and community in reading about other clerks’ negative experiences, because they know they are not alone. Subscribers using the Database to find a second (or third) clerkship opportunity tell us that seeing the security and privacy measures LAP employs and the care LAP takes - far beyond what their law schools do - gave them the confidence to share their clerkship experiences with LAP.
As LAP marks this important anniversary, we encourage all supporters in the legal industry and beyond to get involved with our clerkship transparency movement.
If you are a:
Law student or recent law school graduate applying for clerkships, register today for Database access at survey.legalaccountabilityproject.org for just $40 per year. This is the best investment you can make in your future career. There is no larger, broader, more candid source of clerkship information than LAP’s Database.
Current or former law clerk: share your experience in LAP’s Database at survey.legalaccountabilityproject.org. Your survey submission will be anonymous unless you indicate otherwise. Whether your experience was incredibly positive, terrible, or somewhere in between, LAP - and thousands of clerkship applicants - want to hear about it. This is the most efficient way to ensure that applicants truly understand the work environment they’re entering. Remember the lack of information you had when you were applying for clerkships? LAP’s Database corrects that.
Supporter: Donate to LAP at: https://www.legalaccountabilityproject.org/donate-1. You can even donate on behalf of students at your law school alma mater so they can access LAP’s Database for free this year.
We are heading into the peak of judicial clerkship hiring season, a time when, historically, thousands of applicants applied broadly and indiscriminately to as many as 100 judges (or more) about whose management style and chambers culture they knew nothing, and simply hoped for the best. Applicants were not empowered to be discerning consumers of clerkship opportunities, nor to say “no” to a clerkship interview offer or job opportunity, nor to avoid judges who mistreat their clerks.
No longer. This is the second clerkship hiring cycle where applicants know which judges to apply to and which to avoid. And, it’s the first cycle where some Clerkships Database subscribers have had nearly an entire year of access - doing their research thoroughly and at their leisure, rather than frantically for a few months in the spring, or not until 24-48 hours before a clerkship interview in the summer.
This is a completely different conceptualization of clerkship hiring - a radical transformation from just a few years ago. LAP is proud to be the catalyst behind this change.