Toward Smarter Judiciaries

And a Clerk Experience Policy

The current American model of law has within it certain defects, notably the system of hiring judicial clerks who are second or third year law students who are barely twenty years old and have the life experiences of someone barely twenty years old. Law clerks run the gamut in terms of intelligence and prior work experience, but some may be nothing more than people who were favored enough to get good grades for one or two years in law school after having no more life experience than lifeguarding or waitressing at the beach.

Serious life and death decisions rest in the judiciary. Even civil cases have serious life or death implications for people's ability to run businesses and earn a living. And some law clerks are people you would not hire to put gas in your car from fifth rate colleges and third rate law schools.
And these people are relied on by overworked judges who have too much docket on their plate often to even read a full file before ruling.

Law clerks should be hired only with five years of practice under their belt, or at least the ones who have any serious say doing anything other than shepardizing cases on line or pulling them and tabbing pages. To attract a better quality judicial clerk these people should be paid competitively with top firms of someone of their tracking seniority.

It is absurd and appaulingly ridiculous that someone from a third rate law school who is twenty years old barely is deciding anything or conferring with a judge to decide anything of import. They are not old enough to see how what looks like an incongruity is not or how somethings could be simultaneously true that look inconsistent. Some are so dumb you want to tell them to not forget that facebook is not a daily journal.

I here argue for a new rule- ABA, please require law clerks have five years at least of legal practice experience, and pay them enough to attract top quality clerks.