Preparing for your judicial clerkship: Advice

• In order to succeed in your clerkship you must be a generalist. Court cases could cover just about any area of law (especially in State Courts) and you must be willing and able to become an expert on anything. Are you an expert on Space Law? That's not going to help you because an issue about outer space is not likely to come up. 
• You must be decisive after considered and thoughtful review. Your opinion matters. Anyone can sit on the fence and avoid making conclusions but that method is not likely to impress your superiors. It's important to note the part about 'considered and thoughtful review.' That fact that you made a conclusion won't be very impressive if you didn't think about the case in front of you. Show everyone how smart you are.
• One of your jobs as a law clerk is to prevent your judge from making mistakes.  This means you need to speak up if you believe the judge’s tentative decision may be based on some misunderstanding as to the facts of the case or the law.  As the law clerk, you are the person who has spent the most time with the case and you likely will be more familiar with the record and the relevant case law.  Don’t let your inclination to defer interfere with performance of your job.  On the flip side, if the judge has an inclination to decide an issue in particular way, take that inclination very seriously.  If you plan to recommend that the judge decide the issue differently, be prepared to explain why.  Also be sure to review your judge’s past decisions to see if the issue was already decided by the judge one way or the other.  If you are asking your judge to take a position that is contrary to the judge’s past decision, the burden on you to justify taking a different approach will be high. 
• Your writing must have the 4 C's. It has to be clear, concise, compelling, and comprehensive. Think about this: your memo/opinion has to be articulated in a way that will get votes and you don't have an unlimited amount of time to craft your writing. You don't need to impress anyone with your big bag of vocabulary but you will need to convince people that your treatment of the case is the correct one while addressing all of the issues.
• You must approach cases with an open mind and without prejudgement. This means that you have to see the case without bias or prejudice. You might have thoughts about how cases should turn out based on your views and beliefs when you have nothing to do with a case and that's probably okay. You have to keep in mind that your thoughts will affect the outcome of lives through your opinions and memos when you are involved with a case. This responsibility is too great to approach it with a bias.
• You are a scout for the judiciary. You are there to explore the possibilities of arguments and that means that your review needs to be comprehensive. You can't duck an argument because it's inconvenient. People will notice when you avoid an argument - they read the case too.
• Get past any 'Wizard of Oz' ideas of the court system. Appreciate the fact that these are real people making (flawed) decisions. 
• Resist the temptation to assume that the lawyers know better because they are more experienced than you are, and never trust their representations of fact or of law.  Many lawyers will provide accurate descriptions of the case law and the record of the case, but some will not.  Check everything.  Also don’t assume that because a case was not cited or an issue was not raised that it is not important.  If you see something that you think was missed, flag the issue for your judge.

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