Prep for Your Clerkship Interview: News

Legal News - in addition to skimming legal news as covered under Basic Prep, you can look for legal analysis of your judge's activities in specific areas of law using practice area resources:

• Law 360 - type in your judge's name and click on "News & Analysis" at the left. You can use the topic filters (e.g., consumer law, bankruptcy, class actions).
• Bloomberg Law News topical news sources - These resources are widely used by practitioners and scholars to keep track of developments in their field. Short and in-depth stories track recent cases. To find out issues your judge has been involved with that attract the interest of specialists:
  • use the simple search box at the top to look for your judge's name; or
  • pick a topical reporter (e.g., Daily Labor Report or U.S. Law Week), click on the "View More" link, click on "View and Filter All Stories," then filter by your judge's court on the left side of the screen.

General News - use newspaper sources to find recent press coverage about your judge:

• Major dailies: current coverage of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times via Proquest Newspapers.
• Local interest: Access World News is useful for state court news, as it has good local newspaper coverage:
  • Drill down on the map to the USA and select your state (or click on "Select Multiple States and Territories") or region (click on "Region" in the list of filters at the left side; select one of the 9 US regions or "Select Multiple Regions").
• Appointment process: Use a date range of up to one year before and a couple of months after your judge's appointment as date limiters to focus on news surrounding the nomination and confirmation process
  • consider using a state- or region-specific search in Access World News (described above) focused on the local papers where your judge was based immediately before appointment.
  • for federal appointments, search the Washington Post, available via Nexis Uni.

Law Library Catalog:

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