I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just signed a book contract with ABA Publishing, the publishing arm of the American Bar Association. I’m going to submitting my complete manuscript to them later this year, and Supreme Ambitions: A Novel will be published sometime in 2014.

One of the advantages of working with a traditional publisher is editorial support. I’ll be working on finishing my manuscript with Jon Malysiak, executive editor at the ABA’s Flagship book imprint. Jon has worked extensively with fiction writers before, as an editor, agent, and teacher, and he also writes fiction himself.

Those of you who have read all of the web installments of Supreme Ambitions will notice many changes in the book version. I’m in the process of extensively revising what I’ve previously written, in addition to producing new material. In the revision process, I’m taking into account many of the excellent suggestions that I’ve received from web readers in posted comments and by email.

Once again, my deepest gratitude to all of you for your interest, insights, and encouragement. If you have any other thoughts you’d like to share with me about this project, I welcome them by email. Thank you!

I do plan on finishing the story, which I already have fully outlined (even if not yet written). But I’m mulling over different possible approaches to doing so.

In any event, I thank everyone for their patience and their interest!

I spent Tuesday morning reading the briefs and doing some research for Hamadani, an immigration case involving a Pakistani man seeking political asylum in the United States. The immigrant, who overstayed illegally years ago but went on to start a successful small business (a grocery store), as well as to raise two kids here, seemed sympathetic. But the legal standard for granting asylum struck me as stringent.

So immersed in my reading, I didn’t realize it was half past noon until James’s tall, slender figure materialized in the doorway of my windowless office.

“Lunch?”

How could I say no to a sandy-haired boy with blue-green eyes, flawless skin, and great teeth?

“Sure, thanks!”

I had brought my lunch to work, and so had my co-clerks. Not only was that the economical thing to do, but there weren’t many dining options in the courthouse’s residential neighborhood in Pasadena.

The chambers had a small but well-equipped kitchen. After collecting my salad from the refrigerator and microwaving my tomato soup, I joined my co-clerks around a conference table in the library.

“So,” said James to me, “are you working on any interesting cases?”

“I’ve just started reading the briefs in this immigration case….”

“Audrey,” interrupted Amit, “he said interesting cases.”

Larry guffawed at Amit’s bitchy quip. Amit seemed nice enough when we met yesterday; what was his problem today?

“I never took immigration law,” I said, “so I’m finding it interesting, since it’s new to me.”

“Then you’ll find almost all of your cases interesting,” said Amit. “You went to Yale, right? The Ninth Circuit doesn’t get that many Fourteenth Amendment cases. Or Con Law cases. Or cases about feminist post-structuralist legal theory.”

I smiled as sweetly as I could.

“Yale does have some incredible theoretical offerings,” I said, “but you can take many black-letter courses as well. I took Admin, Antitrust, Biz Org, Crim Law, Crim Pro, Legislation, Sentencing…. I’m sure I’m forgetting some. Oh yes, all the statutory classes: Bankruptcy, Securities Regulation, Tax, Advanced Tax. And I really enjoyed ERISA, actually…”

James was trying — unsuccessfully — to suppress a grin. Amit was staring intently at the ingredients list on his bag of potato chips. Was the former spelling bee champ looking for more words to memorize?

“Yeah,” said Larry, “but those were the Yale versions of those classes. All theory, I bet. At Loyola, we learned the law. Like, the kind you find on the books. Not all your airy-fairy crap.”

I nodded politely, but then stopped; did nodding make me look patronizing? I looked at James and Amit, who were both silent. Nobody knew what to say to Loyola Larry.

I tasted a spoonful of my soup, found it too hot, and made a mental note to knock ten seconds off the microwave time in the future. Finally, James stepped up to the plate.

“It sounds like you learned a lot at Loyola,” he said, miraculously managing to sound friendly rather than patronizing. “Did you enjoy law school?”

James — what a mensch! A fat pitch, right over home plate. Of course Larry enjoyed law school!

In order to land a Ninth Circuit clerkship — with a feeder judge, no less — Larry must have blown the roof off of Loyola. And people who graduate at the top of the class tend to look back with fondness at their law school years (not unlike schlubby, middle-aged former jocks looking back at senior year of high school).

“Actually, no,” said Larry. “I kind of hated it.”

Larry was a weird one. He wasn’t making eye contact with us during conversation, nor was he looking down at his food. He seemed to be staring at the far wall of the library.

After letting that response hang in the air for a while, Amit broke the silence — and asked what we were all thinking.

“But you must have done very well in law school, right? To land a Ninth Circuit clerkship with Judge Stinson?”

Larry laughed, loudly — too loudly. This was still a library, even if we had temporarily converted it to a cafeteria.

“Not really,” Larry said. “I wasn’t on law review. I graduated in the middle of the class. I got this job through my dad. My last name is Krasner — as in Jonathan Krasner.”

Ah, Jonathan Krasner — the two-time Oscar-winning director, whose critically acclaimed films also managed to make tons of money. Krasner one of the biggest clients of Robert Stinson, the Hollywood super-agent married to my boss.

“My dad and the Stinsons go way back,” Larry continued. “Bob Stinson has represented my dad his whole career. So when I went into my third year of law school without a job lined up for after graduation, my dad called the judge and got me this clerkship. I don’t think I’m going to be that into clerking — I really want to go into entertainment law — but hey, a job’s a job. And clerking’s supposed to be great for the résumé, even if you don’t go into litigation. I’m just glad my dad was able to hook me up. Isn’t that awesome?”

The first thought that came to my mind was far from awesome: James and Amit and I would end up doing Larry’s work for him. And the second thought: one of my colleagues in this coveted job got the post through sheer connections, not merit.

But the third thought actually was awesome: there was no way in hell that Larry was getting a Supreme Court clerkship. Judge Stinson hired him as a favor to his dad, but she wouldn’t pick him as her favored clerk, the one she would push to the justices. Cronyism might get you to the Ninth Circuit, but it couldn’t get you to One First Street.

My competitors for Judge Stinson’s favor were Amit and James. I had nothing to fear from Loyola Larry.

One down, two to go.

<—Previously: 18: Training

After reviewing the general workings of the Ninth Circuit with me, Janet described my specific duties as a clerk. They could be divided up into three broad areas.

First, in advance of each “calendar,” or one-week period in which Judge Stinson would hear cases, I would help the judge get ready for the oral arguments. This would involve writing a “bench memorandum,” a memo summmarizing the facts and legal issues of a case and offering a recommendation for how the case should be decided, and preparing a “bench book,” a binder containing the memo and various key documents relevant to the case. (Janet referred to the making of the bench book — which involved highlighting the documents, putting them in a particular order, and sticking colorful tabs all over them — as “arts and crafts.”) I would also meet with the judge to discuss the cases orally during “review week,” namely, the week immediately prior to the calendar week.

“Here’s one thing you must remember,” Janet said. “When you first get a new case, you need to make sure the court has jurisdiction to hear the case. Judge Stinson is very particular about jurisdiction.”

I knew this from having talked about it with the judge during my interview and from the judge’s writing in the area. Jurisdiction concerns the court’s authority to hear a particular case. There are all sorts of reasons, some of them quite technical, as to why a court might lack jurisdiction — and if there’s a “jurisdictional defect,” the case must be dismissed.

As an example, Janet mentioned cases in which the notice of appeal — the statement by the losing party in the trial court that it plans to appeal — was filed too late with the court. If the notice of appeal was not timely filed, the appeals court can’t hear the case; it must dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

Second, after the completion of each oral argument calendar, I would work with Judge Stinson on the opinion in the case. How much work this would involve would vary depending upon the judge’s role in the case — writing the majority opinion, dissenting, or merely offering editorial suggestions on the opinion of a colleague — and whether the opinion was published or unpublished. Published opinions constituted official precedents of the Ninth Circuit, which would bind the court in future cases, and they tended to be formal and polished pieces of writing; unpublished opinions, which just disposed of the case at hand, tended to be short and even cryptic at times.

Third, I would assist Judge Stinson in dealing with “en banc” matters, an area where the judge was fairly active. This would involve reviewing the opinions generated by other Ninth Circuit three-judge panels to see if they were problematic (e.g., inconsistent with Ninth Circuit or Supreme Court precedent); if so, the judge might want to call for rehearing en banc, i.e., rehearing by a larger group of judges. Working on en banc matters with the judge included advising her on which cases to call en banc, helping her issue en banc calls (which involved drafting a “call memo” explaining why the case should be reheard), and also defending the judge’s own opinions against en banc calls from other colleagues. Because Judge Stinson tended to be more conservative than many of her Ninth Circuit colleagues, she participated actively in the en banc process, either calling for rehearing in cases where the panel reached a result she viewed as unjustified (read: unacceptably liberal), or defending her own opinions against the en banc calls by her ideological opponents (judges like Sheldon Gottlieb and Marsha Barzun).

In the final part of the orientation, Janet reviewed with me the specific cases that I was inheriting from her. I was stuck my how many different areas of law they involved — criminal procedure, sentencing, intellectual property, bankruptcy, immigration — and all the different procedural stages there were at. It felt overwhelming to me; I was fresh out of law school, not yet admitted to the bar (I sure hoped I had passed the bar exam), and unfamiliar with several of these subject-matter areas.

“I’ve never taken intellectual property or immigration law,” I confessed to Janet. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“You’ll figure it all out,” she said. “Read the briefs, read the cases, do some extra background reading in treatises if you have to.”

“And I can always go to the judge with questions, right? She must know all these areas cold by now.”

Janet paused, then nodded.

At the end of the orientation, Janet presented me with a document entitled “Janet Lee Departure Memo,” which summarized the training she had given me and information about the specific cases I was picking up from her.

“This memo contains pretty much what you need to know,” Janet said. “You’ll have to prepare a similar departure memo when you finish the clerkship. The judge is big on clerks training their successors.”

“Thanks! This looks great,” I said, thumbing through the hefty document. “And can I call or email you with questions too?”

Janet paused again. Was she frowning?

“Well,” she said, “I’m going to be pretty busy once I get to Wachtell….”

I could tell she was looking for a graceful out, so I quickly jumped in.

“Oh, I totally understand. I hear the hours there are brutal. Do you think you’ll miss clerking?”

Again, another pause, accompanied by pursed lips.

“I’ve learned a lot from working here,” said Janet in a careful, measured way, “but I’m ready to move on. And to collect a salary with another zero in it!”

We both laughed. Even within the world of high-paying New York law firms, Wachtell was known for paying especially well.

Janet slung her handbag over her shoulder and extended her hand for a farewell handshake. No hug (which was fine with me; I’m not a fan of physical displays of affection).

“I think you’ll find clerking for Judge Stinson to be very interesting,” Janet concluded. “Good luck.”

<—Previously: 17: First Day
Subsequently—>19: Breaking Bread

This Monday marked the start of my Legal Career. And because I went straight though to law school from college, this was also the first day of my first Real Job. This was a Big Deal….

When I reached the door to Judge Stinson’s chambers on the fifth floor, I pressed the buzzer tentatively, just as I had when I came for my interview. Instead of being buzzed in, the door flew open before me.

“Audrey! It’s so wonderful to see you! Welcome!”

Before I knew what was going on, I was being hugged by the judge’s secretary, Brenda Lindsey — all of Brenda Lindsey. I tried my best to return the hug, although I feared I was doing so too stiffly. Brenda and I had met just once, but as the outgoing clerks had told me, Brenda viewed the clerks like her children.

“The judge is out of town this week for a conference,” said Brenda, “but let me show you to your office and introduce you to the other clerks.”

I was the last of my clerk class to arrive, which was a position I had chosen, to give myself a little buffer period after the bar exam in late July. The downside of arriving last meant that I had the one windowless office, while my co-clerks enjoyed views of the Arroyo Seco valley and the Colorado Street bridge. I consoled myself by telling myself this would be an advantage: a windowless office meant fewer distractions from work. (And I could always go work in the chambers library — yes, the chambers had its own private library, in addition to the main courthouse library on the first floor — if I wanted some sunlight and a view.)

As for my co-clerks, we had already met each other online — i.e., over email and Facebook — but meeting them in person still felt momentous. Would we become fast friends, foxhole buddies in the Ninth Circuit’s jurisprudential war? Would we wind up as rivals for the favor of Judge Stinson, constantly trying to outdo and one-up each other? Or maybe a bit of both, not unlike friends in law school? The legal profession, stocked with competitive overachievers, featured many such “frenemy” relationships.

There was something that made me uncomfortable about Amit Gupta, a graduate of Columbia Law, where he had served as executive managing editor of the Columbia Law Review. (He didn’t mention that when we met, of course; I had looked up all my co-clerks prior to arriving to see if they had served on law review at their respective schools.) Amit seemed intense, energetic, and high-strung; he bowed slightly when he shook my hand and said, in a manner that bordered on fake, “It is a pleasure to meet you!”

We had some things in common — Asian-American, both from New York, both from Queens, even — but I felt there was something Amit was hiding from me, something that made me uneasy. I resolved to keep an eye on him. Maybe I just felt threatened by him because I viewed him as my biggest competition for Judge Stinson’s favor. Amit had won the national spelling bee as a child. Would that kind of quirky honor catch the eye of a justice or a clerk skimming through Supreme Court clerkship applications?

I felt more at ease upon meeting James Hogan, who had a firm but not crushing handshake and a bright, easy smile. He could also be in the running for a SCOTUS clerkship, as a graduate of Boalt Hall (the judge’s alma mater; she generally hired at least one clerk from there a year). His impressive height and striking good looks certainly wouldn’t hurt him in the application process. It seemed to me, based on anecdotal observation, that Supreme Court clerks tended to be better-looking than average; perhaps the justices, faced with so many excellent résumés, used looks as a tie-breaker.

For whatever reason, I didn’t feel as immediately competitive with James as I did with Amit. Maybe it was because James and I were so different; he seemed so relaxed, so Californian, and so tall, making Amit and I look like dark neurotic dwarfs. It felt to me like James was somehow in a different sphere altogether.

I didn’t know what to make of my fourth co-clerk, Larry Krasner. Maybe I was reading too much into the fact that he graduated from a less highly ranked law school — Loyola Law School, a local institution here in Los Angeles — but he didn’t seem to have a very academic air. Maybe he was having a bad day or something, but he greeted me with so little enthusiasm, it seemed like he didn’t even want to be in chambers. He seemed a bit… strange.

<—Previously: 16: Sassy
Subsequently—>18: Training

First, two months and 16 installments (no longer “chapters”) into this project, I’d like to thank everyone for reading and for posting so many excellent comments. So far it has been a very interesting and enjoyable experience. I appreciate all of the feedback, both critical and complimentary, as well as the great fact-checking (and policing of typos)….

Second, I wanted to apologize for not posting a new installment this past Sunday — and to warn everyone that it looks like I’ll be missing this coming Wednesday as well. There are a few reasons for my delinquency (which I will again list in numbered, lawyerly fashion).

First, I’m getting to the harder part in terms of reaching the point where I don’t have pre-written material that I can just bring out, edit a bit, and publish. From this point onward, I’m working off of a rough (and still evolving) plot outline, as opposed to draft chapters. So my prose, which is already pretty plain, may become even more pedestrian (or problematic). If anyone has advice for writing more stylishly — I think I’m too inhibited to really swing for the fences, stylistically — I welcome it. (I think I’m risk-averse; I’d rather have unadorned prose than lyrical prose that falls flat.)

Second, I’m getting to the harder part in terms of getting to the meat of the story. This is a lot trickier than just laying the groundwork or providing background info, so I feel I have to tread a lot more carefully.

Third, things have been a little crazy in my “real life.” As those of you who are connected to me on Twitter and Facebook know, last week I got displaced by Hurricane / Superstorm Sandy, which exiled me from my apartment and threw me off my normal routine. This week, I’m traveling a ton — right now I’m in Nashville, where I just gave a talk at Vanderbilt Law, and as soon as I get back to New York, I’m leaving for D.C., to attend (and cover) a conference (in honor of the late professor and blogger Larry Ribstein).

I’m hoping to post the next substantive installment this coming Sunday. I can’t guarantee it, but that is what I’m shooting for.

Anyway, enough excuses. My main message is, thank you for reading!

“Girl, what you looking at?”

Her aggressive tone caught me off guard. I was momentarily speechless.

“What,” she said, “are your ears as small as your tiny white ass?”

I didn’t have much of a choice at this point, so I tried to diffuse her hostility with warmth. I walked over to her, put on a big smile, and extended my hand.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Audrey. I just moved into the building.”

“Harvetta,” she said, rising to her feet and shaking my hand. “Harvetta Chambers.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, um, startle you. I was just, well, you know…”

“Oh, I know, all right! You were just checking out my big black booty!”

She slapped her sizable thighs and laughed. I laughed too, feeling relieved; Harvetta’s belligerence was playful. Was she going to be my new Sassy African-American Friend?

“Actually,” I said, “I noticed your reading material. No offense to the Stanford Law Review, but it’s not my idea of a poolside read. It’s a bit serious, don’t you think?”

“You kidding? I love it. I love law review articles. I can get interested in almost any type of law. For my job I’m a state law kinda gal, but today I’m reading on the federal side, about the effect of the SEC’s new proxy access rule on shareholder value for small companies. Next up is a linguistic analysis of ERISA preemption. Right now I’m like a pig in shit!”

I didn’t quite know what to say to that.

“So,” I said, “did you go to Stanford Law?”

“Naw,” Harvetta said, “Stanford? That place is for rich bitches. I keep it real — I went to McGeorge. You a lawyer too?”

“Well, almost, kind of,” I said, as I frantically tried to recall what I even knew about McGeorge. Was that the law school in Sacramento? The one where a Supreme Court justice likes to teach? “I took the bar a few months ago, but I haven’t gotten the results yet, so I’m not yet a lawyer. Right now I’m clerking for a judge.”

“Get the fuck outta here! Me too. Who you clerking for?”

“Judge Stinson? Ninth Circuit? How about you?”

“Sherwin Lin, California Supreme Court.”

I didn’t know that much about state court clerkships, but I had a vague recollection of the California Supreme Court using long-term staff lawyers rather than law clerks.

“Oh,” I said, trying my best to sound politely confused, “I thought that the California justices didn’t have law clerks?”

“Yeah,” Harvetta said, “the Cal Supremes usually roll with permanent staff attorneys. But Lin is trying out the clerk thing — a mix of staff attorneys and term clerks. We’re his first clerks. It’s an experiment. Hope we don’t fuck that shit up for everybody else!”

My strict Filipina mother did not tolerate profanity, and so people who cursed a fair amount — like Jeremy, and definitely like Harvetta — sometimes threw me for a loop. My face must have betrayed my discomfort at Harvetta’s manner of speaking.

“What,” said Harvetta, “is my potty mouth freaking you out, girl?”

“Ha! Well, you see, I just….”

“I am like the president,” Harvetta said, raising her arms skyward and adopting a markedly different tone, straight out of the evening newscast. “I am extremely talented at calibrating my manner of speaking to my audience. Do you think I obtained a clerkship with the Honorable Sherwin Lin by cursing up a blue streak during the interview?”

Once again, Harvetta left me speechless. She liked to read law review articles for fun. She could oscillate seamlessly between gangster and grande dame. Who was this bizarre woman?

“So,” she asked, as I tried to collect my dropped jaw from the pool deck, “where did you go to law school? Some fancy-ass place, I bet?”

“Um, Yale?”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said, smacking my forearm — surprisingly hard. “Don’t worry, I won’t player-hate. My boss went to Yale, so I have mad respect.”

That’s right: Harvetta’s judge, Sherwin Lin, was still renowned at Yale for his brilliance. He served as executive editor of the law journal, won a slew of prizes at graduation, and clerked on the D.C. Circuit (of course) followed by the U.S. Supreme Court (of course). He was nominated to the Ninth Circuit before the age of 40, but some of his controversial speeches and academic writings as a UCLA law professor derailed his nomination. After the Republicans successfully filibustered his Ninth Circuit appointment, the governor appointed him to the California Supreme Court.

Despite (or perhaps because of?) my puzzlement at Harvetta, I felt I wanted to get to know her better. She seemed friendly, beneath the tough-talking veneer, and she was without a doubt an interesting character. We exchanged contact info and agreed to hang out sometime soon.

As I headed back to my apartment, I continued to think about Harvetta. I would have expected someone who liked to read law review articles for pleasure to have attended a higher-ranked law school than McGeorge (whose rank I looked up on my iPhone almost immediately after we parted ways; McGeorge was #101 on the U.S. News list). And I wondered about where her whole “street talk” thing came from. If I had to guess, she was from an upper-middle-class African-American family but was trying to “keep it real” by sounding like someone from a more modest background.

Based on the fact that she had landed a clerkship with Justice Lin, Harvetta must have done fairly well in law school. But even a clerkship on the California Supreme Court, the highest court of the largest state, was less prestigious than most federal court clerkships. As for U.S. Supreme Court clerkships, I wondered: did Harvetta even know about them?

<—Previously: 15: Transitions
Subsequently—>17: First Day

Ms. Audrey Coyne
129 York Street
Apt. 5F
New Haven, Connecticut 06511

Dear Audrey:

I am writing in confirmation of our understanding that I have offered, and you have accepted, a clerkship in my chambers for the 2012-2013 judicial year. I am delighted to have you on board, and I look forward to working together.

As you plan for the summer of 2012, you should make arrangements to take the bar exam before you start work in my chambers. Please coordinate with your predecessor law clerk to select a start date that is mutually acceptable to you both. Most transitions occur between August 1 and September 15; I leave it to the incoming and outgoing clerks to make suitable arrangements.

As another pre-arrival matter, you should give serious consideration to assembling your materials for clerkship applications to the United States Supreme Court for October Term 2013. I suggest that you submit applications to all nine justices, as is customary when applying to the Court, prior to your law school graduation, and once again after you have arrived in chambers and we have had the chance to work together.

Finally, please be sure to stay in touch with me in the interim and keep my secretary, Brenda Lindsey, apprised of any changes in your contact information.

I wish you the best of luck as you conclude your law school career, and I look forward to seeing you here in Pasadena next year.

Sincerely,

Christina Wong Stinson
United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit

* * *

Before I knew it, it was a sweltering Sunday afternoon in August 2012. Upon landing at LAX, I called my old pal Pervez, the friendly taxi driver who had taken me to and from my interview with Judge Stinson a year earlier. After my two giant suitcases were stashed securely in the back of the minivan, we drove off to Pasadena, where I would be living for the next year.

“So,” Pervez asked, “why did you decide to live in Pasadena?”

“I’m going to be working long hours as a clerk, and I don’t drive,” I said. “So I need to be close to the courthouse.”

“Ah yes, the courthouse I took you to — beautiful courthouse. Anyone who works in that building must have a very important job!”

Although I was glad that Pervez didn’t mistake my job as a law clerk for a purely clerical position, I responded to his impressed-sounding tone with humility. I emphasized that law clerks are there to assist the judge, who is the ultimate decisionmaker, and that everything coming out of chambers would go out under the judge’s name. As clerks, we were like Santa’s elves — essential but unseen contributors to the process.

This limited responsibility was something I was actually grateful for, at least some of the time. I had just graduated from law school (and not a very practically oriented school at that), and I was not even admitted to the bar (New York bar exam results wouldn’t come out until November). What did I know — about law, or life, or anything? It gave me comfort to know that I would just be doing research and making recommendations, which my judge was free to ignore or override as she saw fit.

(On other days, of course — like, for example, the day after I got the clerkship — I felt excited by my proximity to power, as well as confident that I would be an amazing law clerk. But today, for some reason, I felt anxious, like a third grader about to start a new school year. I suspected that this vacillation between anxiety and minimization of one’s role, on the one hand, and confidence and exaggeration of one’s influence, on the other, was something many law clerks experienced.)

There wasn’t much traffic on this Sunday, so it didn’t take long for us to arrive at my new home: a nondescript, somewhat rundown, low-rise apartment complex a few blocks from the courthouse. I had taken the small studio without visiting it in person (because I couldn’t afford another flight out to Los Angeles), so I had seen it only in pictures. Like someone you’ve seen only in an online dating profile, it looked dumpier in person.

Pervez took my heavy suitcases all the way to my door, on the second floor of the open-air building. Once again, as I had done when he drove me to my clerkship interview, I gave him $100 on an $80 metered fare. I was happy to be generous, especially given how nice he was and how much he had to fight with my bags when taking them up the stairs, but I did feel a twinge of money-related worry as I fished the five twenties out of my wallet.

Money worries were why I had gone with this apartment, a unit that had been passed down among a few cycles of Stinson clerks. The place was cheap, under $1,000 a month (including utilities), and it came furnished (with IKEA stuff that was probably on its last legs).

So I wasn’t troubled after I opened the door and surveyed the cramped, borderline grim-looking quarters, which looked like a motel room where a down-on-his-luck movie outlaw might hole up while on the run from the police. This was what I had expected. This was what it looked like to be living on a law clerk’s salary with more than $100,000 in student loans. And this was not where I’d be spending most of my time anyway; the outgoing Stinson clerks, Michael Nomellini and Janet Lee, had joked about how chambers was their real home.

Michael, the prior tenant, had left the apartment very clean (especially for a guy). It didn’t take me long to unpack and tidy up the place. Since it was still quite bright outside, I decided to check out the apartment’s small swimming pool, located in the central courtyard. I just wanted to take a quick look, so I didn’t bother changing into a swimsuit or anything.

The pool itself was clean, well-maintained, and empty. There was only one resident sitting next to the pool, and she was hard to miss. She was a young, large African-American woman; she reminded me of Gabourey Sidibe, the star of Precious. She was wearing a red bikini with white polka dots.

And she was reading a copy of… the Stanford Law Review? There’s nothing wrong with reading legal academic journals, but personally I prefer to go with Us Weekly when working on my tan.

I stood at the edge of the pool area, behind the white metal gate. My neighbor, deeply engrossed in her reading, did not notice my presence. Should I go over and say hello?

<—Previously: 14: The Sorcerers’ Apprentices
Subsequently—>16: Sassy

“So the interview ends because Barzun has to go to a dinner party with her husband,” said Jeremy. “She tells me she’ll walk out with me. One of her clerks comes downstairs with us too — Craig Silver, a Yalie, graduated two years ago — do you know him?”

“No, although everyone says he was a great managing editor on the Journal.”

“Anyway, we all go outside. We’re at the corner of Seventh and Mission — totally sketch neighborhood, by the way, as you’ll see when you go up to S.F. for hearings with Stinson. We’re there maybe a minute or two, and then this huge black Mercedes S-class pulls up right in front of us….”

“That’s quite a nice car, especially on a federal judge’s salary!”

“A uniformed driver hops out and opens the rear door, while bowing — it’s ridiculous, I mean, his torso is at like a right angle to his legs, a really low bow. Barzun steps in, the driver closes the door, and zoom, they’re off!”

“That’s awesome, she is literally a limousine liberal,” I said, tickled by the knowledge. “Where does her money come from? Circuit judges earn less than $200,000. You can’t pay for a Mercedes and driver on that kind of pay.”

“I found out from Craig as we were standing around after she drove off. It’s thanks to her husband, a guy named Pierre Barzun — a super-successful wine merchant, also owns some vineyards up in Napa, distant relation to Jacques Barzun I think. According to Craig, Barzun — Judge Barzun, that is — can’t drive for shit. So every day, the car and driver come to pick her up. And every day when she leaves chambers, she makes one of her clerks walk her downstairs and wait with her until the car and driver show up. Can you believe that?”

“Well, it is a terrible neighborhood, and she is a woman by herself….”

“Yeah, and she’s apparently a workaholic, so sometimes she’s in chambers until ten or eleven at night. And so her clerks have to stay at work until she leaves, so they’re there until ten or eleven. Does she really need a law clerk to be her escort? Can’t she call one of the courthouse security guards? I mean, people don’t bust their tails at Harvard and Stanford Law so they can serve as bodyguards and valets. And it’s not like some wimpy-ass law clerk would even offer much protection! I mean, really, you can’t fend off a mugger by waving around a highlighter and smacking him on the head with your Bluebook.”

“What else did Craig tell you about Judge Barzun? In terms of what she’s liking to work for?” This struck me as a good opportunity to get some intelligence on the enemy.

“He was a little guarded, actually. I thought that he’d open up to me after telling me about her husband and the car and driver and everything. But I think he just said that as harmless chitchat. When I asked about his clerkship and the work, he was pretty cautious. You know how clerks can be when talking about their judges. That judge is going to be on your résumé for the rest of your life — at the very least a reference, possibly a recommender, maybe even a mentor. It’s not in your interest to badmouth the judge you clerked for. Why do you think you hardly ever see negative write-ups in the clerkship evaluation forms in the career services office?”

“Interesting….” And Jeremy did have a point. The vast majority of clerkship write-ups were positive, even gushing.

“Then I say good-bye to Craig and hail a cab to the airport,” Jeremy said. “Since Barzun did not offer me a lift to SFO in her Mercedes.”

I laughed. The line wasn’t that funny, but Jeremy had great delivery — this ridiculous, completely over-the-top way of saying things.

“I get into this cab,” said Jeremy, “and then my phone starts ringing. It’s a restricted number. I’m thinking it’s Barzun, calling to offer me a job.”

“Oh no! I mean, oh yes?”

“I’m thinking of what I’m supposed to say. I mean, everyone says you’re not supposed to turn down a clerkship offer. And I did accept Kenote on the spot for the year after next. But it would kill me if I accepted Barzun and then Gottlieb called with an offer. I wonder if I can ask her for 24 hours….”

“True,” I said, “people do that — ask for time to consider an offer. I think it’s best practice, though, to accept on the spot if you can see yourself clerking at all for the judge.”

“Yeah, but it would just slay me if I wound up with Barzun when I could have had Gottlieb. So, anyway, I take a big gulp and pick up the phone….”

“And….”

“And it’s Sheldon Gottlieb! Calling to offer me a clerkship! Starting right after we graduate!”

“That’s awesome! Congratulations!”

“I was thrilled. I still am thrilled. I bought this new Jack Spade” — he gestured at the orange messenger bag on the seat next to him – “as a congratulatory gift for myself.”

“Of course you did. And you deserve it.”

“Ha, don’t I? But you know what this means, Audrey.”

“What?”

“We’ll be clerking together on the Ninth Circuit, both in Pasadena, at the same time. See you in Pasadena, girl!”

“Yes — and it will be so great to have you there! We’ll have a lot of fun together.”

“We will,” said Jeremy, “but at the same time, you know, you are working for the forces of darkness. Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean that Gottlieb and I are going to let you and Stinson force your radical right-wing agenda on the western United States.”

He was smiling, but Jeremy was enough of a liberal so that he actually meant some fraction of what he was saying.

“Oh please! Judge Stinson and I are moderates. We just want to interpret and apply the law as written. It’s you and Judge Gottlieb who are the judicial activists.”

“Judicial activism? Come now, Audrey, we all know that that’s a meaningless term. A political slogan. ‘Judicial activism’ is in the eye of the beholder. Whenever some politician disagrees with a judge’s ruling, he just labels that judge a ‘judicial activist.’ I think we’ll learn during our clerkships that things are a lot more complicated than that.”

“I’m not as much of a cynic as you,” I said. “The term can be abused, but there is such a thing as judicial activism. And judicial restraint. And ‘the law’ — and it’s not just politics by other means or the whims of the judges.”

Were we having a mini-argument? I didn’t want to argue with Jeremy; we should be celebrating each other’s good news. I paused and pretended to take a sip out of my paper coffee cup (which was empty).

“Your views are duly noted, counselor,” said Jeremy. “Clerking together on the Ninth will give us a chance to see how our theories play out in real life. I guess we’ll see what we both think at the end of the year.”

He polished off what remained of his soy latte and smacked his lips dramatically.

“Anyway,” he continued, “even though clerking is supposed to be awesome, they say it can be hard at times. I’m just glad that we’ll be going through it together.”

He reached across the table, grabbed my left hand — the one not holding my coffee — and squeezed. I squeezed back, awkwardly. (Physical displays of affection make me uncomfortable.)

“Absolutely,” I said. “It’s going to be an interesting year.”

<—Previously: 13: A Liberal Troika
Subsequently—>15: Transitions

Jeremy blew into Willoughby’s, pecked me on the cheek, dropped off his bag at the table (was that a new Jack Spade?), and went up to the counter to order a drink. I fiddled with my phone as I waited for him, texting my mother to say that I’d call her tonight to let her know how my L.A. trip went.

“So,” said Jeremy, sitting down with his large soy latte, “tell me everything, Miss Audrey. I want to hear every last delicious detail.”

Before I could even open my mouth, he interrupted me.

“Actually, hold it right there,” he said, raising his right hand in a stop-sign motion. “Let me guess. You interviewed with Stinson, she loved you, you loved her, she made you an offer, you accepted, and everyone lived happily ever after. Am I right?”

“Well, that’s the abridged version, but that’s basically right! How did you know?”

“Oh come on, how could you not hit it off famously! Two fabulous fierce females, fighting the good fight against judicial activism run amok on the crazy liberal Ninth Circuit?”

“Wow, you’re good. I think I may have even used those words — ‘fight the good fight’ — during my interview.”

“Of course you did. The interview was probably a textualist, originalist love-in, where you quoted Frankfurter and Holmes to each other. And then you braided each other’s hair.”

“Ha! Yes, there was some quoting of great justices from our nation’s history. But it was a little more complicated than that….”

I proceeded to give Jeremy a blow-by-blow of the interview, including the moments where I thought I almost blew it. He listened attentively, savoring every detail as he sipped his soy latte, and congratulated me at the end, standing up and reaching over to give me a big hug.

“But enough about me,” I said, “what about you? Your day was far more exciting than mine — or at least more active.”

“Can you believe it? Three cities in a single day? This is how my dad must feel.”

Of the four judges who called me for interviews, only Judge Stinson insisted on interviewing me yesterday, the first day interviews could be conducted according to the Law Clerk Hiring Plan (a non-binding set of guidelines governing the timing of clerkship applications, interviews, and offers). For Jeremy, all three of the judges he interviewed with wanted to move on day one. This required him to meet with three different judges, in three different cities, all on the same day.

For a clerkship applicant, this kind of interview schedule was on the demanding side, but not unprecedented. Luckily for Jeremy, expensive travel wasn’t a problem: he came from a wealthy family, so unlike me, he’d graduate law school without any loans. His father was the managing partner of Jenner & Block — based out of Chicago, but constantly traveling to visit the law firm’s far-flung outposts.

“You must be exhausted,” I said.

“Actually, right now I feel just dandy,” said Jeremy, sipping daintily at his soy latte. “But maybe it will hit me this afternoon. I think I’m still just processing it all.”

“So give me the rundown. Start at the beginning. I want to hear everything.”

“First I interviewed with Paul Kenote in New York. That was at seven in the morning — crazy! As you know, I am so not a morning person. But since I had to make it out to the West Coast for two more interviews, I asked him if he could interview me first thing, and he was nice enough to squeeze me in. I was thinking it would be at nine, but when he found out about my flight schedule, he suggested seven, just to make sure I made my flight. He was really cool — the courthouse wasn’t even open then, but he met me outside and walked me into the building. When we got up to chambers, we were the only ones there.”

“That’s really great of him. How did the interview go? What was he like?”

“Very nice, very smart, very bald,” said Jeremy. “And the interview went great! We bonded over Yale stuff and gay stuff. I asked him about the work he did on L v. T, which was fascinating to hear about.”

L v. T – shorthand for Lawrence v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court struck down Texas’s law against sodomy.

“And then, like 15 minutes into the interview, he makes me an offer! Which I accepted! So I’m going to be clerking for Paul Kenote!”

“That’s awesome! Congratulations!”

“Thank you! I am totally, totally excited. I think I’m going to learn so much from him and from clerking in the Southern District.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “My only disappointment is that we won’t be clerking on the Ninth Circuit together!”

“Hold your horses, girlfriend! I forgot to mention — he’s actually already hired for next year, so he made me an offer for one year out. Which I accepted, on the spot. But which left me still open to do my two Ninth Circuit inteviews, since those clerkships would start right after we graduate.”

“So you still flew out for your interviews with Judge Barzun and Judge Gottlieb, even after getting the offer from Judge Kenote?”

“Yup. So I fly out to Pasadena for my Sheldon Gottlieb interview, early afternoon. You and I probably just missed each other. When was your Stinson interview?”

“Noon. I was done by one, one-thirty.”

“Yeah, so we just missed each other. My Gottlieb interview was around two. Oh, by the way, how ridiculous is that courthouse?”

“As in, ridiculously beautiful?”

“Yes! It’s insane. It looks like a freaking luxury resort hotel. I could not believe it. I was like, this is a federal courthouse? Funded by taxpayer dollars?”

“It actually once was a resort,” I said. “Before World War II….”

“I am not surprised,” said Jeremy, cutting off my history lesson. “So, anyway, I interview with Gottlieb. He is amazing. Just brilliant. And so full of empathy. You name a group, and he has stood up for them at one point or another – gays, African-Americans, women, immigrants, labor. He is such a big part of what the Ninth Circuit stands for.”

“Yes, if by that you mean judicial activism, and liberal judges run amok….”

Jeremy raised a sarcastic eyebrow in my direction.

“By the end of the interview,” he continued, “I am dying to work for this man. We seem to hit it off so well. But no offer, either during or by the end of the interview.”

“So up to San Francisco to see Judge Barzun.”

“Yup. I fly up to S.F. to see Marta Marta Marta!”

(I noticed how Jeremy referred to Judge Kenote as “Paul Kenote” and Judge Barzun as “Marta Barzun” or just plain “Marta.” When you grow up as the son of a law firm partner and a tenured professor at the University of Chicago Law School — Jeremy’s mother, Judy Silverstein, was a tax law goddess — you are more likely to see federal judges as part of your family social circle than, say, the children of nurses and handymen.)

“Judge Barzun has a reputation for being… demanding,” I said. “What is she like in person?”

“Kind of odd, honestly. Not a very natural conversationalist. Not well put-together — no make-up, dark frizzy hair with mega-split ends.”

“Well, she’s a federal appellate judge, not a model,” I said. (It did occur to me, though, that the gorgeous Judge Stinson probably could have been a model in her younger days, if only she were taller.)

“Barzun asks me for a copy of my writing sample, which was the latest draft of my Note. I hand it over — it’s like thirty pages — and she starts flipping through it. I’m sitting there awkwardly, staring at the ugly-ass modern art on the walls. Then Barzun looks up, after like two or three minutes, and starts asking me about it. And her questions are great — incisive, penetrating, raising points that had never occurred to me. She’s telling me to check out specific cases — I had to take out my pen to start writing them down. She’s interrogating me about stuff in the footnotes. I couldn’t keep up with her!”

“That’s kind of scary.”

“Yeah,” said Jeremy, nodding, “she just speed-read the thing, all thirty pages, and in a manner of minutes she had mastered it. Her mind is lightning-fast. It was freaky. I mean, I think she understands it better than my faculty adviser!”

I felt a chill go through me. Judge Barzun, a hard-core leftist, would be my archenemy as a clerk to Judge Stinson. I viewed myself and my future boss as very smart. But could we hold our own against the icy brilliance of Marta Barzun?

“And then what happened? How did the rest of the interview go?”

“Pretty normally. We spoke for about half an hour. She’s clearly a genius. But on the cold side, definitely not warm and fuzzy. And we don’t click they way I clicked with Gottlieb or Kenote. The whole time, I’m praying she doesn’t give me an offer….”

<—Previously: 12: Afterglow
Subsequently—>14: The Sorcerers’ Apprentices