A database for prospective law clerks to learn more about the judges they’re considering working for is set to launch in March, the nonprofit behind the project said Thursday.
The Legal Accountability Project’s Centralized Clerkship Database, featuring hundreds of surveys from former state and federal law clerks, will be available to potential clerks who register for the website, said Aliza Shatzman, the group’s president and founder. People interested in accessing the database can preregister for it now. It costs $20 for individuals to subscribe, and access to the database will last through the end of the clerkship hiring cycle, in August or September.
Shatzman, who started her group in 2022 after a negative experience clerking for a judge, said the database is an effort to “democratize information” about clerkships. She said that, instead of rumors about certain judges only being shared through a whisper network or law schools aware of those judges’ behavior, the database will give young attorneys and law students a more frank and detailed look at what their clerkship might look like.
“Historically, sadly, law clerks whose experiences were negative or even neutral have just not been empowered to share candidly, fearing retaliation by the judges who mistreated them and reputational harm in the legal community for saying anything about judges,” Shatzman said. “So we’re finally providing a candid platform to share.”
The launch of the database is a significant achievement for the project, which aims to add transparency to the opaque clerking process. While many lawyers publicly laud the experience — which can lead to prestigious professional opportunities — clerks are often young adults and work closely under a judge for a year or longer, leading to what advocates have described as a lopsided power dynamic. A handful of former clerks have publicly accused judges of misconduct during their clerkships.
Shatzman said the group has received over 800 responses to surveys about clerkship experiences that will be published in the database, with some respondents choosing to share anonymously and others allowing their names to be included. She said the group is given the name of all respondents so their identities can be verified, and no one but prospective law clerks are allowed to access the database, including reporters.
Shatzman said that she isn’t concerned about false information being included in surveys, and noted that the group is a publisher, offering them legal protections over content shared in the database. “We don’t have a culture of false allegations against judges,” she said. “We do have a culture of silence and fear and gross under-reporting.”
Bloomberg Law was shown a preview of the database, featuring fake reviews about real judges. Users can search for judges by name, or filter them by location, gender, race, and other categories.
Some questions are mandatory for people to answer, like the name of the judge they clerked for. They also must rate their judge as a manager and the clerkship experience as a whole as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.” Not all judges are included in the database, as LAP hasn’t received survey answers about every judge.
Schatzman declined to say whether any law schools have subscribed to the database — an option that would give any school’s student body full access, for $5 per student.
She said that the database is also an accountability tool. “Judges who mistreat their clerks or who are sub-par managers can no longer hide behind the opacity of the system, by the fear and secrecy,” Schatzman said. “This year, their chambers’ culture, their treatment of clerks will be on display for any student who can pay $20 to consider a clerkship and that’s important, because that’s going to raise the bar not just on clerkship advising on the law school campuses. It’s going to raise the bar on workplace civility in the judiciary.”