LAP Pledge

Over the past 10 months, judges have been circulating LAP’s post-clerkship survey–which asks a variety of questions about judges as managers, chambers culture, and the clerkship experience–to their law clerk families. Now, we’re formalizing this effort! We’re asking judges to circulate LAP’s post-clerkship survey to their former law clerks and to pledge to send the survey to their current and future clerks at the end of their clerkships.

LAP appreciates our Founding Pledge takers, including:

Judge Douglas Nazarian, Appellate Court of Maryland (LAP board member)

Presiding Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard, Court of Appeals of Georgia

Chief Judge Erin C. Lagesen, Oregon Court of Appeals

Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster, Delaware Court of Chancery

Judge Darleen Ortega, Oregon Court of Appeals

Judge Jacqueline S. Kamins, Oregon Court of Appeals

Judge Jeffrey Geller, Baltimore City Circuit Court

Justice Elizabeth Welch, Michigan Supreme Court

Judge Christopher P. Yates, Michigan Court of Appeals

Judge Dan Friedman, Appellate Court of Maryland

LAP also appreciates support from:

Retired Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack, Michigan Supreme Court

Judge Mike Engelhart, 151st District, Harris County, Texas

Judge Karin Crump, 250th Civil District, Travis County, Texas

Why did LAP initiate the LAP Pledge?

LAP’s post-clerkship survey has been live at survey.legalaccountabilityproject.org since April 2023. Over the past 10 months, we’ve amassed more than 800 survey responses from law clerks nationwide, rapidly establishing ourselves as the largest independent repository of clerkship information in the U.S.

We’ll launch the Clerkships Database this spring for an initial cohort of student users. We want the Clerkships Database to continue to grow and flourish, and to ensure that it’s broadly representative of state and federal clerkships nationwide. You can make a front-end investment in improving and diversifying your hiring, and ensure that your clerks’ perspectives are included as applicants read reviews of judges in the Clerkships Database, by helping us circulate the survey.

We’ve reached many clerks through collaboration with alumni at more than 40 schools. This initiative helps LAP broaden our outreach and ensure that the Database is geographically representative of as many federal and state courts as possible.

Clerkship hiring is shrouded in mystery. Judicial clerkships seem inaccessible to far too many law students and new attorneys. LAP has created a marketplace for clerkship information: our free-market transparency model fosters informed and discerning consumers of clerkship information and enables judges to compete for the best applicants by spotlighting positive chambers culture.

Help us democratize information about judges as managers, chambers culture, and a diversity of clerkship experiences by taking the LAP Pledge today!

The Ask:

Please send LAP’s post-clerkship survey to your current and former clerks. The more surveys the Database contains, the more applicants will know about you before applying, which creates a comparative market advantage and improves and diversifies your hiring.
Authorize LAP to note on our website that you have sent LAP’s survey to your clerks and pledged to send it to future clerks, so clerkship applicants know you’re a judge particularly committed to transparency in both your chambers culture and clerkship hiring practices. By authorizing LAP to include you on our growing list of judges who have pledged to send our survey to former, current, and future clerks, we can spotlight collaborating judges and amplify their networks of prospective clerk contacts.

Please note:

- LAP’s Database is not a public access website. The only individuals who can read surveys are law students and clerkship advisors at participating schools that have signed up for database access.

- The LAP Pledge should not be viewed as an endorsement of LAP. Rather, it’s an opportunity to publicly signal a commitment to the transparency and diversity principles that motive LAP’s Clerkships Database.

- Answers to some Frequently Asked Questions can be found here. We would also be happy to speak individually with judges to answer any additional questions.

LAP views judges as important partners in our efforts to improve and diversify judicial clerkships. We welcome your support in this effort to democratize information about judicial clerkships.

I’m a judge and this sounds great! How can I take the LAP Pledge?

Email LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman at Aliza.Shatzman@legalaccountabilityproject.org to let us know that you would like to take the LAP Pledge.