Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

Did the nine firms that reached controversial settlements with the Trump administration last year suffer negative consequences as a result?

In terms of their financial results in 2025, reported in the newly released Am Law 100 rankings (which I’ll be discussing soon), these firms did just fine. As noted by The American Lawyer, seven out of the nine firms enjoyed double-digit revenue growth.

In terms of prestige, however, some settling firms might have taken a hit—at least according to the latest Vault 100, an annual ranking of the nation’s most prestigious law firms, which was released earlier this month. As explained by the Vault Law editors, their rankings1 reflect the views of more than 20,000 U.S.-based associates, who responded during the survey window of October 22, 2025, to January 23, 2026.

Let’s take it from the top. Here are the 10 highest-ranked firms in the 2026-2027 Vault 100,2 with changes in rank from last year noted parenthetically (“—” means no change):

1. Cravath Swaine & Moore (—)
2. Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz (—)
3. Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom (—)
4. Latham & Watkins (—)
5. Sullivan & Cromwell (+1)
6. Kirkland & Ellis (-1)
7. Davis Polk & Wardwell (—)
8. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (+3)
9. Milbank (—)
10. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (—)

Some thoughts:

• Because reputation is “sticky,” i.e., slow and resistant to change, it’s not surprising to see stability in the top 10. Nine out of the top 10 firms were in the top 10 last year. Seven of the top 10 didn’t even change their rank. And for the 11th consecutive year, the #1, #2, and #3 firms remained the same—ever since Cravath ended Wachtell’s 13-year reign at the top, back in 2016.

• I’m admittedly biased as a Wachtell alum, but for those of you who will be Vault voters next year, I think it’s time to return Wachtell to the top spot. The firm increased its profits per equity partner by 35 percent, hitting $12.2 million—becoming the first firm in the history of the Am Law 100 to achieve that feat, according to Patrick Smith of Am Law. Meanwhile, Cravath grew its PEP in 2025 to $7.2 million—nothing to sneeze at, but only a 5.2% increase over 2024 (during a year when PEP was up by 14 percent for the Am Law 100 as a whole).3

• In addition, Cravath has seen an unusually high number of partner departures in 2026—by my count, nine partners year to date—which could be viewed as a sign that it’s not the firm it once was, at least among partners. And associate perceptions of firms tend to follow those of partners, after a delay. As I wrote last year, Vault rankings are something of a lagging indicator compared to partner perceptions because associates, who don’t follow industry news as closely as partners, might not notice certain developments until they become more obvious.

• In 2025, Kirkland reported record-setting financial results: $10.6 billion in gross revenue, up 20%, and $11.1 million in profits per equity partner, also up 20%. So did Paul Weiss: $3.3 billion in gross revenue, up 24%, and $8.6 million in PEP, up 14%. Both also made impressive lateral partner hires in the past year. So why did Kirkland drop a spot, and why did Paul Weiss fall out of the top 10 entirely? These firms’ settlements with the Trump administration strike me as a perfectly plausible contributing factor.4 And Paul Weiss also endured some negative publicity related to former chair Brad Karp’s emails with Jeffrey Epstein, which contributed to Karp’s decision to step down as chair.

• Yes, Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm that gained a spot at K&E’s expense, actually represents Trump in various appellate matters—and S&C’s chair, Robert Giuffra, played a role in brokering Paul Weiss’s settlement with the Trump administration. But there’s an argument that defending The Donald in a personal legal matter, in an adversarial system where everyone is entitled to representation, is more defensible than settling with the administration.

• Congrats to Gibson on making the top 10 this year, taking the #8 spot previously occupied by Paul Weiss. It’s not surprising to me that Gibson was the beneficiary of PW’s drop: GDC has been a top 10 firm in the past, as recently as 2024, and it’s easier to return to the top 10 than it is to break into it. The firm had a good year in 2025, growing revenue by 18 percent and PEP by 24 percent, and it also ranked #3 in Vault’s best law firms for inclusion.

For additional analysis of the Vault 10 or “V10” firms, see Staci Zaretsky’s post over at Above the Law.

Now let’s discuss the rest of the top 25, as well as all firms throughout the Vault 100 that moved up or down by three or more spots (because smaller moves are usually just noise). Changes in rank can offer an interesting window into the state of a firm—or at least how a firm is perceived in the market.

I include my own candid comments on these moves and their significance, likely to be appreciated only by hard-core Biglaw nerds. I was going to apologize for all the wonkery, but then I thought to myself, “Who am I kidding? This is exactly why people subscribe to Original Jurisdiction.”

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Over the three decades that I’ve been in and around the legal profession, I’ve noticed an interesting evolution in Biglaw litigation. Large law firms that have traditionally focused on defending their corporate clients in lawsuits have become increasingly open to representing plaintiffs.

“For many years, large, prestigious law firms have defended their corporate clients from claims brought by plaintiffs, typically represented by small, upstart law firms on a contingency basis,” wrote William P. Scarbrough, who worked on the business side of law firms for many years, for Thomson Reuters. “Big-firm defense lawyers often looked down on plaintiff-side counsel for their brash style, swashbuckling tactics, and limited resources. For big-firm lawyers, bringing such cases themselves was certainly beyond the pale.”

But that was already changing in 2020, as Scarbrough noted—and the trend has only gained momentum since then. In 2022, two years after announcing a plan to expand its plaintiff-side docket, Kirkland & Ellis reported more than $2 billion in recoveries for clients it represented in affirmative litigation.

And legal finance is helping in this shift.

“Am Law 100 firms are increasingly realizing that they don’t want to lose business representing their traditional clients as plaintiffs,” said Evan Meyerson, a managing director at Burford Capital, where he leads the U.S. Commercial investment team. “These firms don’t want to leave money on the table—and so they’re working with legal finance firms to develop the more creative fee structures that these matters often require.”

Law Firms Are Following Their Clients Into Affirmative Litigation

What’s behind the evolution? One of the biggest factors, which I covered last year, is that major corporations are increasingly willing to bring litigation in appropriate cases. In fact, a 2024 report commissioned by Burford found that more than half of surveyed companies had already implemented an affirmative recovery program or were in the process of developing one.

And as they so often do, Biglaw firms have evolved alongside their corporate clients.

“Our litigation practice focuses on clients’ most important, strategically significant matters—and those matters are a mix of plaintiff- and defense-side work,” said Craig C. Martin, Chairman, Americas of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, where he’s a litigation partner in the Chicago office. He estimated that around a third of his practice today involves representing plaintiffs.

“Clients are more willing to be plaintiffs—and to turn to our firm when they want to be plaintiffs,” another litigation partner at an Am Law 100 firm told me. When this partner started practicing more than 30 years ago, 10 percent or less of his docket involved plaintiff-side work; currently, around 40 percent of his cases involve a plaintiff-side representation (counting cases in which his client is asserting a counterclaim).

A related factor is that certain practice areas have developed within Biglaw that revolve around representing plaintiffs—often existing clients of these firms who find themselves needing to sue instead of being sued.

For Robert (Bob) Weigel, a longtime litigation partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, around 75 percent of his cases are for plaintiffs. He’s the founder and co-chair of the firm’s judgment and arbitral award enforcement practice. It’s work that is, as Weigel put it, “plaintiffs’ work by definition”—and work that has increased significantly during his time at the firm.

Representing Plaintiffs Can Be Creative—And Fun

“Plaintiff-side work has added a dimension to big-firm practice that wasn’t there before,” as Weigel put it. And it brings with it unique rewards, beyond the financial.

“There’s a certain amount of creativity involved in formulating your theory of the case as the plaintiff,” a litigation co-chair at an Am Law 100 firm told me. “Crafting the claims and gathering the facts can be interesting, even fascinating, work.”

When a law firm represents a client on the defense side, the lawyers often take what might be called a “kitchen sink” approach, offering many different arguments—often pleaded in the alternative—for why their client isn’t liable. Representing a company as a plaintiff requires a different approach and skill set, calling upon litigators to weave together a unified, cohesive story for why their client should prevail.

“I love plaintiffs’ cases,” Craig Martin of Willkie told me. “I love putting together the strategy for the case. You’re focused: you have a core theory, you execute on the theory, and you try the case. It’s really fun.”

(“Not to say that defending isn’t fun,” he added. “It’s certainly fun when you win.”)

How Legal Finance Can Help Bridge The Gap

Full-service, defense-oriented Biglaw firms can be less enthusiastic about the contingency-fee arrangements that are commonly employed in plaintiff-side matters, which require putting firm resources at risk. If a firm devotes thousands or even tens of thousands of lawyer hours to a contingency-fee matter that ultimately doesn’t pan out, that represents a huge financial hit to the firm—and to its profits per partner, which firms strive to maintain at high levels.

And even successful contingency-fee matters can sometimes take years to pay out. This doesn’t fit comfortably into the financial model of most Biglaw firms, which distribute profits to partners fairly promptly.

In such situations, legal finance can play an important role.

“Even if a defense-oriented, billable-hour-oriented firm decides to start handling plaintiff-side matters, they’re not going to transform overnight into a firm that’s comfortable with contingency-fee arrangements,” said Meyerson of Burford, who previously practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell and Paul Weiss. “So that creates an outsized role for smart, sophisticated capital providers, who can help develop innovative financial structures to support the firm in its growth trajectory.”

Vanessa Biondo, a former litigation partner at Mayer Brown and current vice president at Burford Capital, was first exposed to litigation funding in 2013. She worked on a matter that needed funding—“a David versus Goliath case involving a business that had a great claim and wanted to hire Mayer Brown, but couldn’t afford the firm’s standard hourly rates.”

Biondo secured funding for the client for that case, which allowed it to move forward. And during the rest of her time in practice, at both Mayer Brown and boutiques, she worked on other cases in which litigation finance played a valuable role.

“Litigation funders can help litigators take on plaintiff-side cases at firms where their partners might be reluctant to take cases on full contingency,” Biondo explained. “With funding, a litigator can take on a plaintiff-side case even if the partnership doesn’t want to fund riskier cases.”

“Another reason law firms work with legal finance providers is that we bring a clear, independent view on risk and return,” said Meyerson. “We evaluate these opportunities every day across a wide range of complex disputes. Experience matters. Our team includes attorneys from leading law firms and in-house roles, and we draw on more than 16 years of proprietary data. We help firms decide where to deploy their time and capital, especially when the stakes are high.”

Bob Weigel of Gibson Dunn agreed that funders are rigorous in their vetting of matters, putting a tremendous amount of diligence into deciding which cases to back. So if a funder decides to invest in a matter, “that suggests to the client and to the law firm that this is a good case—and we don’t bring cases that we don’t think are good cases.”

“As the funding industry has grown, it has allowed parties who have good claims but lack the financial wherewithal to bring those claims,” he continued. “I had one client that turned to funding because they couldn’t bring the case without it: they were bankrupt. These claims are legitimate claims—and some of them are very big claims.”

“The existence of funding has enabled smaller companies to hire firms like ours, which are at the top of the field but expensive, to represent them in pursuing these claims,” Weigel concluded. “Litigation finance has been a real game changer.”

At the same time, it’s not only resource-constrained companies turning to funding. Well-capitalized businesses use litigation finance to manage risk, unlock capital, and optimize cash flow associated with pursuing large claims.

“We work with companies of all sizes,” said Meyerson. “Today, it is not just a question of resource constraints, but one of opportunity cost. A Fortune 500 company that could afford to pay hourly for legal representation can now pursue valuable affirmative claims while preserving resources for its core business. And it can now use its preferred law firm to do so, as more top global firms take on plaintiff-side engagements for their institutional clients rather than losing that business to other firms. Underpinning all this evolved thinking is legal finance, which is increasingly becoming a corporate finance solution for legal claims.”

Interested in learning more about this topic? Please consider joining me and my friends at Burford in New York City on May 6 for our upcoming Burford Briefing breakfast panel, “Biglaw’s Embrace of Contingency Litigation.” To learn more and register your interest, please visit the event page.

This post is sponsored by

Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com.

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

A shorter version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission.

If you want to develop a skill or talent, you should learn from the best. And when it comes to appellate advocacy, one of the all-time greats is Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general and former Kirkland & Ellis partner who now has his own boutique, Clement & Murphy.

Last Wednesday, Clement appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Cook. His performance was, according to Sarah Isgur of SCOTUSblog, “a master class in oral argument”—and I concur.1

In Trump v. Cook, the justices must decide whether to stay a lower-court ruling that prevented Donald Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over unproven mortgage-fraud allegations. Based on their questions and comments at argument, the justices seemed wary of allowing the firing to go forward, at least for now—which would be a victory for Cook, as well as a rare loss for the Trump administration on the interim docket.

If the justices end up leaving Cook in place, at least some of the credit belongs to Clement and his superb presentation. Here are three tips for appellate advocates, based on my listening to the oral argument in real time and subsequently reading the transcript.

1. Listen, listen, listen.

When most people think of a great lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court, they probably imagine some silver-tongued orator, like Henry Drummond from Inherit the Wind. But as H. Rodgin Cohen of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the nation’s top transactional lawyers, said on my podcast, a critical skill for attorneys of all types is “the ability to listen, whether to your client or to the other side, so you really understand what is going on.”

At the argument in Trump v. Cook, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued first. But even though Clement wasn’t at the podium lectern, he was no less focused and engaged—with listening. [UPDATE (1/30/2026, 10:08 p.m.): The correct term is “lectern,” not “podium.”]

That became clear when it was Clement’s turn to stand up. He brought up questions and comments made by the justices during Sauer’s presentation and integrated them seamlessly into his own argument, using them to buttress the points he wanted to make.

But many advocates can do that. Clement went beyond this technical skill and somehow sensed, in his bones, the justices’ sense of frustration with the case. He then brilliantly channeled it back to them, encouraging them to resolve Trump v. Cook in a manner favorable to his client.

As Isgur commented during the argument, Clement “tapped into the court’s exasperation with this case,” effectively telling the justices, “This is an annoying case; I agree. That guy brought it to you, not me. So just get rid of it. Here’s 97 options to do that.”

2. Stay nimble.

It’s critical to listen as a litigator, whether you’re a trial lawyer questioning a witness or an appellate lawyer arguing before judges, so you can adjust on the fly. A common mistake for new (or even not so new) advocates is to stick doggedly to their outline for a cross-examination or oral argument—even after it’s clear that their approach isn’t working.

After the justices posed tough questions to Sauer, you might have expected Clement’s argument to be a cakewalk before a quiet bench. But as they often do in complex cases, the justices subjected Clement to a grilling as well.

Early in Clement’s argument, Justice Samuel Alito criticized the claim that conduct engaged by Lisa Cook before she joined the Fed, so-called “pre-office conduct,” can never serve as a basis for firing. Sensing the strength of Justice Alito’s skepticism, Clement didn’t dig in. Instead, he moved quickly to what he called his “backup argument,” explaining that at the common law, removing an official based on “an infamous crime” required a conviction. (Cook hasn’t been convicted of—or even indicted on—anything.)

It was a shrewd move on Clement’s part, because arguments based on the common law usually resonate well with the current, history-focused court. But after Justice Alito and then Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed unpersuaded, Clement offered “a backup to the backup”: regardless of the president’s power to remove an official, Congress always has the power to impeach an official accused of misconduct.

And Clement even had “a backup to the backup to the backup” (as Justice Elena Kagan put it). Because this case is before the court on the administration’s motion for an emergency stay, the government bears the “extraordinary burden” of showing both irreparable harm and a likelihood of success on the merits. A likelihood of success on the merits requires not just that Clement’s position be wrong, but that the government’s position be “actually right.” Considering the justices’ apparent reluctance to make conclusive pronouncements about the messy, substantive issues raised by Trump v. Cook, this argument could end up being compelling.

As Isgur put it—sounding like a sports commentator, as some of us tend to do during arguments—“this is just so brilliantly done, because everywhere Sauer looks, Clement is there. He’s painted a world where he wins on every issue up the ladder, which means that for Sauer to get to the topic, he has to defeat Clement on every single topic—which is just a tall order.”

3. Keep it conversational—and candid.

If you were to ask SCOTUS watchers for an adjective to describe Clement’s argument style, many might say “conversational”—a term that Clement uses himself. As he told me on my podcast, he views each argument as a conversation with nine justices, from a wide range of backgrounds—which means that “you’re not going to persuade them by being overly rhetorical,” and “you’re not going to persuade them by being so hyper-technical that a generalist isn’t going to appreciate the point that you’re making.”

So if you listen to Clement’s arguments, you won’t encounter a lot of jargon. Instead, you’ll hear folksy phrases you’d expect from a Midwesterner like Clement (a Wisconsin native)—such as “the game’s not worth the candle,” “music to my ears,” or the charmingly archaic “heaven forfend.”

The substance of Clement’s arguments mirrors his style: he keeps it real, and he’s unfailingly honest with the justices. If an advocate owes a duty of candor to the court, Clement fulfills it—in spades. Sometimes he’ll even “break the fourth wall,” stepping outside of his expected role to make a “meta” sort of point—in a way that highlights his honesty as an advocate, buttressing his credibility.

At one point during the Cook argument, Justice Alito asked Clement whether the court should resolve this case based on a factual ground (such as the argument that Cook didn’t engage in mortgage fraud, but simply made inadvertent errors in her paperwork). But the justice also seemed to view Clement’s position on this as self-serving: “I understood your answer to be, ‘You should do that if you’re going to find in favor of me, but you shouldn’t do it if you’re going to find the other way.’”

Instead of denying the obvious, Clement admitted that Justice Alito had a point, humorously acknowledging his response as a “heads I win, tails you lose answer.” But Clement quickly pivoted to one of his many backups: here, Lisa Cook was denied due process, i.e., not given the opportunity to present any facts in her favor. So if the justices do want this case resolved on the facts, they should send it back to the lower courts for more fact-finding—while leaving Lisa Cook in her job.

Paul Clement is a unique talent—quite possibly “the best living SCOTUS advocate today,” as Professor Rory Little of UC Law San Francisco opined during the Trump v. Cook hearing. But even if Clement might be “a god” at One First Street, in the words of veteran Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein, applying strict scrutiny to Clement’s arguments and drawing lessons from them can still benefit mere mortals.

UPDATE (1/31/2026, 8:16 a.m.): If you’re the type of person who appreciates posts that dispense advice, you might like these stories from the archives:

• 3 Tips For 1Ls (aka First-Year Law Students)

• 4 Tips For Incoming Judicial Law Clerks

• 6 Tips For Incoming Law Firm Associates

• 3 Tips For Having A Career As A Politically Engaged Lawyer

• 4 Tips For Leaving The Law

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

Today was the U.S. Supreme Court’s first opinion day of October Term 2025—i.e., the first day the justices took the bench to issue decisions. Or decision, as it turned out: Bowe v. United States, an opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a highly technical habeas case. Contrary to the expectations of some observers, the Court did not release opinions in Louisiana v. Callais, an important election-law case that’s somewhat time-sensitive (because it could have implications for this year’s midterm elections), or Trump v. V.O.S. Selections and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, aka the tariffs cases.

For any of you who were disappointed by the solitary opinion in Bowe—and in this morning’s SCOTUSblog live blog, there was definitely some disappointment—here’s a consolation prize: a new Supreme Court clerk hiring roundup. My last report was back in July, and I have almost ten new hires since then—enough of a critical mass to warrant a fresh roundup.

And I expect to publish another roundup in the next month or so. Why? First, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson interviewed and hired her clerks for October Term 2026 last month, and I expect to have all of their names soon. Second, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is interviewing potential OT 2026 clerks this month, so I’m guessing we’ll know their identities by the start of February.

Before providing you with the clerk names, I’d like to highlight some research and news that should be of interest to folks who follow SCOTUS clerk hiring:

• If you share my fascination with Supreme Court clerk hiring, here’s a paper from last August about SCOTUS feeder judges that you will surely enjoy: “Beyond Merit: The Hidden Gatekeepers to Supreme Court Clerkships,” by Professors Tracey George, Mitu Gulati, and Albert Yoon. From the abstract: “Through an analysis spanning more than a century, we investigate the factors that contribute to a judge becoming a feeder. We question whether superior training is the primary driver of feeder status. Instead, we reveal how personal relationships, ideological compatibility, and the increasing market value of clerkships influence the decision-making of both justices and aspirants alike. By uncovering the nuanced trends and hidden networks at play, this study provides insights into the clerkship market as well as the federal courts themselves.” (Professors George, Gulati, and Yoon produce some of the best SCOTUS-related scholarship—e.g., their paper about Supreme Court litigators, which I discussed in Even Superstar Supreme Court Litigators Can’t Win Them All.)

• You’ll also eat up this paper by Andy Smarick, “The Souterian and Rehnquistian Views of Legal Talent.” From the intro: “During congressional testimony in 1999, the late Justice David Souter explained that only those who graduated from one of the nation’s most elite law schools would be qualified for a precious Supreme Court clerkship. He considered it risky to hire from ‘outside the well-trodden paths.’ Earlier in the same hearing, he referred to Chief Justice Rehnquist’s well-known and different view: that the top performers at a wide array of law schools are ‘fungible.’ That is, the most elite schools might have more of the highest-ability students, but extraordinary talent can be found far and wide….. [This article] describe[s] the differences between the ‘Souterian’ and ‘Rehnquistian’ views of talent, show[s] how these differences manifest in a variety of important legal roles at the federal and state level, and describe[s] the influence of several notable factors, including geography, ideology, and ‘feeder judges.’” (Sarah Isgur and David French discussed Smarick’s paper on Advisory Opinions.)

Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com.

• But wait, there’s more. Last September, Adam Feldman published two fascinating posts for Legalytics, his excellent Substack newsletter: The Ultimate Guide to Supreme Court Clerk Pipelines, which tracks data going back to 2005 concerning the law schools and feeder judges that produce SCOTUS clerks, and Clerks, Chambers, and Power: The Networks Behind the Court, which argues that “Supreme Court clerkships now function less as prizes than as pipelines, channeling talent through tight networks into powerful firms and institutions.”

• Interesting clerkship-related discussions aren’t limited to academic scholarship. Over at Reddit, where I maintain a profile (u/davidbenjaminlat) and occasionally comment, someone posted an interesting thread about a month ago. The original post was deleted, but the gist of it was whether it’s consistent with a Supreme Court clerk’s duty of confidentiality to reveal that they worked on a particular opinion while at the Court (without disclosing anything substantive, such as how a draft opinion might have differed from the final, published opinion).
  
  The issue applies to non-SCOTUS clerks as well, since they also have duties of confidentiality. Thoughts? Please opine in the comments and take my poll:

• While doing the reporting for my deep dive into intensely accelerated Biglaw recruiting of law students (some firms are now interviewing first-semester 1Ls), clerkship hiring came up repeatedly as a subject for comparison. Some judges, predominantly liberal judges or Democratic appointees, adhere to the Law Clerk Hiring Plan—which provides some structure for the process, at least when it comes to the hiring of rising 3Ls. One critique of the Plan, however, was that its timetable was too rushed or compressed: applications could be submitted on the designated Monday in June at 12 p.m., judges could start contacting applicants that Tuesday at 12 p.m., and interviews could also begin on Tuesday—which led to a mad scramble.
  
  But last month, a tweak was made to the Plan, as revealed on the website for OSCAR, the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review (emphases in original): “Judges will not accept formal or informal clerkship applications, or seek or accept formal or informal recommendations, before 12:00 pm EDT on Monday, June 8, 2026. Judges also will not directly or indirectly contact applicants, whether to schedule interviews or otherwise before 12:00 pm EDT on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. Judges will not conduct formal or informal interviews, or make formal or informal offers, before 12:00 pm EDT on Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (Note: As an experiment, a day has been added between the interview scheduling period and interview period.) A judge who makes a clerkship offer will keep it open for at least 24 hours, during which time the applicant will be free to interview with other judges.”
  
  Giving applicants 24 hours in which to schedule clerkship interviews and prepare for them, instead of having the scheduling and conducting of interviews start simultaneously, strikes me as a positive change. As one judge who follows the Plan opined to me, “It’s not exactly a humane process, but it’s much less inhumane.”
  

Okay, that should suffice for color commentary. For paid subscribers to Original Jurisdiction, below please find actual clerk names, which won’t mean anything to most readers (aside from alumni of top law schools who are within five years or so of graduation, who might know some of these folks or be in the SCOTUS clerkship hunt themselves). Enjoy!

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This is a deep dive into an interesting and important subject, based on extensive original reporting, so it’s longer than a usual OJ post. But I believe it’s one of the better things I’ve written, and I hope you’ll find it worthwhile. If you don’t have time to tackle it now, maybe save it for later, to read when you have some downtime over the next few weeks (perhaps on a plane or train, if you’re traveling).

Because of the holidays, I may be publishing less than usual between now and January 5, but hopefully this will help tide you over. And if you like this piece, please share it—by forwarding (if you received it by email), posting on social media, or both.

Portions of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and are reproduced here with permission.

In September 1997, a few weeks into my second year of law school, I began the process of on-campus interviewing (OCI). Also called fall recruiting—because back then, it took place in the fall, at least at Yale—this was how my classmates and I obtained positions as summer associates at large law firms (aka Biglaw).

Initial screening interviews took place at a hotel near the law school. If the screener went well, you’d be invited back to the firm’s offices for a callback. If the callback interviews went well, you’d receive an offer of summer employment.

My job search concluded in early December, when I accepted an offer at Wachtell Lipton. While December was on the later side, it was not insanely so; back then, hunts for summer jobs often extended into October or November.

After graduation, I returned to my firm as a full-time associate, as most summer associates do. Positions as “summers” are the most common path into prestigious, high-paying careers in Biglaw, which is one reason why these summer jobs are so coveted—especially by debt-laden law students. In turn, full-time Biglaw jobs play a significant role in shaping young lawyers’ careers, whether they remain at their firms or move on to other opportunities.

Filling their summer classes with top talent is critical for law firms as well. Large law firms hire the vast majority of their entry-level lawyers through their summer programs—so the summer associates of today are the partners of tomorrow.

With their two-hour lunches, Beyoncé concerts, and occasional scandals, Biglaw summer programs might seem unserious. But the process of recruiting for these programs is seriously important, for both law students and law firms.

And the current recruiting process—in which students are applying for jobs in the first semester of their first year, mere weeks after starting law school—is seriously problematic.

“It feels predatory,” said Nancy Menagh, a 3L at Fordham Law who serves as a teaching assistant and advises several 1Ls going through the process. “Are the firms just looking for bodies? Are the schools just diploma factories?”

“It cheapens the process—and has the overall effect of cheapening the profession.”

The ‘Analog Era’ of Recruiting

The OCI process that I experienced in the late 1990s had existed in that form for decades. It was run by the law schools, and numerous aspects of it were regulated by guidelines issued by the National Association for Law Placement or NALP.

NALP is a voluntary association of over 3,000 legal career professionals who advise law students, lawyers, and law firms. It’s not a regulatory body, and it has no supervisory role over firms or schools. But the NALP Timing Guidelines were widely followed for many years, and until a major revision in December 2018, they covered everything from how early firms could contact students (not before December 1 of the 1L year) to how long offers of summer employment should remain open (28 days).

“Throughout this time, OCI was the main vehicle for firms to recruit students for their summer programs,” wrote Nikia Gray, NALP’s executive director, in a fascinating history of how recruiting has evolved. “Firms had to go through the law schools if they wanted access to enough students to fill their slots. This was an expensive, time-consuming process, with firms flying lawyers nationwide to interview students face-to-face. We might call this the Analog Era of recruiting—and it lasted for decades.”

“It was a routinized process, with a certain artificiality to it,” said Lois Casaleggi, associate dean for career services at the University of Chicago Law School. “And it worked for many years.”

Then came Covid—which completely upended the traditional process of in-person screening and callback interviews.

“After Covid, schools got rid of ‘on-campus’ recruiting and moved to virtual interviews,” explained Professor David Wilkins of Harvard Law School, where he serves as director of the Center on the Legal Profession. “On-campus recruiting had a built-in constraint on timing: the 2Ls had to be back on campus. But once recruiting moved to Zoom, this was no longer true. Firms started interviewing candidates in the summer before 2L year, and we were off to the races.”

A Process Transformed

Since Covid, recruiting has grown more decentralized and moved up in time—and today, Biglaw’s approach to hiring law students looks completely different from what I experienced. OCI and other school-run programs have largely fallen by the wayside, replaced by direct applications: students submit their materials and interview with firms on their own, with no involvement from schools.

For 2024 summer programs, 56 percent of offers resulted from recruiting outside of law school interview programs, according to NALP. And the recruiting process, instead of taking place during the fall, was largely over by Labor Day: 78 percent of offers were made before August 2023—before the start of the candidates’ 2L year.

We don’t have complete data yet on 2025 summer programs, which NALP expects to publish in the first quarter of 2026. But we do know the process began even earlier, with firms accepting applications from candidates as early as April or May 2024—before the issuance of grades from the spring semester of the students’ 1L year.

The trends of direct application and earlier hiring have only intensified for 2027 summer programs—for which the recruiting process is already underway. Yes, that’s right: some firms are interviewing first-year, first-semester law students, who have not yet taken their first final exams—let alone received their first set of grades—for positions that will start not next summer, but the summer after that.

According to Reuters, applications submitted by 1Ls to firms through the popular Flo Recruit online platform jumped from 841 in November 2024 to 12,082 in November 2025—an increase of 1,300 percent. And firms conducted 6,700 interviews last month on Flo Recruit—five times as many as in November 2024.

And firms are engaged in this mad scramble for talent against the backdrop of dramatic technological change that’s transforming the practice of law, with unknown implications for Biglaw firms and their personnel needs. According to the 2026 Citi Hildebrandt Client Advisory, 63 percent of large firms expect AI to affect their lawyer leverage models within the next decade—up from 43 percent in the prior year.

“Some 1L students are interviewing right now, during law school exams, not just for 1L summer jobs but 2L summer jobs,” said Wilkins of Harvard Law. “But in two years, ChatGPT may be doing many of these entry-level jobs—and more.”

So firms are interviewing first-semester law students—but are they making offers? According to Bloomberg Law, some (unidentified) firms are making offers to first-semester law students. But I couldn’t confirm this with any of my sources; based on my reporting, it appears that most firms are holding off on extending offers until first-semester grades arrive—at least for now.

“One big question mark is what firms are willing to do before they have any grades,” said Casaleggi of Chicago Law. “Right now we’re seeing a divide. Some firms are already interviewing students, but saying that they’ll hold off on offers until grades are in. Other firms have said that they won’t start interviewing until they have grades.”

The recruiting process has changed in other ways as well since my time. When I was in law school, it was rare for firms to hire summer associates for their first summer. Today, it’s more common for firms to hire 1L summer associates, and some firms are even extending offers of employment for both the 1L and 2L summers—so-called “jumbo” offers, which sometimes come with “loyalty” bonuses of up to $25,000. (A firm is less likely to lose a candidate to a rival if the candidate spends both the 1L and 2L summers with that firm.)

Other firms, including Davis Polk and Milbank, are hiring 2L summers—and will pay them $25,000 to do public-interest work in their 1L summer (i.e., not work at other firms). It’s a sign of how aggressively firms are pursuing what they perceive to be the “best” talent, at all levels—from first-semester law students to $20 million partners.

For Law Students, Academic Disruption and ‘Off the Charts’ Anxiety

The first year of law school is a notoriously trying time for students. It has always been academically demanding and psychologically challenging, as reflected in cultural touchstones from One L to The Paper Chase to Legally Blonde (the latter two admittedly fictional, but reflecting certain realities of being a 1L).

And now, on top of memorizing Latin legal terms and mastering the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, first-semester law students are expected to be finding jobs—and not just any jobs, but ones that often play an outsized role in launching legal careers.

“My take, which many of my classmates share, is that the timing of the whole process is unfortunate,” a 1L at Yale told me. “It has required us to devote time to researching firms, completing applications, and attending networking events, during an already busy semester where we’re supposed to be focusing on classes and learning the fundamentals of legal thinking.”

“Friends and I often explicitly discussed which was more important: reading a case for class or working on a cover letter for a firm,” this 1L added. “And we often prioritized the latter because it felt like our early careers were on the line.”

“The academic disruption this is causing is not sustainable,” said Casaleggi. “We should be letting first-year law students get their feet under them—by learning how to read cases, take cold calls, and study for exams. We need law students to become law students first.”

“Law students are having to navigate recruiting as they’re still trying to navigate law school—interviewing at the same time as they’re figuring out where the bathrooms are,” said Nikia Gray of NALP. “Schools feel very protective of students’ well-being, so there’s a lot of frustration and even anger over what’s happening among career-services deans and counselors. They see students day to day, struggling with mental-health challenges, and they have students crying in their offices.”

“Different firms and markets are moving at all different times—but some students hear of their classmates getting interviews, when they haven’t had any interviews yet, and these students start to panic,” said Casaleggi. “And then they go on Reddit, and all nuance goes out the window. The student anxiety is off the charts—and it’s entirely understandable.”

One student at Boston University even withdrew from law school, less than two months into the semester, after suffering panic attacks.

Going through recruiting as a 1L “was so much on top of everything else,” this student—or former student—told Reuters. “I thought it was completely unfair.”

‘You Might As Well Be Throwing Darts’

Adding recruiting and its attendant anxieties on top of the existing demands of the first semester of law school isn’t good for students academically. It isn’t good for their mental health. And it also doesn’t make for sound career choices.

“Probably the most unfortunate part of this process is that we have to make decisions that shape our early careers based on little information about ourselves and our interests,” said a Yale 1L. “By the time we accept an offer, none of us will have done a clinic, a legal internship, or even a semester of classes that we chose to take.”

“There’s no way that a 1L who’s still taking Contracts, Torts, and Civ Pro can make an informed decision about firms and practice areas,” a 3L at Duke told me. “It took me a long time, a lot of research, and talking to many people to come up with meaningful heuristics for distinguishing firms. If you’re picking a firm in your first semester of law school, you might as well be throwing darts. It’s a totally impossible task.”

If firms are recruiting so much earlier, you might expect them to extend greater flexibility to students in terms of picking a practice area or declaring their interests within the law. But if anything, the trend is in the opposite direction.

“As recruiting has moved earlier, we’ve also seen an increase in firms expecting students to know what practice areas they want to work in,” said Casaleggi. “But most first-semester 1Ls don’t have fully-formed ideas about what they might want to do in the law—and I don’t mean that in a negative way, because as 1Ls, they haven’t seen enough to know what they want to do.”

Making students pick firms and practices this early is causing more students to select firms that might be great firms, but aren’t the right firms for them. And it’s causing firms to hire candidates who might be great candidates, but aren’t the right candidates for them.

“We’re increasingly seeing many more mismatches, on both sides of the aisle,” Casaleggi said. “More and more students are coming back to us and saying they want to re-recruit as 3Ls—but historically, 3L recruiting has been very limited and narrow.”

This mismatch could permanently affect careers—in unforeseen ways.

“When I was a 1L, I thought I wanted to be a transactional lawyer, and I spent my 1L summer doing corporate work,” said a Biglaw partner who is today a leading Supreme Court litigator. “If I had to pick a firm and practice area as a 1L, there’s a very good chance I’d be doing something completely different.”

A Disproportionate Impact on First-Generation Students, Minority Students, and ‘Late Bloomers’

Certain groups or types of students will bear the brunt of this accelerated recruiting timetable. First-generation law students will find it especially difficult.

“Both of my parents were lawyers,” said Menagh, the Fordham 3L. “I’ve had a very different experience compared to someone who has never met a lawyer or didn’t know any lawyers growing up. There’s nobody who can help them through the process in the same way.”

“The accelerated recruiting timeline is systematically disadvantaging students who are first-generation professionals, attend schools outside the traditional T14, and don’t have the cultural capital to know this recruiting process even exists,” wrote Kourtney James, former firmwide diversity recruiting manager at Morgan Lewis & Bockius, on LinkedIn. “We’re creating a system that rewards proximity to privilege.”

Also on LinkedIn, Dean Eboni Nelson of the University of Connecticut School of Law wrote, “I worry about what this will mean for the legal profession, given its longstanding diversity and inclusion challenges. To quote the great Sam Cooke, I hope ‘a change is gonna come.’”

Dean Nelson’s concern about the impact on diversity is understandable. According to Nikia Gray of NALP, the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) is already affecting where students from underrepresented minority groups go to law school, by shifting them toward less-selective less schools. A New York Times analysis found that the number of Black students matriculating at the nation’s top 18 schools declined this year, even though Black students as a percentage of all law students held steady (at around 8 percent).

In light of how large firms focus on highly ranked schools when recruiting, reducing the number of minority students at elite schools will make it even harder for these students to land Biglaw jobs. And the earlier recruiting timeline will likely exacerbate this effect, by making it harder for minority students at non-T14 schools to distinguish themselves through grades and activities.

The latest version of the process also puts disproportionate emphasis on a student’s first-semester academic performance.

“Grades aren’t everything, but they’re important to many employers, and not everyone does well their first semester of law school,” Casaleggi said. “Some students won’t do well in their first semester, and firms will miss out on those late bloomers.”

This point resonated with Bryan Heckenlively, a partner at Munger Tolles & Olson.

“My first semester was my worst semester in law school,” he said. “My career might have taken a very different trajectory if it had been decided based on that one semester.”

In the end, Heckenlively graduated near the top of his class at Berkeley Law, completed two federal clerkships, and joined Munger, where he made partner and now chairs the recruiting committee. In that role, he oversaw the firm’s revamp of its summer program (discussed in more detail below).

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Law Firms ‘Need To Be in the Game’—But Aren’t Happy About It

Law students and law schools are generally upset over the incredibly early recruiting process. What about law firms?

“The firms are generally unhappy, but they feel they have no choice,” according to Casaleggi. “The competition between firms that has pushed the process earlier doesn’t reward restraint; the risks are too high.”

In the last recruiting cycle, Cleary Gottlieb opened its portal to applications in May of the 1L year. For this cycle, it opened its portal even earlier, in November of the 1L year.

“We made this move in response to the market,” explained Maureen Linch, a tax partner at Cleary and member of its global talent management committee. “Like other firms, we’re competing for a similar pool of talent—so if other firms are hiring at this time, we need to be in the game.”

But this is not the process that she would have designed or selected herself—and Linch identified, candidly and thoughtfully, some of its drawbacks for firms.

“We have limited information about the candidates,” she said. “They don’t have work experience in the law, for the most part. They don’t have grades—which aren’t the only thing that matters, but they are a metric.”

“They don’t have as clear a sense of what they want to do, compared to students farther along in law school, so it’s harder to find things to talk about during interviews. And it’s more challenging for firms to plan for the future, when we have a group of individuals who are less certain about what they want to do in the law.”

“I’m going through a stack of résumés on my desk, and it’s very difficult to differentiate law students after only two to three months,” said an office managing partner at a prominent firm. “There’s a prejudice in favor of candidates with impressive undergraduate schools or pre-law-school employment, but this might not bear any relationship to how they perform as lawyers.”

“We run a higher risk of selecting people who don’t want to be in our city or aren’t as interested in what we do at our firm. As someone who takes mentoring seriously, I want to make sure we’re getting candidates who are making the right choices for them. But this process seems almost designed to ensure that that won’t take place. It’s dispiriting.”

And recruiting this early isn’t just bad for a firm’s culture. It also threatens something that partners have to care about, in an increasingly competitive market: profitability.

“Firms are going to see much more associate attrition going forward, and this will hit their bottom line,” said Casaleggi. “Associates often don’t become truly profitable for firms until their third or fourth year, but a growing number of associates aren’t making it to their third or fourth year.”

“So the mismatch factor is huge. And firms should be concerned about that, even if they’re not as concerned about the academic disruption and mental-health challenges faced by students.”

Inadequate information about candidates and an increased risk of mismatch are what led Munger Tolles to restructure its summer program. I recently praised Munger’s approach as “an effort to stop the insanity and make the recruiting process more flexible and less pressured.”

The revamped Munger program is less about converting summer associates into permanent associates—in a departure from tradition, offers of full-time employment are not extended at the end of the summer—and more about forming a longer-term relationship between the firm and the candidate. That lawyer might decide to join Munger after a clerkship or two, or maybe after a few years at a different firm.

“As a small firm, we’re very focused on the quality of our lawyers, making sure that everyone we bring in the door is someone that we’re comfortable having on a lean team and introducing to a client,” said Heckenlively of Munger. “It’s very important for us to have a certain minimum amount of information about our candidates. So it wasn’t going to be workable for us to hire people in January of their 1L year, with the expectation that they’ll become our full-time lawyers.”

The Unintended Consequences of Hyper-Accelerated Recruiting

Hyper-accelerated recruiting will likely have a number of unintended consequences, both within and beyond Biglaw. Here are some possibilities.

First, we could see erosion in the primacy of the 2L summer program as the main source of entry-level or junior associates. The Munger Tolles approach of essentially decoupling its summer program from its hiring of full-time associates could become the wave of the future.

If firms start noticing more mismatch and greater associate attrition among former summer associates who return as full-time associates, firms might shrink their 2L summer programs, while increasing their hiring through other channels: more hiring of recent graduates, judicial law clerks, and lateral associates from other firms. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more lateral hiring of junior associates with only one to two years of experience, as opposed to the midlevel associates who have been the traditional targets of lateral recruiting.

And law students might also start recognizing that the 2L summer program isn’t the only entry point to a firm. As Professor Orin Kerr of Stanford Law tweeted, “[l]aw students will realize that you don’t have to sign on to the firm where you summered, resulting in a more active market in straight-to-associate hiring.”

Second, we could see a rise in 3L recruiting. Historically, 3L recruiting has been limited and narrow, a way for firms to fill very specific needs—e.g., an opening for a junior tax associate in the Houston office. But if we see more mismatches between 2L summer associates and their firms, more robust 3L recruiting could serve as a safety valve or corrective of sorts—a way of fixing mismatches before a lawyer spends two or three years at the firm where they happened to summer, but isn’t the best fit for them in light of their long-term interests.

Imagine a student who, as a 1L, accepts an offer to do a 2L summer at Cravath—mainly because it’s one of the few firms that she’s heard of. During her 1L summer, she works for the World Bank. As a 2L, through coursework and serving as a research assistant to a professor of international law, she discovers a passion for international arbitration. She might want to re-recruit as a 3L—not because Cravath isn’t a great firm, but because certain other firms focus more on international arbitration.

“We are looking into increasing the population of 3Ls that we hire,” said Maureen Linch of Cleary (which does have a Chambers-ranked practice in international arbitration, as well as many foreign offices). “When law students are choosing firms this early, they are doing so with incomplete information. So we can imagine summer associates going to a firm, not having the best experience, and wanting to explore other options. We think the 3L market will become more active, and we’ve already been dipping our toes in it.”

Third, at law schools, we could see reduced participation in law review and moot court. Traditionally, according to Nikia Gray of NALP, law journal and moot served as “résumé boosters,” valuable to students in their quest for Biglaw jobs. But if students land firm jobs in January of their 1L year, before the process of applying to the law review or the moot court team, they’ll be less motivated to pursue these activities.

“One big issue is what will happen to law reviews, when there’s less of an incentive to join the law review or serve on the board,” said an articles editor of their school’s flagship law review. “We already noticed fewer submissions for the law review competition in the most recent cycle, after recruiting moved up to the 1L spring.”

Fourth, getting 1Ls committed to Biglaw so early could have a negative effect on other sectors of the legal world, such as public-interest work or government service. The legal profession is a series of interconnected webs—so what happens in Biglaw has spillover effects for other practice environments.

“The new recruiting timeline could further undermine the delicate ecosystem of public-interest law,” said Professor Tanina Rostain of Georgetown Law, a scholar of the legal profession and access to justice. “Now 1L students feel immense pressure to commit to Biglaw, before they’ve had the chance to explore public-interest careers. This early in law school, students have hardly any information about legal career paths. What they do know is that these firms pay extraordinary amounts of money—and these students have enormous debt loads.”

Some firms are offering to pay their future 2L summer associates to perform public-interest work during their 1L summers. The firms might present this as their generous support of public-interest work, but Rostain doesn’t see it that way. Her fear is that these well-funded 1Ls—who have already committed to spend their 2L summers in Biglaw—will “crowd out” students with a stronger interest in public-interest work, taking away 1L summer internships that these students need to advance in the public-interest world (which is a challenging career path to begin with).

What Is To Be Done?

In the course of my reporting, I spoke with law students, professors, and career-services counselors, as well as law firm partners and recruiting professionals. With a few exceptions—such as a 1L at Yale who told me that “getting Biglaw recruiting out of the way earlier is huge,” and “a lot of the firms really are quite similar”—the vast majority of my interviewees expressed dissatisfaction with super early recruiting.

“This is madness—a lose-lose-lose situation that’s bad for students, schools, and firms,” a 3L at Yale told me. “And I don’t understand why top law schools and top firms don’t use their market power to stop it.”

It can be summed up in a word: antitrust.

“One natural possibility would be for the law schools to get together and agree not to permit law firms to recruit before the second year or some such thing,” said Professor Eric Posner of Chicago Law, an expert on the antitrust laws as applied to labor markets. “But such an agreement might violate the antitrust laws.”

In December 2018, as noted above, NALP revised its recruiting guidelines. The biggest change was the removal of specific dates and timelines for different steps in the process—a move that was motivated by antitrust concerns, according to NALP executive director Nikia Gray.

“Over time, the Department of Justice’s and Federal Trade Commission’s interpretation and enforcement of antitrust regulations had changed, leading the agencies to remove or update much of their published guidance that businesses had relied upon to tell them what conduct was permissible,” wrote Gray. “With it, many associations found it necessary to revisit their codes of conduct, ethics policies, and guidelines—and NALP was no exception.”

I asked Gray a question that several sources asked me: might NALP get back in the business of issuing concrete timetables? Her response: “No, that is not something we can do.”

In the absence of the coordination that’s prohibited by antitrust law, what we’re most likely seeing in the Biglaw associate market is what labor economists call “unraveling.” Unraveling happens when employers and candidates make employment decisions earlier and earlier, often too early, for fear of being left behind or losing out if they wait.

According to Posner, what appears to be happening is that “law firms are (legally) coordinating on starting salaries, through follow-the-leader pricing”—e.g., adhering to a salary or bonus scale set by a recognized market leader, such as Cravath or Milbank. And so, because there’s so little competition between firms on pay, “competition is displaced into the timing of offers—but that just leads everyone to make early offers, so no one gains and everyone loses.”

It’s a standard prisoner’s dilemma. The market participants could cooperate for mutual benefit—but because such coordination is legally prohibited, the incentives favor acting for individual gain, even if everyone acting that way makes everyone worse off in the end.

In a thoughtful and thought-provoking paper about the unraveling of labor markets like the ones for medical residents and judicial law clerks, Posner chronicled some interesting history. In 2002, three physicians filed a class action challenging the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), the elaborate system used for matching medical students with hospital residency programs. But after a fierce lobbying effort by medical schools and hospitals, Congress passed a law effectively granting the NRMP an antitrust exemption.

Could Biglaw obtain a similar exemption? I doubt it.

According to the congressional findings in support of 15 U.S.C. § 37b, the medical-match program “has effectively served the interests of medical students, teaching hospitals, and patients for over half a century.” Many would disagree with that—including Eric Posner, who views the NRMP as enabling the exploitation of residents. But getting the American people and Congress to care about the training of doctors, who treat all of us, was surely easier than it would be to get the public to care about future Biglaw associates and the elite law firms that hire them.

And there’s at least one other reason to believe an antitrust exemption would be tough to get today.

“Congress’s view on antitrust has shifted since the medical-match program got that exception in the early 2000s,” said NALP’s Nikia Gray. “Aggressive antitrust enforcement is one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement.”

Can Someone Else Please Fix This Problem?

If coordination is unlawful and the law can’t be changed, does any individual actor have the power to make a difference? Law schools argue that law firms need to step up to the plate.

“If we tried to push back as an individual school, we’d put our students at a disadvantage,” said Rostain of Georgetown. “If a leading firm like Cravath was willing to wait, that might inspire other firms to follow, and something might change. But firms have this crazy sense of desperation that they’re going to miss out on the ‘best’ students. It’s very much like clerkship hiring.”

“When I’ve asked why Harvard goes along with this, I’ve been told that if we don’t do it, our competitors will do it, and our students will be disadvantaged—consigned to the equivalent of selling pencils outside of Macy’s,” said Wilkins of Harvard. “The only people who can stop this are the law firms.”

“They would have antitrust issues if they had a lateral agreement,” he acknowledged. “But firms have ways of telegraphing things to each other. Look at how they set compensation through ‘conscious parallelism,’ after they were told that they couldn’t sit around a table in their club and fix salaries.”

The firms, however, maintain that the schools are best situated to take a stand.

“The top law schools have far more market power than the firms,” said a department chair at a major firm. “All the firms are vying for students at the very top law schools.”

“I’ve been surprised at the relative silence of law school deans on this subject,” this partner continued. “If Yale Law came out against early recruiting of its students, would any firm just skip out on hiring anyone from Yale? Of course not.”

“When we put together our summer class, we have a rough idea of how many students we might get from a particular school. If Yale said it was going to hold off, we’d take note of that, and we’d leave enough room in our program to accommodate them.”

I could see the situation improving if maybe a few actors take initial steps, and a few more follow them. On the school front, maybe Yale or Harvard Law could take a stand against excessively early recruiting—and maybe that would empower other top schools to follow suit, just as they did when Yale and Harvard led a boycott of the U.S. News rankings (which resulted in rankings reform).

On the firm front, maybe a few firms could follow the example of Munger and chart a different path. For example, one career-services counselor pointed out to me that Wachtell Lipton announced February 6 as the application deadline for its 2027 summer program—even though many other firms will probably be done hiring by the end of January.

By expressing its willingness to conduct a less rushed process that will extend into February, Wachtell “is betting on itself—and betting that even with a somewhat slower process, it can still get the talent it wants,” according to this counselor. “They’re taking a risk. But given their market position and smaller size, they probably feel they can take a risk that other firms can’t.”

Finally, here’s an intriguing development. Law students from 18 law schools—the top 14 aka “T14,” which actually amount to 17 schools (because of a four-way tie for #14), plus Cornell Law, a traditional member of the T14—have drafted an open letter to the American Bar Association. Law student associations at ten law schools have voted in favor of signing the letter, with others still considering it.

The letter contends that accelerated recruiting is “undermin[ing] legal education, student and staff well-being, and the recruitment market.” It then suggests possible courses of action the ABA might take—including “evaluating whether accreditation standards might better support the educational focus of the first year of law school.”

Could the ABA use its power as the only nationally recognized accreditor of U.S. law schools to issue accreditation standards that might improve the current Biglaw recruiting process? It’s an interesting idea. But its timing isn’t great: the ABA’s accrediting role is facing scrutiny right now, from the Florida Attorney General, the Texas Supreme Court, and most recently, the Federal Trade Commission.

This much is clear: the orderly and organized OCI process that I went through in 1997 can’t be brought back. In the words of Nikia Gray of NALP, “We can’t put that genie back in the bottle.”

But hopefully the Biglaw recruiting process will get better, not worse, going forward. The chaos of the current time cannot continue.

“We might not be able to go back to the past,” said Lois Casaleggi of Chicago. “But we have to get somewhere different than where we are now—for the students’ sake.”

UPDATE (12/19/2025, 12:03 p.m.): For additional discussion, please check out the latest episode of the On the Merits podcast, where Nikia Gray of NALP and I discuss the current recruiting timeline with Jessie Kamens (my fabulous editor at Bloomberg Law, when she’s not podcasting).

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Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission.

On Monday, the Skadden Foundation announced its 2026 class of Skadden Fellows, the latest recipients of high-profile fellowships supporting public-interest work. And despite a controversial agreement with the Trump administration that raised the possibility of an ideological shift, the program appears to have kept its progressive bent. The biggest change relates to the size of the program, which will support 34 new fellows next year—an increase of more than 20 percent.

Skadden Fellowships, which I’ve previously called the public-interest world’s version of Supreme Court clerkships or Rhodes Scholarships, are highly prestigious. Awarded annually by the Skadden Foundation and funded by the Skadden Arps law firm, the fellowships often serve as springboards into long-term careers in public-interest law. The Skadden Foundation, which was launched in 1988 to commemorate Skadden’s 40th anniversary as a firm, has awarded more than 1,000 fellowships to date.

As part of its settlement with the Trump administration in March, Skadden Arps committed itself to “funding no fewer than five Skadden Fellows each year dedicated to the following projects: assisting veterans, ensuring fairness in our justice system, combating antisemitism, and other similar types of projects.” The firm also pledged that the fellows “will represent a wide range of political views, including conservative ideals” (which struck me as so vague as to be unenforceable, since “conservative ideals” are in the eye of the beholder).

When Skadden’s promises relating to the program became public, many former Skadden fellows reacted negatively.

“I have concerns that the fellowship will be taken away from its core mission of providing desperately needed legal services to people who cannot otherwise afford access,” said Leigh Goodmark, a 1995 fellow who is now an associate dean at University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law.

Skadden has “given up on the rule of law in a fair and free society, where one can champion the issues and the causes that one cares about without fear of retribution from the government,” said Lauren Koster, a 2020 Skadden fellow who now runs a public-interest boutique.

Kathleen Rubenstein, a former Skadden Fellow herself, resigned as executive director of the Skadden Foundation. In a LinkedIn post, she wrote that this “moment in history calls on us to provide more and better support for public-interest lawyers”—and opined that Skadden hadn’t yet “risen to that challenge.”

Last week, Skadden shared with me a list of the 2026 Skadden Fellows. I’ve been covering Skadden Fellowships for more than 15 years, dating back to 2010, so I have a good sense of the program.

Here’s my bottom line on the new class: it’s the same as the old classes, for the most part. Folks who were concerned about or critical of Skadden’s announced changes to the fellowship program should be relieved.

The projects that the 2026 fellows will work on during their fellowships focus on issues that are mainstays of the Skadden program, such as poverty, homelessness, and workers’ rights. The fellows will work with familiar client populations, including low-income communities, migrants, and individuals with disabilities.

The host organizations are also typical, including legal aid societies, immigrants’ rights groups, and projects or affiliates of the ACLU. You’ll look in vain for a libertarian public-interest organization such as the Institute for Justice or the Pacific Legal Foundation—to say nothing of a socially conservative nonprofit such as the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com.

During President Donald Trump’s second administration, large law firms have changed the type of pro bono work they’re willing to do, presumably to avoid incurring Trump’s ire. But in terms of its fellowships, Skadden appears to be staying the course. The projects of the 2026 fellows include several advancing immigrants’ rights and one protecting transgender students—not subject matters favored by the Trump administration.

Charlie Gillig, executive director of the Skadden Foundation, told me in an interview last week that the foundation didn’t change its factors for selecting fellows.

“We had an exceptional group of candidates—even larger than last year’s applicant pool—and we didn’t do anything differently this time around,” he said. “We selected the fellows based on our traditional criteria, focusing on the needs of the client populations.”

Size may be the most significant difference between the 2026 class and the last few classes of Skadden Fellows, as noted above. The foundation awarded 34 new fellowships, six more than usual. Five of the new fellowships are being funded by Skadden, while a sixth is being funded by a generous bequest from Ron Tabak—a longtime leader of the firm’s pro bono program, who passed away earlier this year.

I noticed two differences that might have been prompted by the Trump deal, which requires the firm to support projects that will help veterans, promote fairness in the justice system, or fight antisemitism.

First, four of the 2026 fellows will work on projects serving veterans—a significant increase from the 2025 class and the 2024 class, which each featured only a single project targeting veterans.

Second, one 2026 fellow will work on a project targeting antisemitism. At least in the five most recent classes of Skadden fellows (2021–2025), no projects had centered on antisemitism.

So there are at least five projects that clearly satisfy the terms of Skadden’s settlement with the administration. Five is also the number of additional fellowships that Skadden funded in the new class—which I’m guessing is no coincidence.

Imagine a critic of the Skadden-Trump deal who views projects focused on veterans or antisemitism as insufficiently tied to the fellowship program’s mission of “address[ing] unmet civil legal needs of people living in poverty in the United States.” Because Skadden funded five additional fellowships, the firm could respond as follows: “We funded an extra five fellowships this year. Even if you set aside or ignore the veteran- and antisemitism-oriented projects, we still funded 28 fellowships in other areas—the same number of fellowships we’ve funded in recent cycles.”

On a more big-picture level, some progressives might argue that the Skadden fellowship program, by providing a reputational benefit to the firm, whitewashes the work of a large corporate law firm that serves the rich and powerful. This argument could have been made before Skadden’s settlement, but it may carry additional force in an age where the firm, according to some critics, “roll[s] over” for Trump.

But as someone who doesn’t share such a negative view of Biglaw and sees the Skadden fellowship program as a good thing, I think Skadden handled this year’s fellowship class well. The firm seemingly found a way to comply with the Trump deal while honoring the fellowship program’s core values.

Charlie Gillig—a 2011 Skadden fellow himself, who has spent his entire legal career doing public-interest work—told me he’s very pleased with the first class of fellows picked during his tenure as executive director.

“Our focus was on selecting a terrific class of Skadden fellows for 2026,” he said. “And I’m proud to say that we did.”

Below please find lists of (1) the ten law schools that have produced the most Skadden Fellows over the past 15 years, (2) all law schools that have produced Skadden Fellows over the past 15 years, and (3) the 2026 Skadden Fellows and their sponsoring organizations.

TOP 10 LAW SCHOOLS FOR SKADDEN FELLOWS (2012-2026 FELLOWSHIP CLASSES)

1. Harvard – 73
2. Yale – 64
3. NYU – 41
4. UCLA – 23
5. Stanford - 21
6. U. Penn. – 19
7. UC Berkeley — 18
8. Georgetown – 16
9. (tie) Columbia – 14
9. (tie) Northeastern – 14

LAW SCHOOLS WITH SKADDEN FELLOWS (2012-2026 FELLOWSHIP CLASSES)

American University – 4
Boston College – 2
Boston University – 3
Case Western – 1
Chicago – Kent – 2
City University of New York – 9
Cornell – 2
Columbia – 14
Denver – 2
DePaul – 4
Duke – 3
Emory – 1
Florida International University – 1
Fordham – 4
Georgetown – 16
GW – 3
Harvard – 73
Hofstra - 1
Howard – 1
Indiana – 3
John Marshall (Chicago) – 1
Loyola (Chicago) - 3
Loyola (Los Angeles) – 2
Michigan State – 3
Northeastern – 14
Northwestern – 6
NYU – 41
Ohio State – 1
Roger Williams – 1
Rutgers – 3
Seattle – 1
Stanford – 21
Suffolk – 1
Tulane – 1
UC Berkeley – 18
UC Davis – 2
UC Irvine – 4
UCLA – 23
U. Chicago – 5
University of Colorado – 1
University of Connecticut – 1
University of Houston – 1
University of Illinois – 1
University of Iowa - 1
University of Kansas – 2
University of Maryland – 3
University of Miami – 1
University of Michigan – 10
University of Oklahoma – 1
U. Penn. – 19
University of South Carolina – 1
University of Texas – 3
University of Tulsa – 1
UVA – 4
University of Washington – 1
Valparaiso – 1
Vanderbilt – 3
Villanova – 1
Washington & Lee – 2
Wash U. – 4
William & Mary – 1
Yale – 64

SKADDEN FOUNDATION — 2026 SKADDEN FELLOWS

Zoe Ades
Georgetown Law Center
ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality / New York, NY
Challenge local and state laws criminalizing panhandling and homelessness as violations of First Amendment free speech protections.

Carola Aisenberg
Houston Law Center
Anti-Defamation League – Houston / Houston, TX
Combat antisemitism and discrimination in K–12 education by enforcing existing legal protections for low-income Jewish communities.

Vedan Anthony-North
NYU School of Law
ACLU Foundation / New York, NY
Contest federal grant terminations targeting public-health initiatives designed to address health disparities, and provide representation to providers serving low-income populations that have lost funding.

Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes
Boston College Law School
ACLU of Massachusetts / Boston, MA
Contest post–Grants Pass criminalization of homelessness and expand statewide capacity to safeguard unhoused people’s rights.

Joelle Besch
NYU School of Law
ACLU Women’s Rights Project / New York, NY
Protect low-wage immigrant women working in New York City hotels from wage theft, trafficking, and harassment by holding hotels accountable for abuses by their subcontractors.

Elizabeth Bird
Colorado Law School
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project / Seattle, WA
Challenge unlawful immigration detention for low-income immigrants by filing individual habeas petitions and expanding habeas advocacy and impact litigation.

David Boord
George Washington Law School
ACLU of Alaska / Anchorage, AK
Secure safe, habitable housing for low-income Alaska Natives and other rural residents by enforcing state constitutional guarantees of health and welfare.

Jayden Boudreau
Indiana - Maurer School of Law
ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project / New York, NY
Protect transgender students in K–12 public schools in rural, low-income regions by challenging the growing wave of laws that restrict their rights.

Paolo Ciancio
Denver University Strum College of Law
Rocky Mountain Veterans Advocacy Project / Denver, CO
Support low-income survivors of Military Sexual Trauma in rural and tribal lands in the Mountain West by providing legal representation in discharge upgrades and VA benefits appeals to ensure access to veterans’ and public benefits.

Jessenia Class
Harvard Law School
Rights Behind Bars / San Francisco, CA
Expand access to legal representation for indigent detained immigrants by bringing Petitions for Review and training partners to replicate this model nationwide.

Jasmine Crain
Cornell Law School
National Veterans Legal Services Program / Arlington, VA
Help wounded, ill, and injured service members and veterans obtain disability retirement, combat-related and public benefits by challenging benefit denials.

Bill De La Rosa
Yale Law School
Florence Immigrant Rights and Refugee Project / Tucson, AZ
Provide universal representation for detained immigrants in Eloy and Florence, Arizona, representing primarily indigent clients against deportation and building a coalition to sustain its expansion.

R. Elliott DeRiso
Harvard Law School
ACLU of Southern California / Los Angeles, CA
Protect marginalized immigrants with cognitive and developmental disabilities from unlawful arrest and detention by challenging unconstitutional practices in detention facilities.

Brandon Dodds
Emory School of Law
Pine Tree Legal Assistance / Bangor, ME
Preserve housing stability for low-income mobile home park residents in rural Maine through eviction defense, affirmative habitability litigation, and enforcement of Maine’s right-of-first-refusal law.

Jacalyn Goldzweig Panitz
CUNY School of Law
Legal Aid Society / New York, NY
Enforce sanctuary city laws to protect low-income immigrants from unlawful arrests, detainers, and transfers through impact litigation and rapid-response representation.

Megan Hess
Michigan Law School
Children’s Law Center / Washington, DC
Expand a pediatric medical-legal partnership to safeguard low-income families from public benefits loss and health care instability.

Siddharth Jejurikar
Harvard Law School
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project / New York, NY
Address discriminatory barriers that low-income immigrant and mixed-status families face in the rental housing market through direct representation and strategic litigation.

Eric Johnson
Ohio State Moritz College of Law
Legal Aid Society of Southeast and Central Ohio / Columbus, OH
Represent low-income tenants pursuing rent escrow in urban and rural Ohio, helping tenants enforce their right to a safe and habitable home.

Vatsala Kumar
Chicago Law School
MacArthur Justice Center / Chicago, IL
Enforce Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act, which eliminated cash bail, to ensure that the public and legal organizations understand the empirical outcomes of the Act for low-income individuals and any disparities in pretrial outcomes.

Evan Lehmann
Stanford Law School
Community Economic Defense Project / Denver, CO
Ensure safe, healthy conditions in rural Colorado mobile home parks by representing low-income homeowners and resident associations in affirmative litigation

Anna Luttrell
Northeastern School of Law
Tennessee Justice Center / Nashville, TN
Expand free legal services and address systemic barriers to improve and increase access to SNAP benefits for the lowest-income Tennesseans.

Mack Makishima
Northeastern School of Law
Greater Boston Legal Services / Boston, MA
Preserve affordable housing among financially distressed, low-income tenants and homeowners at risk of debt-driven eviction or foreclosure.

Rose Mendelsohn
Northeastern School of Law
Justice at Work / Boston, MA
Help low-wage construction and cleaning workers recover stolen wages through direct representation and providing trainings on workplace rights and fair contracting.

Danielle Miles-Langaigne
NYU School of Law
Brooklyn Defender Services / Brooklyn, NY
Provide direct representation to indigent New York City parents excluded from educational decisions for their children placed in the foster system.

Bryce Morales
Yale Law School
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law / Washington, DC
Combat private voter suppression of low-income individuals by challenging schemes using digital disinformation to deceive, defraud, and disenfranchise marginalized communities.

Jennifer Morgan
Columbia Law School
A Better Balance / New York, NY
Ensure access to Temporary Disability Insurance and Paid Family Leave benefits for pregnant, postpartum, and caregiving low-wage workers in New York.

Lindsay Nicholas
Loyola Chicago School of Law
Ascend Justice / Chicago, IL
Ensure the safety of low-income children during caregiver arrest, immigration detention, or domestic violence by expanding the use of short-term guardianship agreements.

Susie Powell
Georgetown Law Center
Centro de los Derechos del Migrante / Baltimore, MD
Protect temporary migrant workers from exploitative practices and coercive techniques commonly used by both employers and recruiters.

Lucas Rodriguez
Harvard Law School
ACLU Voting Rights Project / Washington, DC
Represent low-income voters of color and organizations serving their interests to use state voting rights acts to consolidate off-cycle elections with state and federal ones.

Douglas Smits
Case Western Reserve School of Law
Legal Aid Society of Cleveland / Elyria, OH
Deliver legal representation and clinics to low-income veterans seeking discharge upgrades in Northeast Ohio.

Wesley Streicher
Harvard Law School
ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project / New York, NY
Protect low-income children from excessive and illegal police encounters by enforcing children’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights during interactions with law enforcement.

Ariel Vasser
Virginia School of Law
Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law / Washington, DC
Protect low-income people with mental health disabilities from expanded involuntary commitment and other coercive treatment.

Jett Watson
Harvard Law School
Legal Aid Chicago / Chicago, IL
Expand a medical-legal partnership to the largest regional VA facility, providing legal representation for low-income veterans with disabilities.

Eve Zelickson
NYU School of Law
Community Service Society of New York / New York, NY
Protect low-income New Yorkers from Medicaid coverage loss and medical debt through legal representation and enforcement of hospital financial-assistance rules.

Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; (3) transcripts of podcast interviews; and (4) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below.

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When I worked as a Biglaw litigator more than 20 years ago, things were very different. Generative AI was unheard of. Even e-discovery was uncommon; most document review was still done using paper copies (and paper cuts were an occupational hazard).

And almost all litigation involving major corporations—which was, and still is, the bulk of the Biglaw docket—featured companies as defendants. Even ten years ago, more than 80 percent of in-house lawyers who responded to Norton Rose Fulbright’s 2015 Litigation Trends Annual Survey reported no lawsuits with more than $20 million at issue commenced by their employers in the last 12 months.

But things are changing on this front—and continue to change, according to Greg McPolin, Managing Director at Burford Capital. As a leader of business-origination efforts at Burford, the world’s largest provider of commercial legal finance, McPolin is constantly talking to in-house lawyers about litigation they might bring or have already brought.

A New Corporate Mindset

“Generally, we’ve seen an increase in the willingness of companies to become corporate plaintiffs,” said McPolin. “Now more than half of our business comes from corporate clients.”

“Fifteen or twenty years ago, you had some companies pursuing cases as plaintiffs, but much of it was high-volume, low-value litigation,” said David Perla, a former in-house lawyer who is now Vice Chair of Burford. “Since then, there has been a rethink. And now Burford might work with a company pursuing, say, a $100 million claim that they might not have pursued in the past.”

And the pace of change on this front has accelerated in recent years—which explains why litigation finance grew from a $9.5 billion industry in 2019 into a $16 billion industry five years later.

Much of that growth took place during and after the Covid-19 pandemic—which shouldn’t be viewed as a coincidence.

“There was a sea change with Covid,” said Aviva Will, President of Burford Capital (and also a former in-house lawyer). “Companies were willing to rethink everything they did, from supply chains to cost structures to work-from-home policies. It created an opportunity for legal departments to ask themselves, ‘What resources do we have, and how do we use them?”

Another reason that companies became more open to both litigation and litigation funding during the pandemic is that many of them needed extra cash, especially during the earliest days of the crisis.

“Covid was a classic example of unforeseen financial headwinds for many companies,” said Greg McPolin. “Many had to adjust to very different conditions—and getting value out of assets, including legal assets, became an imperative.”

The Cases That Corporate Plaintiffs Are Bringing

According to Perla and Will, causes of action commonly raised by corporations as plaintiffs include business torts, antitrust violations, patent infringement, and breaches of contract (whether litigated in court or raised through international arbitration). In addition, a growing number of companies are opting out of class actions, choosing to litigate their own claims instead of accepting the settlement negotiated by class counsel.

Why? According to a recent survey of in-house lawyers, 71 percent of respondents believed that opting out of a class action would increase their company’s recovery by more than 25 percent.

And success in bringing meritorious cases breeds more success. Companies that have positive experiences with bringing litigation or financing it are more willing to do it again.

“It becomes self-perpetuating,” said Charles Griffin, Senior Vice President at Burford. “If a client has done it a few times and received successful outcomes, the client’s finance team starts to see it as a potential source of revenue.”

“We hear all the time of situations where the finance department comes to legal and says that the company is having a challenging quarter or half, or might miss its numbers,” said McPolin. “And so the finance team asks the lawyers, ‘What can we do to generate some cash?’”

And once these conversations are happening, it’s a sign that corporate leaders are viewing litigation—and the company’s lawyers—in a different light.

Corporates Embrace Affirmative Recovery Programs

“Broadly, companies—who are usually defendants—don’t like litigation,” said Aviva Will. “But when you bring in money as an in-house lawyer, suddenly they like you. They can get their arms around what’s now known as an ‘affirmative recovery’ program.”

So what’s an affirmative recovery program? In theory, it’s simple: it’s just “a fancy term for ‘trying to get the money we think we’re due,’” in the words of Chris Bogart, CEO of Burford Capital.

In practice, according to McPolin, an affirmative recovery program requires taking a programmatic and systematic approach to managing a company’s litigation-related assets. And once a company decides it wants to pursue a particular claim, it can work with Burford or another litigation funder to reduce or eliminate the associated costs—which can be considerable, especially given current Biglaw billing rates.

“Financing can allow a claimant to bring a case on a no-cost, no-risk basis,” explained McPolin.

Corporate Legal Finance in Practice

How does this work in a typical case? The litigation funder covers some or all of the costs involved in prosecuting the lawsuit, with the company paying a reduced amount—or even nothing. The funder gets its repayment—as well as a return on its investment, hopefully—from any recovery in the lawsuit.

But the funder gets paid only out of any recovery. So if the litigation is unsuccessful, the funder would lose its investment, but the corporate claimant will suffer no out-of-pocket loss (aside from any legal fees or expenses it agreed to cover as part of the funding arrangement, if any).

This certainty as to the cost of bringing a legal claim is a critical part of litigation funding’s appeal, according to former in-house lawyer Steven Greenspan. A chief financial officer or other business-side executive is far more likely to approve pursuing a particular lawsuit if the chief legal officer can say, at the outset, exactly what it will cost to litigate. Funding a lawsuit no longer requires the finance department to write a blank check to the legal department.

“For a CLO to be able to tell the CFO, ‘this is what the litigation will cost, and not a penny more’—is not only unusual, but also it makes the decision whether to commence litigation much easier to reach,” said Greenspan.

Stacy Bratcher, an in-house lawyer and host of The Legal Department podcast, has enjoyed success with affirmative recovery programs at two different companies. In a recent podcast episode, she explored the topic with Greg McPolin of Burford and veteran general counsel Andrew Johnstone—who recovered more than $500 million in affirmative recoveries for a former client.

What advice would Bratcher offer to corporate counsel thinking about establishing an affirmative recovery program? She emphasized the importance of being intentional and thoughtful.

As she said on her podcast, in-house lawyers should not take a “set it and forget it” approach to affirmative recovery. Instead, it’s important to monitor and actively manage the company’s litigation, to maximize returns while protecting the company’s other interests.

“Litigation claims are valuable assets, akin to intangible property or real property or accounts receivable—assets that companies use to generate cash every day,” said Greg McPolin of Burford. “In the final analysis, litigation finance is really just another form of corporate finance.”

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Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com.

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

Thanks to the high level of activity on the interim docket, summers are no longer sleepy at the U.S. Supreme Court. This shift has definitely affected the work-life balance of the high-powered lawyers who work in the Office of the Solicitor General (“OSG”), which represents the federal government before the high court.

And it has surely created a lot more work for the holders of Bristow Fellowships—prestigious one-year fellowships that allow lawyers to work on Supreme Court cases just a few years out of law school. Serving as a Bristow Fellow is probably more interesting than it has been in recent years, but also more stressful.

But even with more stress and longer hours, a Bristow Fellowship is still a coveted opportunity for ambitious young lawyers—and one can understand why. Working on SCOTUS litigation at such an early point in one’s career is an incredible opportunity. And a Bristow Fellowship holds great value as a credential, with Fellows going on to other high-powered positions within the legal profession, including but not limited to Supreme Court clerkships.

(Speaking of SCOTUS clerkships, I have a surprising number of new hires—surprising because this isn’t usually a busy time of year for clerk hiring. If I get a few more, I’ll publish a Supreme Court clerk hiring roundup. So help me help you: if you know of any new hires since my last roundup, please email me (davidlat@substack.com) or text me (917-397-2751), including the words “SCOTUS clerk hiring” as the subject line of your email or somewhere in your text. Thanks in advance for your tips!)

OSG recently finished hiring the class of Bristow Fellows for October Term 2026 (2026-2027). Here they are:

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Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission.

Sports law has long been an attractive practice area for individual lawyers, especially those who are sports fans themselves. It’s exciting and enviable to work for famous sports franchises that are constantly in the headlines. You can impress relatives at Thanksgiving by telling them that you’re representing the NFL team on the television screen in front of them (as opposed to representing some private-equity or hedge fund they’ve never heard of).

But for years, with deal values in the millions rather than billions of dollars, sports law wasn’t a field that all firms sought to play on. It was something of a niche practice, dominated by a handful of firms known for their specific expertise in sports deals—including Covington & Burling, DLA Piper, Hogan Lovells, and Proskauer Rose.

This is changing, as you can see in the latest lateral partner hire by Davis Polk & Wardwell. Yesterday, the firm announced the arrival of Jon H. Oram, one of the nation’s leading sports lawyers—according to Chambers (Band 1), The Hollywood Reporter, and other authorities. He’s coming over from Proskauer and will be based out of New York.

“I’ve known Jon since we were associates at Proskauer together over twenty years ago,” said Jessica Berman, commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). “His leadership and credibility with owners and investors will help Davis Polk drive the next phase of growth in sports.”

Jon Oram is only the latest—although the biggest—in a series of sports-law names to be recruited by elite transactional firms in 2025. In February, Weil Gotshal & Manges brought aboard Steve Argeris from Hogan Lovells. In September, Kirkland & Ellis hired Frank Saviano from Latham & Watkins (and reportedly allotted him partner shares that last year would have been valued between $13 and $14 million). In October, Kirkland reunited Saviano—who began his career at Proskauer, before joining Latham in 2020—with a former Proskauer colleague, Jason Krochak, who also focuses his practice on the sports space.

Why are firms such as Davis Polk and Kirkland so interested in sports? They’re drawn to high levels of activity in the sector—and following the moves of their clients.

“The sports sector is white hot,” Oram said in an interview. “The deals are bigger and more sophisticated than ever—driven in large part by the involvement of institutional investors, especially private equity and private credit.”

Oram also mentioned a striking statistic, showing how sports law has boomed since he and I graduated from law school. (Disclosure: we’re friends from law school.)

“When I started as an associate, NBA teams sold for around $200 million,” Oram told me. “Today you can’t buy one for less than $4 billion. Earlier this year, a majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers was acquired in a deal that values the team at $10 billion. That’s the trajectory the sports industry is on right now.”

Yes, there has been inflation. But $200 million from 25 years ago would today be worth around $400 million, not $4 billion—to say nothing of $10 billion. What explains these soaring values?

First, there’s scarcity: there are a limited number of major-league sports teams. Even with plenty of money, you can’t just go out and start your own franchise, in the same way that you can launch a tech startup or PE fund.

Second, changes in league ownership rules have opened up the sports sector to private equity. In 2019, Major League Baseball liberalized team ownership rules. Since then, the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer have made similar moves.

Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com.

This regulatory shift has allowed sports properties to mature as an asset class. As Andrew L. Cohen, executive chairman of JPMorgan’s global private bank, told Bloomberg, major-league teams today are “more than just a passion investment,” evolving into “a real part of the portfolio.” Or as Davis Polk’s chair, Neil Barr, told me in an interview, “Ownership of these assets is shifting from a vanity or hobby model into a true investment model, involving tremendous amounts of capital.”

More capital chasing scarce assets has led to a predictable result: vastly higher valuations. And Davis Polk has handled several of these landmark transactions—including the $10 billion Lakers deal, which set a record for biggest NBA sale, and the $6 billion Washington Commanders sale, which set the NFL record.

“After the Commanders deal in 2023, we looked around and realized that we do have credentials here,” Barr said. “By that point, we had done two of the biggest deals in the history of sports”—referring to the Commanders sale and the $2.4 billion acquisition of the New York Mets, which set an MLB record in 2020.

“So we started exploring the idea of doing something more committed in the space, but didn’t take action at that time. When the opportunity to hire Jon presented itself earlier this year, though, it was one that we couldn’t pass up.”

“We’re now establishing a formalized sports practice, which Jon will lead. We plan to take advantage of this market opportunity to create a destination practice, handling the most significant transactional and non-transactional matters in the sports ecosystem.”

Turning to the broader dealmaking context, expanding its sports practice makes perfect sense in light of Davis Polk’s strategic plan.

“Our strategy has evolved from being focused on the public markets, such as securities offerings or syndicated debt, to embracing work involving private capital,” Barr explained. “For a number of reasons, including non-correlated returns and longer time horizons, sports assets are increasingly attractive to private capital. And so building out a destination sports practice fits well into our broader strategy as a firm.”

Developments like this make me wonder: are the days of the “sports bar”—a small group of firms with specialized sports expertise, distinct from top transactional firms more generally—numbered?

It’s too early to tell. And certainly Proskauer, home of heavyweights such as Joe Leccese and Wayne Katz, still has a deep bench of sports-law talent. But there’s no denying that Big Law’s biggest names are lacing up their cleats and stepping onto the field.

“The top law firms are increasingly focused on sports,” Oram observed. “And they’re making the investments needed to achieve industry leadership, just as they have dominated so many other practices.”

Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; (3) transcripts of podcast interviews; and (4) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below.

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A shorter version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission. The version below includes bonus material for Original Jurisdiction subscribers—not just the usual footnotes I add when reprinting my Bloomberg Law columns in OJ, but some great responses I received by email from experts when I was doing my reporting for this piece (which I’ve reprinted with their permission).

Readers, please feel free to add your own advice to associates in the comments to this post. Thanks!

There are many signs that fall is here. Pumpkin spice lattes are dominating Starbucks. Halloween candy displays are taking over the local CVS.

And, at large law firms, fresh-faced newcomers are wandering the halls—or joining the Zoom calls. Welcome, new associates!

Back in August, I wrote a column offering counsel to new law clerks. It proved popular, so in the spirit of the season, I wanted to provide advice to incoming associates.

I’ve written this with Biglaw associates in mind, since the world of large law firms is my focus as a journalist. But the advice applies generally to new lawyers entering private practice, regardless of firm size.1

Many of these tips might seem obvious. But I know of situations where associates didn’t follow this advice—usually to their detriment. So here goes.

1. Act as if you want to make partner—even if you don’t.

I spent less than three years at a firm, and that’s par for the course in Biglaw: most associates don’t stick around long enough to be considered for partnership. But even if you know that you won’t be staying at the firm for the long term, it’s to your advantage to act as if you might be.2

Firms invest the most in associates who seem like future partners. These associates receive the best work, greater mentorship, and more opportunities generally, at least compared with peers who come across as “tourists” (to use a term that one former firm chair used with me).

If you act like an aspiring partner, you’ll do your best work—so if and when you decide to leave, you’ll have strong references from the firm. You’ll also enjoy your time at the firm more if you approach it enthusiastically, rather than as an ordeal to endure until you pay off your student loans.

As Paul Shim, co-leader of Cleary Gottlieb’s Americas M&A Group, said on my podcast, “We’ve all heard the adage, ‘Do what you love.’ …. I would say, ‘Love what you do’—because no matter what it is you do, chances are you can find a way to make yourself proud of it. You can find a way to find some enjoyment out of some aspect of it. And if you can do that, then you’ll not mind doing it.”

And you know what? Careers take surprising turns—so even if you start off thinking you won’t be a “lifer” at your firm, that might change. One managing partner told me that when he first joined his firm, his plan was to work there for a few years, get good experience, and then return to his native Tennessee. But he fell in love with both his work and the firm—and 25 years later, he found himself running the place.

2. Take control of your career—and steer it in the direction that you want it to go.

“You are in charge of your career. No one will care about it as much as you do.” That’s what Grover Cleveland wrote in Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks, one of my favorite books of advice for new lawyers—and he’s right. (Additional advice from Grover appears below, along with tips from other experts.)

When I was a junior associate, I thought my job was to be a “good solider”: to take the work that I was given and to do it well, without complaint. And while it’s essential to do good work (and not complain), I could have done that while at the same time taking a more proactive approach to my career, by figuring out what I enjoyed doing and what I was good at doing—and trying to do more of it.

In Cleveland’s words, “Do what you love. Seek out the kind of work that interests you most and that uses your natural abilities. If you are passionate about your work, you will do better work.”

3. Take the initiative in your cases or deals.

Apply a go-getter mindset not just to your career writ large, but to the individual matters you handle as a lawyer. When you start off, you might be given projects that seem modest or menial (though less so than in decades past, thanks to technology). Do your best with every task, think about where it fits into the litigation or transaction as a whole, and look for ways to contribute beyond just the narrow assignment you’ve been given.

As Shanu Bajaj, an M&A partner at Davis Polk, put it, “Roll up your sleeves and take the initiative… [Many new lawyers are] used to learning in an academic setting: they’re sitting down, someone’s in the front teaching them everything they need to know, there’s a textbook in front of them.” But law firms are different: “a lot of the learning is self-done,” so you need to be a self-starter.

Teach yourself. Learn as much as you can about your cases and clients, as well as the practice areas and industries you find yourself working in. Ask questions. Acquire as much knowledge as possible—then draw on that knowledge to serve your firm and your clients, to the best of your ability.

As Mark Herrmann wrote in The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law, a classic of the advice-for-young-lawyers genre, “You are not a potted plant. You are valuable, and you can make yourself even more valuable. Prove to the firm that you are indispensable. We can be convinced, and it will open up a world of opportunity for you.”

4. Follow the news—about your firm, and about the legal industry as a whole.

Doing excellent legal work is necessary but not sufficient for success in the legal profession. Careers unfold in a broader context—and that context plays a major role in how careers turn out.

Don’t just bury your head in the court filings or deal documents that make up your day-to-day work. Take time to read about how your firm is faring, in an increasingly competitive legal marketplace. Monitor the broader trends shaping the industry. What some might dismiss as “gossip” is actually competitive intelligence, and it could have a greater effect on your professional trajectory than seemingly more substantial information.

You could (and should) be doing superb legal work for a particular partner or for your firm. But what if that partner moves to a rival, taking no associates with them? Or what if your firm starts to stumble, then gets swallowed up by a larger firm—or, worse yet, goes under?

If you pay no attention to industry news, you could be caught flat-footed by such developments. If you follow the news closely, you might be able to anticipate them—and adjust your career plans accordingly.

5. Keep up with technology—then harness it, to help you and your clients.

The days of going to law school because you’re “not a STEM person,” then largely steering clear of technology for the rest of your career, are over. For better or worse, legal tech has become too important to ignore.

This is especially true in the age of artificial intelligence. As Gibson Dunn partner Orin Snyder recently said to me, “Any lawyer in 2025 who is not utilizing AI technology is underserving their clients, because it is a valuable tool to both get work done more efficiently and, in some instances, better.”

Follow the world of legal tech. Read about the products available to lawyers in your space, the capabilities of these tools, and their limitations. Contact your firm’s tech folks and volunteer to try out new products. Learn as much as you can about how to use the latest technology—and how to not misuse it. (Shameless plug, for a company whose board I sit on: if you do a lot of writing, check out BriefCatch, a fantastic editing tool developed by legal-writing guru Ross Guberman.)

6. Act with integrity, treat people respectfully, and pay it forward.

These last points are—or should be—obvious. But they’re easier said than done, especially when you’re working 2400 hours a year (or more), under a lot of stress, and not getting enough sleep.

Once you’re in the trenches of practice, you might find yourself in situations where you’re tempted to act unethically—and where you might be rewarded, or think you might be rewarded, for doing so. Resist the temptation.

“Be kind to everyone, and mentor others,” Yvette Ostolaza, chair of the management committee at Sidley Austin, told me. “Making sure you’re giving back, in terms of what other people have done for you in mentoring, is important.”

When you’re working long hours and under incredible pressure, it can be difficult to prevent yourself from acting unkindly or lashing out—at opposing counsel, a paralegal, or anyone with the misfortune of crossing your path. Try to control your worst instincts. Get help if you need it, perhaps from a therapist or lawyer assistance program.

If and when you fail—and dealing well with failure is crucial, in careers and in life—apologize, learn from your mistakes, and strive to do better in the future.

Speaking of the future, it’s bright for young lawyers, in my personal opinion. Today is a great time to be starting off in Biglaw. In the words of Roy Strom, “associates have never had it better than they do right now.”

There’s less grunt work, thanks to the combination of technology and high billing rates—because clients won’t pay $800 an hour for associates to do work that machines can do (often better). There’s also less tolerance for mistreatment of associates and staff by partners.

The financial rewards for lawyers who stay in Biglaw are greater than ever. But so are exit opportunities for lawyers who leave, given the rise of fields like legal tech and litigation finance.

If you’ve managed to land a job as an associate—in Biglaw, at an elite boutique, or with some other amazing law firm—congratulations. I wish you the best of luck as you embark on your career in private practice.

I’ll now turn the floor over to several experts, who kindly emailed me with their own advice for associates. I have reprinted their messages below, with their permission. And I encourage any of my readers with additional tips to post them in the comments.

Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com.

Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland is a sought-after speaker on law career success and the author of Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks: The Essential Guide to Thriving as a New Lawyer (3d ed.). A former partner at Foster Pepper in Seattle, Washington, Grover represented Paul Allen, the late Microsoft co-founder, and many of his companies, including the Seattle Seahawks, while in private practice.

Here are some thoughts on new lawyer success:

1. Get in the habit of acknowledging receipt of emails. This can keep associates from missing emails and keeps assigning attorneys from waiting and wondering.

2. Develop a reminder system to provide project updates. In the throes of work, status updates often fall by the wayside. Assigning attorneys do not like to chase junior associates. And junior associates sometimes forget that senior attorneys have to update clients. Responsiveness (the lack of it) is the most frequent concern that I hear from partners about junior associates.

3. Get into good timekeeping habits immediately. Bad habits are especially hard to break when things get busy. Make capturing time the first step of every activity and never intentionally under-report time. Junior associates often have “sticker shock” about their billing rates and intentionally under-report their time. Pricing is not the associates’ job. And many factors go into pricing and determining value: a Snickers bar at Target costs $1.59. From the minibar in the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas, an identical Snickers bar is $9.

4. Always look for ways to be more helpful and add more value. This habit helps associates shift into a client-service mindset. The shift is challenging for some because law students are the “clients” of law schools.

5. Use Microsoft’s Read Aloud feature to proof everything. It’s efficient, and typos undermine trust.

6. Read Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks. :-)

Van Ann Bui

Van Ann Bui has over 15 years of experience in the legal profession, first as a practicing corporate attorney, and then as a practitioner with expertise in recruiting and talent development at leading legal organizations. You can reach her at contact@vanannbui.com. The views expressed below are solely her own and do not represent the views of any organization with which she is affiliated.

There are the garden-variety fundamental “must-dos,” like developing the technical skills (research, writing, drafting, etc.) for your practice. But that is table stakes: everyone goes in knowing they need to do this.

Where young associates often go “wrong” is to fail to see where or how they fit into the “bigger picture.”

First, it’s important to know what your role is on a specific case or transaction: how does your specific task help a senior attorney do what they need to do in order to deliver the final product to the client? Understand how each document you touch (and even those you don’t) impact the client’s goals.

On a broader scale, it’s also important to know how the work you do helps the partners/firm make money—and where it costs them money. In sum, you have to begin to see yourself, not just as a lawyer, but importantly, as someone who is in the business of selling legal services.

A student of mine once shared a piece of advice they received from a partner at a firm they were interviewing with that I think excellently demonstrates this concept:

Imagine that you are a solo practitioner renting an office in your firm. Your job should be to try to “sell” what you have to offer (your technical skills, availability, responsiveness, etc.) so that senior attorneys will want to “buy” your services (i.e., by staffing you on their matters) so that you can continue to “pay the rent” on your office (i.e., keep your job!).

In any given class of associates, it can feel like a competitive market: there are many first-year associates that senior attorneys could choose for their deals, so to show your worth, you have to get other attorneys to consistently choose you.

This brings me to the next question that inevitably arises: well, how do I get them to choose me?

Again, technical skills development aside, I have the following pieces of advice:

Learn how to manage yourself—and how to manage up: as you probably know by now, lawyers are trained how to think like lawyers, not necessarily how to manage other lawyers.

The most successful young associates are the ones who can manage their own work well, while also keeping others on their team on track, especially by taking things off the plates of their senior attorneys. Essentially, you want to try to make their job easier. Learn how they prefer to communicate and find ways that work best for them to keep them up-to-date on your status. Never make them have to chase you. If you can anticipate their needs and do things before they ask, even better.

With increasing reliance on technology, I believe that it is even more important to learn how to connect with the people you work with “IRL” (in real life). How do you build the skill of connection? Treat everyone like they are the most important person to you in that moment. Acknowledge and recognize any concerns or feedback they have; communicate differences in opinion in ways that constructively add to the conversation. Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, also suggests that not everything that comes to your mind needs to be said: keep unimportant items, small details/minor preferences, or anything that may come from a place of malice or passive-aggressiveness to yourself. Do this in service of preserving the relationship.

Learn how to learn. Our profession is changing at a rapid pace. Those who are better equipped to quickly adapt to new technologies will be better positioned for whatever the future of law brings to your firm and its clients.

And, finally, I have long held that the most underrated skill of all—but probably the most simple to learn—is: be the kind of person that other people want to work with and root for. Competence alone will only get you so far. The ones who are able to rise to the top would not have gotten there if they did not have many other attorneys who were rooting for them and raising them up along the way: giving them critical mentorship and sponsorship, writing glowing evaluations, passing along deals/clients to them, etc.

Carla Harris, Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley and author of Expect to Win: 10 Proven Strategies for Thriving in the Workplace, insightfully notes that nearly all decisions about your career will be made when you are not in the room. Being the kind of person that others want to work with will ensure that your name is and continues to be raised in those rooms even when you aren’t present. You want people to talk about you—but in the best ways possible.

So, be kind, be coachable, and go forth and build a field of cheerleaders rooting you on.

A current Biglaw partner and prominent Supreme Court and appellate practitioner

Associate advice:

1. Work in the office, not from home.

   1. I have had literally thousands of hallway and lunchroom conversations that have made a difference for the better—usually small, but still a difference—in my personal or professional life.

   2. Extreme example: if I had not ridden the right elevator with the right person (decades ago), it’s extremely doubtful I ever would have gotten a job in the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG). I had had an application pending for more than a year, with no response of any kind. After I happened to mention my interest, in an elevator conversation, to a colleague who was leaving the firm to serve as a Deputy Solicitor General, I was at OSG that very afternoon for a preliminary interview—and, two months later, working there.

2. Approach that intimidating partner and ask her or him a question.

   1. Don’t be discriminating before asking the first question. Many pussycats have stern exteriors, and many self-absorbed narcissists have big smiles. The only way to learn who’s open to discussion with a young lawyer and who isn’t is to ask. Get out of your comfort zone early and often in this respect.

   2. Do be discriminating in asking the second and subsequent questions. You’ll find a spectrum of responses. At one end will be, “Why are you bothering me? Do you know who I am?” At the other end will be, “Here’s the answer to your question [or here’s how to find the answer]. Now tell me about yourself, please.” Use sound judgment in the follow-up based on the cues you receive.

   3. Do believe that the partners who show an interest in you and your career are genuinely interested. Ninety-five percent of the young people I deal with take up too little of my time, not too much.

   4. Extreme example: When I was 25 years old, I was advised to ask [a certain famous lawyer] the answer to a question. I was working in London, and he was at a different law firm, but we shared office space. All I had to do to get to his office was walk downstairs from mine. I got my answer, then rushed out of his office. He asked me if I didn’t want to stay and chat; I couldn’t believe that [this famous lawyer] had time for me. But I’ll never forget the pained look on his face when I walked out. I didn’t get it then, but I sure do now. I love talking to intelligent young people with interesting lives ahead of them.

A retired Biglaw partner

I always gave our new associates three bits of counsel:

First, I’d posit a game of Jeopardy! in which the answer is “Elevators, restaurants, and public conveyances.” The question, of course, is, “Where are client confidences most frequently disclosed by accident?” At one time, our office was in the same building as the regional EEOC and our practice included employment matters, so it was particularly easy for the newbies to appreciate the elevator aspect of this advice. [Ed. note: For more on this topic, check out this New York Times article, “Talking Business in Flight? Be Careful.”]

Second, you may be told as part of your orientation that you’re entitled to, or expected to take, no more than x weeks of vacation a year. For your own sanity, you should take that time off. The key, though, is to plan it well in advance and tell the partners and senior associates for whom you work about it well in advance. Then—and this is key—you must repeat the information from time to time, as circumstances permit. “Don’t forget, I’ll be out of the office those two weeks.” And when it’s finally the Friday before your Saturday departure, do not remind the partner—just go.

(Cf. the scene in The Verdict where James Mason gathers his associates and announces that he’ll need all hands on deck immediately for a crash project. One poor fellow—we’ll call him Mr. Jones—says something like, “But I’m getting married tomorrow and I’ll be on my honeymoon next week.” Mason turns to his secretary and says with a flourish, “Please send the future Mrs. Jones two dozen long-stemmed roses, with my regrets….”)

Finally, in your writing, particularly of documents going to clients or a court, lay off the adverbs and adjectives, and keep it as simple as the facts and the law allow. We once had an associate who had been a journalist before going to law school. She didn’t turn out to be a towering legal mind, but she sure could write simple, straightforward, intelligible declarative sentences. Sadly, that is a rarity among lawyers of all ages, who never use one word where ten will do.

A former Biglaw partner, now of counsel

This should apply to any Biglaw firm, but certainly does to ours. Regardless of the area of law you will be practicing, virtually all our clients are businesses or businesspeople. If you do not have an undergraduate degree in business or actual experience in business, and you want to become a trusted advisor and counsellor (yes you do), now is the time to self-educate.

And it’s easy. Read The Wall Street Journal and the business section of a major news source every day; watch CNBC; read what your clients read. Sign up for LinkedIn groups specific to your clients’ work and their industry. (I am an employment lawyer; I sign up for all sorts of HR groups and read their trade journals.)

As soon as you are going to be introduced to a client you have never worked with, read their company website, and ask AI for an analysis (but verify!). If the client is publicly traded, look at their public SEC filings, like their 8K and 10Ks.

Finally, if you never took an accounting course, now is the time to dive in, even if it’s only by reading Accounting for Dummies. If, by the end of your first year, you can’t read a financial statement and come away with some understanding of it and talk intelligently about the issues your top five clients are facing (and I don’t mean just legal issues), then you flunked my course.

A former associate turned in-house lawyer

Although I started as an associate at a law firm more than 30 years ago, I believe the first two pieces of advice I received were among the most valuable and still applicable today. They are simple, but not necessarily intuitive to everyone. They are:

1. Take the time to be sure you are spelling and pronouncing people’s names correctly.3

2. Always respond to a message within 24 hours (no more than 48 hours), even if the response is that you’ll need to get back to the sender at a later time with a more substantive response. In short, do not ignore people.

Thank you for your column. I very much enjoy reading it.

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

Litigation finance is now a $16 billion industry, when measured by assets under management. And in contrast to the early days of the sector, Biglaw is now a big player: large law firms accounted for 37 percent of new commitments of capital in 2024, according to a report by the Westfleet Advisors consulting firm.

Because of this, the future of litigation funding is very much tied to the future of Biglaw. And certain trends in the firm world bode well for litigation finance, according to Christopher Bogart, CEO of Burford Capital (and my former podcast guest).

On Tuesday morning, I attended a briefing that Bogart held for journalists at Burford’s Manhattan offices. Here are some of the Biglaw developments he discussed that have implications for litigation funding.

1. Biglaw billing rates continue to accelerate.

Last year was a very good one, at least in financial terms, for large law firms. In 2024, Am Law 100 firms collectively grew total revenue by 13.3 percent and profits per equity partner by 12.3 percent, according to the latest Am Law 100 rankings. And my prediction is that 2025 will be an even better year for Biglaw (but with greater variation in the performance of individual firms).

Much of the growth was driven by rate increases, i.e., firms charging clients more for their time. And this trend has continued into 2025, Bogart said, with rates continuing to grow at a pace significantly higher than inflation (which is currently around 3 percent in the U.S., in case you’ve been wondering).

These rising rates put even more pressure on the already stretched budgets of corporate legal departments, forcing in-house lawyers to do more with less. As Bogart put it, “If you’re a general counsel or chief legal officer, you’re sitting there thinking, ‘How do I get everything done that I’m supposed to be getting done, given that the company doesn’t want to just keep giving me money?’”

Here’s where funders come in. Imagine a company sitting on a potentially lucrative legal claim. That claim could be worth a lot, but pursuing it would cost money—a constantly growing amount of money, in light of increasing billing rates.

A litigation finance firm can provide this corporation with the funding it needs to turn its cause of action into cash. This allows the company to focus its scarce capital on its operating business—which is what it knows best, as well as what the stock market will give it the most credit for. As Bogart said, “Shareholders don’t give credit to companies for doing a good job on the legal side; it’s table stakes.”

2. Corporations are increasingly open to utilizing dispute-resolution processes, including litigation.

For decades, many if not most large companies were averse to being plaintiffs in litigation. But over the past 20 years, that has been changing. The new mindset, according to Bogart, is that “it’s not an act of war to file a lawsuit—and if we’re in a dispute with another company, it doesn’t mean that we hate each other if we ask a third party to say who is right.”

As a result, a growing number of companies are engaging in unemotional, matter-of-fact dispute resolution. Some corporate legal departments are even turning themselves from cost centers into revenue generators, by launching what are now called affirmative-recovery programs—in Bogart’s words, “a fancy term for ‘trying to get the money we think we’re due.’”

“There’s a greater corporate willingness to participate in significant claims, especially if there has been industry-wide misconduct,” Bogart said. For a good example, look at Europe (which Burford is quite familiar with, as a global company that was first publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange). For a long time, European companies were reluctant to engage in affirmative litigation. But after the European Commission found illegal price-fixing among the manufacturers of diesel trucks, the companies that had bought these trucks—and overpaid for them, because of unlawful collusion—were willing to bring suit.

And what does more companies willing to bring lawsuits mean? More potential clients for litigation funders.1

3. Managed-services organizations (MSOs) are on the rise.

What’s a managed-services organization (MSO)? Here’s a good explanation, from Reuters:

Under a managed service organization model, a law firm’s back-office operations—billing, IT, marketing—are spun off into a separate MSO entity. That entity, funded by outside investors, provides services to the law firm for a fee. The MSO doesn’t share in the firm’s profits, sidestepping the provisions against non-lawyers owning law firms or receiving a cut of legal fees.

“It has the promise of modernizing the practice of law in a really material way,” said Trisha Rich, a partner at Holland & Knight who is advising both law firms and investors on MSOs.

One can definitely see the appeal of MSOs to Biglaw. The MSO model lets law firms and their lawyers focus their time, attention, and capital on the actual practice of law, while leaving other work—typically work with a lower profit margin—to another entity.

MSOs are already widely used in other professions, such as accounting and healthcare, and they’re gaining traction in law. As Travis Lenkner, Burford’s chief development officer, told Reuters, law firms are “seeing what’s happening in other jurisdictions, in other professions, and responding to the competitive challenges in their own market.” Firms are “looking for a solution to the otherwise inefficiency of the partnership structure”—and MSOs represent one possible solution.

And one can also see why the MSO structure is attractive to Burford, as Cecy Graf explained in Law.com:

Litigation finance is volatile. Some cases pay out large sums, others collapse, and many take years to resolve. MSOs are the opposite. Infrastructure services are boring but consistent. Payroll must run. Invoices must go out. IT systems must stay secure. These functions create recurring, dependable revenue streams that investors can model and scale.

From Burford’s perspective, this is not just about diversifying. It is about building a business line with steady cash flow. And when an MSO supports multiple firms, the math gets even better. Costs can be spread, vendors can be negotiated with, and processes can be standardized. That makes the MSO not just a support system but an attractive portfolio asset.

In his remarks on Tuesday, Chris Bogart expressed optimism in the MSO model, for both law firms and for Burford. Although Biglaw firms “have not been as speedy as one might have thought in embracing that kind of structure,” he pointed out that many new boutiques are organizing themselves in a way that lets them separate out the core practice of law from all the other tasks that firms have historically performed. Boutiques organized in this way can work with an MSO as soon as they launch, or they can move to the MSO model down the road—because they’re already set up to accommodate that structure. [UPDATE (12/7/2025, 7:46 a.m.): For more on MSOs, with a focus on legal ethics, see this article from Holland & Knight, Everything Old Is New Again: Why Law Firm MSOs Fit Comfortably Within Existing Ethics Rules.]

4. Some jurisdictions are exploring reforms to legal-ethics rules that would allow investment into law firms or the provision of legal services by non-lawyers.

MSOs offer Burford Capital and other litigation-finance firms one possible way to invest in the legal sector without violating legal-ethics rules that prohibit ownership of law firms by folks who are not lawyers. But another emerging trend is that states are looking into permitting investment into law firms or the provision of legal services by non-lawyers—with at least 10 states exploring the space, per Bloomberg Law.

And as Bogart mentioned on Tuesday, at least one state is already there. Through its alternative business structure (ABS) program, Arizona allows non-lawyers to invest in law firms—and Burford is exploring these opportunities. A number of jurisdictions outside the United States already permit outside ownership—and in one such jurisdiction, the United Kingdom, Burford has a minority stake in a litigation firm.

Given the profitability of Biglaw, one can see the appeal of investing in law firms. But why would outside investment appeal to law firms and their partners?

For a long time, one common response to the possibility of outside investment in law firms is that the practice of law isn’t a capital-intensive business. Law firms aren’t building factories or plowing billions into R&D, so why do they need outside money? Most firms don’t own much in the way of assets; their main “assets” are their lawyers.

But two developments are changing that calculus. First, investing in lawyers—the “talent,” if you will, in a talent-focused business—is getting more expensive. Firms are hiring lateral partners with increased frequency—and for increasingly large sums, including multiyear guarantees of eight-figure annual pay packages. This can be expensive—but current partners of a firm are understandably not enthusiastic about reducing their own pay to invest in lateral hires (especially if they might themselves move to another firm down the road).

Second, firms must now invest more and more in technology—and as artificial intelligence continues to transform the practice of law, the required investment in AI and other cutting-edge tech is only increasing. Back in 2022, one study showed technology overtaking real estate as the second-largest expense for firms (after employee compensation)—and I wouldn’t be surprised if today, tech has already outstripped real estate as a cost.

And, of course, accepting outside equity investment would allow law firm partners to reap more fully the financial rewards of what they’ve built—i.e., to “cash out.” Under the current system, partners might make capital contributions to their firms, but that capital doesn’t appreciate; instead, when partners leave, they get their same capital back (sometimes after a long delay).

Meanwhile, other providers of professional services, such as investment bankers and accountants, are able to enjoy appreciation in the value of their stakes in the businesses they’re helping to build. That wasn’t always the case—but those professions transformed themselves in ways designed to enhance value for their practitioners.

Can the legal sector do the same? I’m often asked, as someone who has been writing about Biglaw for decades, whether I’m optimistic or pessimistic about its future. Overall, I’m optimistic—but my optimism rests upon the assumption that firms will be willing to innovate.

When we think of innovation, we typically think of technology and its potential to transform the practice of law. But innovation can also take an economic form, if lawyers and law firms are open to exploring new structures and approaches to optimize the business of law. And for firms that are open to embracing such innovation, litigation funders are ready, willing, and able to work with them.

Earlier:

• An Inside Look At Litigation Finance: An Interview With Chris Bogart

• Litigation Finance, Then And Now: 3 Industry Shifts

Disclosure: This post, which arose out of a briefing attended by multiple journalists, is not a sponsored post, but Burford Capital does sponsor other content on Original Jurisdiction.

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission. The footnotes, which contain material that did not appear in the Bloomberg Law version of the piece, are a form of “bonus content” for Original Jurisdiction subscribers.

Fall is a time of beginnings. It brings a new school year, a new season for television and theater, and—in the federal judicial world—a new class of law clerks. (Clerks traditionally transition in the late summer or early fall—except for Supreme Court clerks, who change over in July.)

I’m frequently asked for career advice, by everyone from college students contemplating law school to partners thinking about lateral moves. In light of the time of year, I thought I’d tackle this question: What counsel would I give to clerks?

Here are some tips. They’re based not just on my own knowledge of the clerkship world, including my (admittedly dated) experience clerking for the Ninth Circuit, but on recent conversations I had with federal judges whom I consulted for advice.

1. Be proactive, not passive

Law clerks are sometimes described as extensions of their judges. And it’s true that during their clerkships, clerks don’t have independent professional identities—their efforts get turned into work product that goes out in the names of their judges.

You might think, then, that clerks should await instruction from their judges before doing anything—just as an arm doesn’t move unless the brain tells it to move. But multiple judges told me they don’t want passivity in their clerks.

Instead, the judges I interviewed said they want clerks to think independently and offer their honest assessments of the facts and the law, as opposed to being yes-men or yes-women who simply say what they think their judges want to hear. These judges want clerks who can “see around corners” and bring both problems and opportunities to their judges’ attention—for example, a troubling decision that the judge might want to have reheard en banc, or a way in which the judge can clarify existing doctrine or even move the law forward.

As one judge put it to me, the judge-clerk relationship is more like the relationship between a CEO and a general counsel, as opposed to the relationship between a partner and an associate. The best clerks serve as trusted advisers to their judges, taking the initiative and exercising independent judgment—not as mere worker bees, simply waiting to execute on orders.

Okay, perhaps that’s uncharitable to Biglaw associates. Maybe a nicer way to put it is that clerks should act like seasoned senior associates, confident enough to think and speak freely, as opposed to fearful junior associates, not speaking unless they’re spoken to.1

At the same time, because a judicial chambers is staffed more leanly than a Big Law firm, clerks also need to assume the duties of junior associates and paralegals—which include making sure that everything is correct, down to the tiniest detail.

Where can that particular fact be found in the record? Does that case actually stand for that precise proposition? As a clerk, it’s your job to find these things out—and to get them right.2

2. Work closely—and become friends—with your co-clerks

Discussions of clerking inevitably focus on the judge-clerk relationship—which is entirely understandable, given how judges often become mentors to their clerks. But clerk-clerk relationships shouldn’t be overlooked; in fact, they’re also an essential part of the clerkship experience.

Some judges require their clerks to work together—for example, by editing or cite-checking each other’s work. But even if your judge doesn’t mandate it, you should collaborate with your co-clerks, bounce ideas off of each other, and try to improve each other’s work.

A clerkship is, compared with many other legal workplaces, largely free of internal competition and backstabbing.3 Take advantage of this collaborative environment while you have it. In fact, one judge told me that he requires his clerks to come into chambers at least four times a week precisely because being in each other’s company makes for better work product.

And you should enjoy spending time with your co-clerks as well. My three co-clerks are some of the most fun (and funniest) people I know, and hanging out with them—not just at work but outside of it, whether attending the Pendleton Round-Up, hiking in the Columbia River Gorge, or touring Oregon wineries—was a highlight of my clerkship year.

I learned a tremendous amount during my year clerking for the Ninth Circuit. But in terms of the most important things I gained from my clerkship, I’d cite my relationships with Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, who has been a lifelong mentor to me, and with my co-clerks, who are three of my best friends a quarter century later.

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3. Before your clerkship starts, try to get in some R&R: rest and … reading

A clerkship can be an intense and demanding job. So it made sense when one judge told me that clerks should try to get some rest before the start of the clerkship—especially if they’re coming from stressful, time-consuming jobs in Big Law. If you can, try to take some time off after your last job (or the bar exam) and before your clerkship.

Before arriving in chambers, read your judge’s most notable recent opinions. This will give you a sense of both the legal issues your judge is facing these days and your judge’s writing style, which will be useful to you in drafting opinions. Pay especially close attention to dissents and concurrences, which provide even greater insight into your judge’s analytical approach and writerly voice. In these separate opinions, which don’t require buy-in from any of their colleagues, judges enjoy more freedom to think and write as they please.

Judges also provided me with book recommendations for clerks. One suggested Reading Law, by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and the legal-writing expert Bryan Garner, to understand statutory and constitutional interpretation. Another recommended Point Taken: How to Write Like the World’s Best Judges by Ross Guberman, another writing guru, to help clerks draft opinions well.

And if you’ll allow me a shameless plug, check out my own Supreme Ambitions. It’s a novel with a Ninth Circuit clerk as the protagonist, and it’s a fun beach read for these final days of summer.

4. Get to know your judge—and govern yourself accordingly

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received, from then-dean Risa Goluboff of the University of Virginia School of Law, could be described as “meta-advice.” Whenever you receive a tip or pointer, ask yourself: Does this apply to me and my circumstances? Counsel that might be wise for one person, in one particular situation, might be misguided for someone not similarly situated.

This applies to everything written in this column. Because they are individual human beings, judges are more varied than pretty much any other employer (including law firms). So clerks need to know their judges well, including their preferences and pet peeves, and adjust accordingly.

Most judges I know want clerks who take the initiative, as discussed above. But if your judge expects clerks to be glorified cite-checkers, then that is what you should be. (And maybe you should think about clerking again, for a judge who values independent thinking in their clerks; it makes for a much better clerkship experience.)4

If you’re an incoming clerk, congratulations on your clerkship—one of the best jobs the legal profession has to offer.5 And good luck in the year ahead.

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

The U.S. Supreme Court currently stands in recess, but that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening at One First Street. Although the justices generally aren’t in the building, as they typically travel or teach over the summer, July is an important month for the justices’ law clerks: outgoing clerks depart after training their successors, and the incoming clerks settle into their new jobs.

I’ve been reporting on Supreme Court clerk hiring for more than 20 years—going all the way back to my first blog, Underneath Their Robes, where Article III Groupie referred to SCOTUS clerks as “The Elect.“ And for years now, after the Public Information Office of the Court confirms the accuracy of my list of clerks, I’ve been conducting a demographic analysis of each new clerk class.

I recently published my analysis of the latest crop of clerks, for October Term 2025. The year 2025 is a nice, round number, and it gave me an idea. Wouldn’t it be interesting to compare the clerks for October Term 2025 (OT 2025) with their counterparts from a quarter century ago, the clerks for October Term 2000 (OT 2000)?

The two cohorts differ in a number of important respects, and the differences are revealing. In selecting Supreme Court clerks, much has changed over the past 25 years—but one thing has not.

Gender

The OT 2000 clerk class wasn’t very balanced in terms of gender. Of the 35 clerks, 25 were men and 10 were women, making for a split of 71 percent to 29 percent.

By contrast, the OT 2025 class of 38 clerks consists of 20 men and 18 women. At a split of 53 percent to 47 percent, that’s fairly close to even representation.

Over the past 25 years, the representation of women in the legal profession has increased dramatically—and it’s reflected in the ranks of Supreme Court clerks. Women aren’t just entering the legal profession; they’re making progress in its highest echelons.

Men are still overrepresented in the ranks of SCOTUS clerks, since they represented only 42 percent of incoming law students last year but constitute 53 percent of the current clerks. But that’s not an overwhelming majority—and it’s a far cry from the 71 percent of a generation ago.

Age

Of the 35 clerks in OT 2000, three graduated from law school in 1997, 14 graduated in 1998, and 18 graduated in 1999. So no clerk was more than three years out of law school by the time they arrived at the Court, the median clerk was one year out of law school, and the average time out of law school was a little over one and a half years. I’m guessing that all or almost all of the OT 2000 clerks were in their 20s when they clerked at the Court.

The 38 clerks in OT 2025 are a significantly older crew, at least based on when they graduated from law school. Only two graduated in 2024, 10 graduated in 2023, another 10 graduated in 2022—and the remaining 16 graduated four or more years ago. Three graduated in 2019, placing them six years out of law school—and one graduated in 2011, some 14 years earlier. The median clerk in OT 2025 is three years out of law school, and the average time out of law school for the group is 3.6 years.

This shift to more mature clerks has pluses and minuses, but on the whole, I think it’s a positive development. If it’s true that with age comes wisdom, older clerks might have somewhat better judgment than ones fresh out of law school—and might be able to offer their justices sounder advice.

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Prior Clerkship Experience

How did these OT 2025 clerks spend their additional time out of law school? Some worked as lawyers in private practice or government, but most spent the time clerking for lower-court judges.

Out of the 38 clerks for OT 2025, 33—or 87 percent—completed more than one prior clerkship. The most common path, taken by 23 clerks or 61 percent of the class, was to clerk for a district-court judge in addition to the traditional circuit-court judge.

Compare this with OT 2000. Out of the 35 clerks, only two did more than one clerkship, and only one of the two had clerked on a district court. Put another way, 94 percent of the OT 2000 clerks had completed only one clerkship by the time they arrived at the Supreme Court. (For paid subscribers, a complete list of the OT 2000 clerks—including their law schools, graduation years, and prior clerkships—appears at the end of this post.)

Is this trend of multiple clerkships a good thing? For the case against, see this Politico piece by Sarah Isgur or this Judicature article by former Fifth Circuit judge Gregg Costa (who’s now back in private practice at Gibson Dunn).

For my part, I think it’s generally positive for clerks to arrive at the Court with more clerkship experience. And I’m guessing the justices do as well, given their revealed preference for hiring such experienced clerks.

The extra experience often takes the form of a district-court clerkship, which typically provides a clerk with more practical, nuts-and-bolts knowledge about the litigation process than a circuit-court clerkship. This insight can help clerks provide better counsel to their justices—and I’m guessing that the two justices who once served as district-court judges, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, especially appreciate it.

And as one district-court “feeder judge” suggested to me, experience clerking on a district court might be particularly valuable today.

“The Justices’ recent interest in hiring clerks with district court experience makes sense given the rise of the emergency docket,” this judge told me. “That docket—with its fast pace, fact-intensive work, and equitable balancing—is much more akin to the work of district courts than typical appellate fare.”

Law Schools

Which law schools sent the highest number of their graduates into Supreme Court clerkships? Back in OT 2000, the top schools were as follows (with their number of SCOTUS clerks indicated parenthetically):

• Harvard (11)

• Yale (6)

• Chicago (4)

• Columbia (3)

• NYU (3)

For OT 2025, these are the top schools:

• Chicago (7)

• Harvard (7)

• Yale (7)

• Stanford (5)

• Michigan (2)

• Notre Dame (2)

• Penn (2)

• UVA (2)

So the top three schools stayed the same, but after that, there were some notable shifts. Harvard, once dominant, now shares top honors with Yale and Chicago. Columbia and NYU lost ground, going from sending three clerks in OT 2000 to only one clerk apiece in OT 2025.

Meanwhile, Stanford shot up, from one clerk in OT 2000 to five in OT 2025. Notre Dame and Penn also fared well, going from zero clerks in OT 2000 to two each in OT 2025. The remaining two schools basically stayed the same: UVA sent two clerks to the court in OT 2000 and OT 2025, while Michigan dropped from two in OT 2000 to one in OT 2025.

(If you’re thinking that a single Term isn’t enough of a sample size for evaluating the feeding power of law schools, I’m one step ahead of you. For paid subscribers, a list of law schools ranked by their SCOTUS clerk placement over longer, three-year periods—OT 1998 through OT 2000, and OT 2023 through OT 2025—appears below. I’ve also included a few observations on OT 1998-2000 versus OT 2023-2025.)

Compared with the other factors discussed above, law schools changed the least between OT 2000 and OT 2025. Then and now, if you aspire to clerk for the Supreme Court, you’ll maximize your chances by attending an elite law school (and, of course, doing exceedingly well there).

So if you aspire to clerk for the high court, focus on prestige when picking a law school. Stack up those lower-court clerkships. And don’t be afraid to apply again if you don’t succeed the first time.

As reflected in the graduation years of the OT 2025 clerks, there’s no longer a sense that your ship has sailed if you’re more than two to three years out of law school. Maybe I should throw in an application. Is any justice looking for a 50-year-old law clerk?1

A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission.

Paid subscribers can access three things below: (1) the full roster of Supreme Court clerks for October Term 2000, including their law schools and prior clerkships; (2) a ranking of law schools based on their SCOTUS clerk placement from October Terms 1998-2000 versus October Terms 2023-2025; and (3) assorted observations on the school rankings.

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I feel bad for the new class of Supreme Court clerks—especially the clerks to the liberal justices.1

The traditional transition month of SCOTUS clerks is July. Because the Term of the Court is over by then and the justices are away from One First Street, typically vacationing or teaching in far-flung locales, it’s a less busy and stressful time. Outgoing clerks have plenty of time to orient incoming clerks, who can learn the ropes at their leisure—and go home at a reasonable hour.

But that hasn’t been the case in July 2025, thanks to the emergency docket. As you can see from the Opinions Relating to Orders page on the SCOTUS website, the Court has issued orders in four matters on the short-order docket since its Term ended on June 27, and the liberal justices have written a total of six concurrences and dissents—some of them fairly lengthy.2 So clerks to these justices have been thrown right into the deep end, having to work on opinions while still getting their sea legs. (On the bright side for these clerks, the emergency docket is quieting down, and there are only three emergency applications pending—none of them filed by the government.)

Who are the October Term 2025 clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States? I’ve obtained the names of the OT 2025 clerks I was missing from my last SCOTUS clerk hiring roundup, back in May, and I’ve verified them with the Court itself—specifically, the good folks in the Public Information Office, whom I thank for their help.

Because I now have the complete clerk class for October Term 2025, I can do my traditional demographic analysis. Here goes:

1. Gender. The OT 2025 class contains 38 clerks—four for each active justice, plus one each for retired Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer (who will work in the chambers of an active justice, in addition to assisting their retired bosses with various projects).3 Of the 38 clerks, 20 are men and 18 are women—53 percent and 47 percent, respectively.

The OT 2025 class is more balanced in gender than the OT 2024 crop of clerks, which was 58 percent men and 42 percent women (around the historical average of roughly 60 percent men and 40 percent women). The OT 2025 class is the most balanced class since OT 2021, which was 51 percent men and 49 percent women, and I believe it’s #3 among SCOTUS classes in terms of the representation of women—behind only OT 2021 and OT 2018, the only class in the history of the Court in which women represented a majority of SCOTUS clerks.

2. Feeder schools. Twelve law schools sent graduates into OT 2025 clerkships at the Court, which is in line with recent years (11 for OT 2024, 13 for OT 2023, 10 for OT 2022, and 12 for OT 2021). Here’s the ranking of schools, with the number of clerks noted parenthetically:

• Chicago: 7

• Harvard: 7

• Yale: 7

• Stanford: 5

• Michigan: 2

• Notre Dame: 2

• Penn: 2

• UVA: 2

• Columbia: 1

• Georgetown: 1

• GW: 1

• NYU: 1

Chicago, which had no clerks at the Court in OT 2024, made up for it by taking the #1 spot in OT 2025—tying with Yale and Harvard, the perennial top two schools for minting Supreme Court clerks.

Are YLS and HLS starting to lose their stranglehold on SCOTUS clerk production? With 7 clerks each in OT 2025, Harvard and Yale sent fewer clerks to One First Street than they did in OT 2024 (14 for YLS and 10 for HLS), OT 2023 (10 for both YLS and HLS), OT 2022 (12 for YLS and 8 for HLS), and OT 2021 (12 for YLS and 5 for HLS—which actually was #3 that year, behind Chicago with 9).

Here’s a question: over time, will Harvard Law School start to do worse in sending its alumni into SCOTUS clerkships, because of the erosion of its U.S. News ranking? If you look at the historical rankings, you’ll see that HLS was a top three or “T3” school for around three decades, from 1991 until 2022, when it fell to #4—and since then, it has been #5 (2023), #4 (2024), and #6 (2025).4

For the record, I believe there are a lot of problems with the U.S. News rankings (some of them laid out by Stanford Law professor Pam Karlan in our recent podcast interview—and it’s not sour grapes on her part, since SLS has been tied for #1 with YLS since 2023). But I suspect that the super-gunners who end up choosing between top law schools pay undue attention to rankings—and if HLS starts to attract fewer of these super-gunners because of its slippage in the rankings, it could see its SCOTUS clerk production start to flag (since, for better or worse, a disproportionate number of overachieving SCOTUS clerks were once rankings-obsessed super-gunners).5

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3. Feeder judges. The 38 clerks for OT 2025 completed 71 prior clerkships with 39 different judges. That number of 39 judges is lower than OT 2023 (48 judges), OT 2022 (43 judges), and OT 2021 (46 judges).

In terms of this metric, the OT 2025 clerk class is almost an exact match for the OT 2020 clerk class, featuring clerks who completed 72 prior lower-court clerkships with 39 different lower-court judges (note the modifier “lower-court,” because I’m not counting the prior SCOTUS clerkships of three OT 2020 Barrett clerks who previously clerked for other justices). But note that the OT 2020 class included 42 clerks, while the OT 2025 class includes 38 clerks. This suggests that the OT 2025 class has a relatively high number of clerks from top feeder judges, i.e., judges who place multiple clerks at the Court in a single Term.

And you can see that in the data. In terms of lower-court judges who placed two or more clerks at the Court, there were 16 such judges in OT 2024, 13 in OT 2023, 15 in OT 2022, and 13 in OT 2021. In OT 2025, 18 judges sent two or more clerks to the Court—once again, a match with OT 2020.

Here are the 18 feeder judges with more than one clerk at the Court for OT 2025, with the number of clerks noted parenthetically:

• Thapar (6)

• W. Pryor (4)

• Rao (4)

• Bibas (3)

• Katsas (3)

• Srinivasan (3)

• Sutton (3)

• Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) (3)

• Friedrich (D.D.C.) (3)

• Bress (2)

• Hardiman (2)

• Harris (2)

• Lohier (2)

• Boasberg (D.D.C.) (2)

• Engelmayer (S.D.N.Y.) (2)

• Furman (S.D.N.Y.) (2)

• Kovner (E.D.N.Y.) (2)

• McFadden (D.D.C.) (2)

OT 2025 was a very “feeder”-y Term, with nine judges sending three or more clerks to the Court. Compare that to OT 2024, when there were only five such judges.

At some point in the next few weeks, I’m going to be putting together new feeder-judge rankings. So although I have a lot more I could say on feeders and feeding trends, I’ll save it for these future posts.

Before providing you with the clerk names, I’m going to share with you an explanation of the process for applying to clerk for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, which the Jackson chambers provides to applicants. Justice Jackson has a distinctive application process, which I’ve described—and praised—in the past.

I’m happy to share this memo because I believe that making this information publicly available helps level the playing field. Students and graduates of schools like Harvard and Yale Law will always have ways of finding out this information, whether through seasoned clerkship advisors in the career-services office or the “whisper network” of alums, while people at schools that don’t normally produce SCOTUS clerks might otherwise have a harder time locating this info.

I also wanted to share this letter now because Justice Jackson’s application deadline of September 1 will be here before we know it (and recommenders might be hard to reach in the lazy month of August). To everyone applying to KBJ, good luck!

LETTER FROM THE CHAMBERS OF JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON TO CLERKSHIP APPLICANTS - OCTOBER TERM 2026 LAW CLERK HIRING

Dear applicant:

Thank you for your interest in applying for a clerkship in Justice Jackson’s chambers. Justice Jackson seeks clerks with excellent legal research and writing skills, proficiency managing complex and competing workflows, and the ability to overcome challenges. She is also interested in clerks who are committed to pursuing equal justice under law, and who bring to chambers valuable professional and personal experience that is relevant to the work of the Supreme Court. For October Term 2026, Justice Jackson will only consider applicants who have completed an appellate clerkship at the state or federal level by January 1, 2026.

Justice Jackson will begin considering applicants for OT 2026 in September of 2025. All materials must be emailed to JusticeJackson_Clerkships@supremecourt.gov on or before September 1, 2025. Applicants who previously submitted materials will be reconsidered if they resubmit a complete and updated application. The subject line of the email and the name of the attached PDF file of materials should be in the following format: Last Name, First Name OT 2026 Clerkship Application. Materials must be combined into a single PDF file in the order listed below:

• Cover letter of no more than 500 words. Successful applicants will use the cover letter to explain their interest in clerking for Justice Jackson and to highlight, in narrative form, the skills and characteristics identified in the first paragraph above. The most effective cover letters will provide different insight into an applicant’s experience from other application materials.

• Resume of no more than two pages.

• Official law school transcript.

• Official transcripts from undergraduate and any other graduate institutions.

• List of professional references. The list should include at least four, but no more than six, professional references. Please briefly explain how long and in what context you have worked with each reference. Please also indicate at least two, but no more than four, of the listed references who will provide a letter of recommendation.

  • All recommendation letters must be emailed by the recommender to JusticeJackson Clerkships@supremecourt.gov on or before September 1, 2025. The subject line of the email and the name of the attached PDF letter should be in the following format: Applicant Last Name, Applicant First Name OT 2026 Letter of Recommendation, Recommender Last Name, Recommender First Name.

  • The most effective recommendation letters will speak directly to the skills and characteristics identified in the first paragraph above, on the basis of the recommender’s first-hand experience. In particular, recommenders should highlight the applicant’s ability to orally communicate complex concepts.

Justice Jackson may later ask some applicants to provide existing writing samples or to draft an original sample in response to a prompt.

No information will be considered outside of the formal application process. Neither applicants nor their references, recommenders, or other advocates should contact Justice Jackson or her current or former staff regarding a pending or prospective application. Failure to follow this instruction may disqualify an application from further consideration.

Justice Jackson thanks you for your interest in clerking for her and looks forward to reviewing your application materials in due course.

Best regards,
The Chambers of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

And now, for paid subscribers, here are the OT 2025 and OT 2026 clerk rosters. I’ve also included the handful of OT 2027 hires that have already been made, but there aren’t enough yet to justify breaking out a separate list. Some quick things to note:

• You might see some slight changes to clerk names in the lists below compared to my list from May—e.g., “Daniel Ergas” versus “Daniel B. Ergas.” This is because I’m now using the “official” name given to me by the Public Information Office (PIO), and the PIO names often include middle initials that I didn’t have before.

• If you see a name in quotation marks—e.g., “Samantha ‘Sammy’ C. Bensinger”—what appears in quotation marks comes from me, not the PIO. Thanks to my sources, I sometimes know nicknames and other names that clerks go by, which can deviate from the official name from the PIO. So I’ve inserted those nicknames after the middle initial, inside quotation marks, otherwise leaving the official name intact—e.g., “Frederick V. Augur” versus “Frederick V. ‘Van’ Augur.” (This is useful info because if you were to try and research some of these clerks, you’d sometimes get better results if you know the names they go by; for example, running a Google search for “Frederick Augur” instead of “Van Augur” might cause you to miss this article, which is devoid of the words “Fred” or “Frederick.”)

• If you see a name in parentheses, that’s a former name, often a name the clerk used prior to marriage. (I stopped using the term “maiden name” in these pages years ago, after a reader complained about its sexist connotations.)

• It’s interesting that at least two of the clerks who have changed their names had notable former names: Claire H. (Hungar) Chavez, daughter of the high-powered D.C. lawyer Thomas Hungar, and Kate H. (Hardiman) Rhodes, daughter of Judge Thomas Hardiman of the Third Circuit.

• If I had a name with such cachet—e.g., “David Scalia”—I’d hold onto it for dear life. I’d want people to know that I’m descended from law-world royalty. As I’ve learned from covering the legal world for decades, connections matter, for better or worse. Is it possible that some might view “David Scalia” as a “nepo baby”? I suppose. But my view has always been, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” I believe that the benefits of being associated with a powerful and prestigious name outweigh nepo-baby concerns (and I’m confident that I’d quickly demonstrate my merit, dispelling claims that I got my job only through connections).

• Please note the key at the bottom:

  • ? = the clerkship is believed to be filled, but the identity of the clerk is not known to me

  • ??? = the clerkship may or may not be filled

• So as reflected in the lists below, Justices Alito and Kagan are believed to be done with their OT 2026 as well at OT 2025 clerk hiring. I’ve been advised about Justice Alito’s clerk hiring by a reliable source; as for Justice Kagan, earlier this month she sent a letter to clerkship applicants letting them know that her chambers is full for OT 2026.

• When a clerk’s name is hyperlinked, the link goes to an article specifically about that person getting hired as a SCOTUS clerk (as opposed to a firm bio page, LinkedIn profile, etc.).

• Please note that only the OT 2025 hires have been confirmed by the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office. Hires for all other Terms have not been confirmed by the PIO (but they have been confirmed by the standards that I employ when deciding that a hire is reportable).

Please reach out with any hires that I have not yet reported (or any corrections, of course). You can contact me at davidlat@substack.com or 917-397-2751 (texts only—no calls). Make sure to include the words “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring” in your email or text message, perhaps as the subject line of your email or first words of your text. Thanks!

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Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

When industry observers make predictions about the future of Biglaw, it’s common to hear something like this: “Giant global firms with billions of dollars in revenue and dozens of offices around the world, like Kirkland & Ellis or Latham & Watkins, will be fine. So will smaller, more specialized, super-elite firms, like Cravath or Wachtell Lipton. But firms in the middle—lacking the scale of Kirkland or Latham, or the cachet of Cravath or Wachtell—are in trouble.”

This can certainly be true on an anecdotal level, as to individual firms. As I recently discussed, an unusually high number of Am Law 200 firms have announced or closed mergers in the past year—and some of the smaller shops in these combinations entered into deals because their prospects as independent firms were doubtful.

But taken as a group, big but not behemoth firms continue to do just fine. And I’m guessing this will continue to be true for quite some time.

Consider the firms that The American Lawyer refers to as the “Second Hundred,” the nation’s #101 to #200 firms ranked by revenue—the firms right behind the more famous Am Law 100. Based on the 2025 Am Law 200 rankings, we’re talking about firms ranging from Dorsey & Whitney (#101), with $513 million in revenue and 550 lawyers, to Herrick Feinstein (#200), with $136 million in revenue and 140 lawyers.

These firms are an order of magnitude smaller than the largest Am Law 100 firms, such as Kirkland, with $8.8 billion in revenue and almost 4,000 lawyers, or Latham, with $7 billion in revenue and more than 3,500 lawyers. At the same time, they’re closer to the Kirklands and Lathams of the world—in terms of their client bases, business models, and partnership structures—than they are to firms with a dozen or two dozen lawyers, based out of one office, with a single practice area focused on individual rather than corporate clients (e.g., criminal defense, family/matrimonial, or personal injury law).

(A digression: how do we define “Biglaw”? It can be challenging at the margins, and I’d argue that there’s no bright-line rule. I don’t think that being in the Am Law 200 or the NLJ 500, the nation’s 500 largest firms based on headcount, automatically qualifies a firm as Biglaw; while the firms at the top of these rankings are undoubtedly Biglaw firms, the firms at the bottom are often better described as midsize or regional firms. I welcome readers’ thoughts in the comments.)

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The 2025 Am Law 200 rankings are based on 2024 financial performance—and last year, the Second Hundred did quite well for themselves, based on multiple metrics:

• Total revenue: $27.8 billion, up 10.9 percent.

• Revenue per lawyer (RPL): $849,860, up 8.6 percent.

• Profits per equity partner (PPEP): $1.1 million, up 12.6 percent.

• Total headcount: 32,703, up 2.1 percent.

How does the group’s 2024 performance compare to 2023? Quite favorably: in 2023, the Second Hundred grew total revenue by 5.9 percent, RPL by 0.8 percent, PPEP by 1.4 percent, and headcount by 5.1 percent. So this discussion from Patrick Smith’s 2025 rankings write-up is right on the money:

Last year, industry experts pointed to the comparatively lower profitability metrics of the Second Hundred and described it as an “investment story,” where those firms sacrificed short-term profitability for longer-term success through investments in talent, scale, technology, and business expertise. This year, those experts say it is the harvest.

Just look at the numbers. In 2023, the Second Hundred grew headcount at a decent clip (5.1 percent), but PPEP barely budged (1.4 percent)—reflecting the reality that investment, including the hiring of additional lawyers, can be a drag on profits in the short term. In 2024, the Second Hundred grew half as slowly in terms of headcount (2.1 percent)—but PPEP increased by double digits (12.6 percent), as they reaped the rewards of their investments from 2023.

And how did the Second Hundred’s performance compare to their Am Law 100 rivals? In 2024, the Am Law 100 collectively grew revenue by 13.3 percent, RPL by 5.2 percent, and PPEP by 12.3 percent—so the Second Hundred actually outpaced the Am Law 100 in terms of increasing RPL (by 8.6 percent) and PPEP (by 12.6 percent), which is unusual.

But the Am Law 100 grew headcount by 7.7 percent in 2024, compared to the Second Hundred’s headcount increase of 2.1 percent. Combined with the RPL and PPEP metrics, this suggests that the two groups might have switched places last year: the Second Hundred took gains in 2024, while the Am Law 100 invested in the future.

Now let’s look at some individual firms. They include two “comeback kids,” one a litigation powerhouse and the other a force in finance, whose futures were called into question at various points over the past few years—but who did very well for themselves in 2024, and appear to be back in growth mode.

Because the Am Law 200 is a revenue-based ranking, let’s start with that metric. Here are the first 10 firms in the Second Hundred, i.e., the firms ranked #101 to #110 in gross revenue (for the full list, plus lots of other interesting data, check out The American Lawyer):

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Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

What will be the long-term consequences for law firms of either suing or settling with the Trump administration? Critics of the administration would like to see virtue rewarded and vice punished: suing firms should gain clients and recruits, while settling firms should lose them. But even though we have a few initial data points, I think it’s too early to say how this will all shake out.

Here’s one area where we don’t see any Trump-related changes just yet: the Vault 100, an annual ranking of the nation’s most prestigious law firms. And this makes perfect sense, when you take a closer look at Vault’s methodology.

The Vault rankings—plural because there are a whole host of rankings, including the best firms to work for, the best firms for diversity and inclusion, and the best firms in different practice areas and regions—are based on surveys completed by 20,000 associates. For the 2026 Vault rankings—Vault is always (confusingly) ahead of the calendar by a year—the survey window opened on January 28 and closed on March 21, 2025.

March 21 fell only a day after the world learned of the first Trump/Biglaw settlement, the deal cut by Paul Weiss. And while many lawyers are procrastinators, I’m guessing the vast majority of Vault surveys were submitted before this news broke. So as Staci Zaretsky pointed out on Above the Law, we’ll have to wait until next year’s Vault rankings to see the reputational consequences of fighting or folding to Trump.

Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a $7.2 billion portfolio and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs, and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com.

Here are the top 10 firms in the latest Vault 100 ranking, with changes in rank from last year noted parenthetically (“—” means no change):

1. Cravath Swaine & Moore (—)
2. Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz (—)
3. Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom (—)
4. Latham & Watkins (—)
5. Kirkland & Ellis (+1)
6. Sullivan & Cromwell (-1)
7. Davis Polk & Wardwell (—)
8. Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison (—)
9. Milbank (+4)
10. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (-1)

Reputations are formed over long periods of time, so it’s not surprising that prestige is, as economists like to say, “sticky.” Nine out of the top 10 firms were in the top 10 last year, and six out of the top 10 didn’t even change their rank—including the Holy Trinity of Cravath, Wachtell, and Skadden. In fact, 2025 marks the tenth year in a row that these three firms have been #1, #2, and #3—ever since Cravath ended Wachtell’s 13-year reign at the top, back in 2016.

The one newcomer to the top 10 this year was Milbank, which climbed four spots from #13 to #9. As noted by Vault, Milbank was the first firm to announce special bonuses in summer 2024 and (generous) associate bonuses in late 2024. This came after Milbank rose from #17 to #13 in the prior year—so in the span of two years, Milbank moved up eight ranks.

In 2023, Milbank fell six places—after having gone up by 12 in 2022, thanks to leading a Biglaw pay raise in January of that year. So its rank can be volatile, and it will be interesting to see if stays in the top 10 in the 2027 Vault rankings. But there’s no disputing that regardless of year-to-year fluctuations, Milbank is now in a different league since becoming a leader rather than a follower on associate compensation. As Maria Ho observed in her own write-up of this year’s Vault 100 ranking, Milbank was #40 in the Vault 100 in 2019, only six years ago—and now it’s in the top 10.

Elsewhere in the top 10, Kirkland & Ellis and Sullivan & Cromwell switched places, with K&E going up to #5 and S&C going down to #6, and Simpson Thacher dropped a spot to #10. As I’ve mentioned before, I view moves of less than three ranks in the Vault 100 to be pretty immaterial, so I wouldn’t read too much into these changes.

It’s striking that six out of the top 10 firms reached settlements with the Trump administration: Skadden, Latham, Kirkland, Paul Weiss, Milbank, and Simpson. Don’t be surprised if these firms fall in the Vault 2027 ranking. I’m not aware of any polling of Biglaw associates for their views on the Trump deals, but in my anecdotal observation, most associates reacted negatively. So I could see these associates voting down the settling firms in Vault surveys, either because they genuinely hold these firms in lower esteem, for “capitulating,” or because of “protest voting”—e.g., ranking Paul Weiss ridiculously low, like #100, as a kind of “FU” to Brad Karp.

Now let’s look at the rest of the top 20, before turning to the biggest gainers and losers in the entire Vault 100. I include my own color commentary on these moves and their significance, which is quite detailed—likely to be appreciated only by hard-core Biglaw nerds. (I was going to apologize for all the “inside baseball,” but then I thought to myself, “Who am I kidding? This is exactly why people read Original Jurisdiction.”)

Here are the firms ranked #11 to #20 in the 2026 Vault 100:

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Tired of talking about Trump stuff? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s turn our attention to another topic that people love to discuss: money—specifically, how much of it Biglaw firms made in 2024.1

The answer: a lot. Here are the key financial metrics for Biglaw as a whole, from The American Lawyer’s 2025 Am Law 100 rankings (based on 2024 performance):

• Total gross revenue: $158.3 billion, up by 13.3 percent.

• Revenue per lawyer (RPL): $1.28 million, up by 5.2 percent.

• Profits per equity partner (PPEP): $3.15 million, up by 12.3 percent.

These numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation—which they handily outpaced, since inflation was around 2.9 percent in 2024. As Patrick Smith noted in his analysis of the Am Law 100, “[b]y the numbers, there is no other credible way to describe the overall performance of the 100 largest law firms by revenue: They crushed it.”

For purposes of comparison, here are the past five years of Am Law 100 performance:

So 2024 was Biglaw’s best year since 2021—which was its best year “in a generation,” per Am Law. Not too shabby!

In my analysis of last year’s Am Law 100 rankings, I predicted that 2024 would “end up being mixed—not as good as either 2021 or 2023, but better than 2022.” So I was two-thirds correct: while 2024 didn’t beat the banner year of 2021, it did come in ahead of 2023 (and of course 2022, which wasn’t pretty).

What about headcount? If you’ve been worried about the robots (or AI tools) taking lawyer jobs, I have good news for you: the attorney population of the Am Law 100 now stands at 123,953, after growing by 7.7 percent in 2024—much larger than the 1.8 percent increase in 2023. This fact makes the increases in revenue per lawyer and profits per equity partner even more impressive; when there are more lawyers around, RPL and PPEP can sometimes decline. (Why? Because there’s less work to go around, as to RPL, and because more lawyers means more in compensation costs, as to PPEP.)

That increase of 7.7 percent is a blend of multiple attorney populations. The ranks of equity partners increased at a slower rate, by 3.3 percent. But that’s still noteworthy because it means that in 2024, the Am Law 100 managed to increase PPEP by 12.3 percent even as the number of equity partners grew—no small feat. Compare this with 2023, where the number of equity partners actually declined slightly—meaning that the 9.3 percent increase in PPEP that year was achieved partly by shrinking the denominator. It’s more impressive to grow the entire pie, giving bigger slices to a bigger number of people, than to generate bigger slices by feeding a smaller number.

Meanwhile, the number of nonequity partners climbed by 10.1 percent in 2024—which means that there are now more nonequity partners in the Am Law 100 than equity partners, by a 51/49 percent ratio. I predicted last year that this would happen “in the next few years”; it actually took only one.

Now let’s take a closer look at three major metrics: gross revenue, revenue per lawyer, and profits per equity partner—where a new #1 firm narrowly beat out the usual leader in PPEP, Wachtell Lipton.

And you can probably guess who it is. Here’s a hint: $9.3 million goes really far at Costco….

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Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission. The (detailed and lengthy) footnotes contain material that did not appear in the Bloomberg Law version of the piece. You can think of the footnotes as “bonus content” for Original Jurisdiction subscribers.

Four well-known litigators—Karen Dunn, Jeannie Rhee, Bill Isaacson, and Jessica Phillips—left Paul Weiss last month. Shortly thereafter, they launched Dunn Isaacson Rhee, which Dunn described as “a new litigation boutique specializing in high-stakes trials, investigations, and crisis management.”1

Also last month, prominent trial lawyer Abbe Lowell announced the founding of his own boutique, Lowell & Associates. This came after his departure from Winston & Strawn, where he had co-chaired the white-collar practice.

These boutiques share something in common besides timing and the presence of headline-making lawyers. I suspect both firms owe their existences to a certain Donald J. Trump.

Paul Weiss was the first of at least nine large law firms to reach controversial deals with the Trump administration, in which the firms agreed to provide pro bono legal services to support certain priorities of the administration. While the founding partners of Dunn Isaacson Rhee didn’t refer to the Paul Weiss settlement in announcing their departure, three out of the four have ties to Democratic politics—and it has been reported that they wanted to be able to sue the Trump administration “without limitations,” which having their own boutique allows them to do.

As for Lowell, he left Winston to start Lowell & Associates shortly after taking on New York Attorney General Letitia James, the target of a Trump administration investigation, as a client. And many other clients of his new firm are also in the crosshairs of Trump, as noted in a statement he shared with me:

In our first 30 days, we have filed a lawsuit and motion for preliminary injunction on behalf of a whistleblower attorney, Mark Zaid; co-counseled the complaint and preliminary injunction motion on behalf of AmeriCorps grantees; publicly defended Attorney General Letitia James and former DHS official Miles Taylor against the egregious and outrageous threats from this administration; drafted and filed an amicus brief for Judge Hannah Dugan; and advised immigration non-profit organizations on the administration’s executive orders.

“These early efforts reflect not only the volume and urgency of the challenges we face, but also the trust our clients and partners are placing in us,” he added.

Of course, partners leaving Biglaw to start their own firms is nothing new. It happened before Trump took office, and it will continue after he leaves office.

“It is unclear to me if the boutique creation can be meaningfully connected to the Trump executive orders,” said Indiana University law professor William Henderson, a longtime scholar of the legal profession. “Boutiques occur because partners with solid books want the autonomy to make their own decisions.”

But part of that autonomy includes the ability to take on clients and causes that it might be difficult or impossible to represent while at a large law firm. And with the Trump administration taking on such a wide range of issues and paying much closer attention to Biglaw, the universe of potentially problematic representations is significantly larger now, at least for lawyers at large firms—firms with large M&A practices, whose clients need their deals to get approved by the administration.2

“I’ve challenged federal and agency overreach under every administration since President Reagan,” said Lowell. “But what sets this administration apart is the sheer scale and scope of its intrusion into nearly every aspect of American life. That’s why Lowell & Associates is here—to defend against that overreach when it matters most.”

So it’s fair to say that recent activity in the boutique space “is closely tied to the Trump administration’s attacks on the legal industry,” as one legal recruiter told me. “From my conversations with partners launching new boutiques, they want the ability and the autonomy to fight the administration in court.”

And there’s a reason these lawyers are starting their own boutiques instead of simply moving to different large law firms.

“Leaving a firm because of its deal with Trump could have massive ramifications if the new firm they joined ended up doing the same,” this recruiter explained. “So, going on their own is the best option.” (This recruiter asked to remain anonymous because of the confidential nature of their conversations with partners who have left, or are thinking of leaving, their firms.)

So yes, the Trump administration might be intensifying the move of partners from Biglaw to boutiques. But it’s a trend that I predict will continue for quite some time, for at least three reasons.

First, and related to recent events, increased political polarization is making it harder for Biglaw firms to take on controversial cases. Large law firms have many more stakeholders and constituencies compared with boutiques, including more clients and employees—many of whom object to the firm taking on certain hot-button representations.

But these matters can be particularly meaningful and satisfying for individual attorneys to work on—and they can come from across the political or ideological spectrum. Back in 2022, for example, Paul Clement and Erin Murphy left Kirkland & Ellis to start a boutique after Kirkland announced it would no longer represent clients in Second Amendment matters.3

Second, Biglaw billing rates continue to climb, hitting record highs—which many litigation clients can’t afford, at least not to the extent that corporations executing billion-dollar transactions can.4 Not surprisingly, Lowell cited greater flexibility in billing rates as another attraction of launching his own firm, on top of more freedom in taking cases.5

Third, technology enables litigators at boutiques to handle certain matters that previously were the exclusive province of Biglaw. For example, if artificial intelligence tools can review and organize massive volumes of documents, an army of associates might not be required to litigate a large and complex case.6

The migration of litigators from Biglaw to boutiques is a trend with the wind at its back. The Trump administration might be accelerating it, to be sure—as it’s doing with many other trends in American society. But the allure of greater autonomy for Biglaw partners existed before Trump took office, and it will persist long after he’s gone.7

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

It’s hard to believe, but the current Term of the U.S. Supreme Court—October Term 2024, in SCOTUS parlance—is almost over. We’re presumably done with oral arguments—last week’s arguments in the birthright-citizenship cases constituted a special session—and now we’re just waiting for opinions to come down (or not come down, as the case might be).

Here’s something else I’ve been waiting for: the names of the law clerks for October Term 2025 that I’m still missing. That class of clerks will report for duty at One First Street in July, a little more than a month away, and I’m still missing five clerks: three for Justice Alito and two for Justice Barrett. (I’m already aware of Michael Bradley, Kate Hardiman Rhodes, and Matt Phillips.)

Does this mean that Justices Alito and Barrett still have open slots for OT 2025? No; to the contrary, I’m reliably informed that they have filled their slots for the upcoming Term, but I don’t have the names of these five clerks yet. Can you help me out? If so, please email me, at davidlat@substack.com, or text me, at 917-397-2751 (texts only—no calls). Please include the words “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring” in your email or text message, perhaps as the subject line of your email or the first words of your text.

Before turning to the lists of clerk names, here’s some color commentary:

• I believe that all nine active justices have hired all their clerks for OT 2025—and looking ahead, five out of nine have hired at least one clerk for OT 2026 (everyone except Justices Alito, Sotomayor, Barrett, and Jackson). In addition, three justices—Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—have hired at least one clerk for OT 2027.

• As I’ve mentioned before, analyzing clerk hiring patterns foreshadowed the retirements of Justices O’Connor, Souter, and Stevens. And while it isn’t a foolproof indicator—Justice Kennedy hired a full complement of clerks, then peaced out (and those hires got placed with other justices)—clerk hiring can be suggestive. So I’d say that Justice Alito hiring four clerks for OT 2025—as I’ve been told he has, even though I’m missing the names—provides at least partial support for my previous, somewhat contrarian prediction that he won’t retire during Donald Trump’s term (to the disappointment of many conservatives who’d like Justice Alito to be replaced by a more youthful jurist).

• The same is true of Justice Clarence Thomas—a fortiori. He’s hired four clerks for OT 2025, whose names are all known to us (see below), plus an additional six (6!) clerks for the Terms after that.

• Speaking of Justice Thomas, one of his OT 2027 hires is Dan Vitagliano, a 2020 graduate of St. John’s University School of Law—and, according to St. John’s law professor Mark Movesian, that school’s first-ever SCOTUS clerk. Congratulations to both Dan and St. John’s. If any justice would hire outside the T14—or maybe that should be the T17?—it would be Justice Thomas, who’s commendably open-minded when it comes to educational pedigree.

• Vitagliano is currently cooling his heels as an associate at the powerhouse conservative boutique of Consovoy McCarthy (written about here and here). So is another future Thomas clerk, Tiffany Bates (who also clerked for Judge Kyle Duncan (5th Cir.)—one to watch when it comes to feeding). For a variety of reasons I won’t get into here, I don’t produce “feeder firm” rankings (despite occasional requests for them). But if I did, Consovoy McCarthy would be up there.

• Speaking of small places with big SCOTUS feeding patterns, Tiffany Bates graduated from tiny Hillsdale College (total undergraduate enrollment of 1,700), which punches above its weight in producing SCOTUS clerks. It doesn’t hurt that Hillsdale—a Christian, classical liberal-arts college in Michigan, which doesn’t take federal government funding (a good thing in this day and age)—is conservative, as are most of the justices. Another institution that punches above its weight, also religiously affiliated, is my alma mater, Regis High School—a Catholic, Jesuit, all-boys school in New York City. Maybe some diligent readers can provide me with statistics on the Hillsdale and/or Regis alums who have gone on to clerk for the Court in recent years.

• Fun fact: Michael Bradley (Notre Dame 2023 / Hardiman / W. Pryor), clerking for Justice Alito in OT 2025, is the younger older brother of Timothy Bradley (Notre Dame 2020 / Colloton / Sutton), who clerked for Justice Barrett in October Term 2022. [UPDATE (1:31 p.m.): Michael Bradley is the older brother of Tim Bradley; even though Michael graduated from Notre Dame Law School after Tim, Michael took some time off before law school. Another fun fact: their father is Professor Gerard “Gerry” Bradley, who taught at NDLS for many years and retired last year.]

• Speaking of Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton (6th Cir.), he’s the SCOTUS feeder judge who has sent clerks to the highest number of current justices—eight out of the nine. As noted by Sarah Isgur of Advisory Opinions (where Chief Judge Sutton was a guest earlier this week), he’s tied for this distinction with two others, Judges Amul Thapar (6th Cir.) and J. Harvie Wilkinson (4th Cir.). The first one of them to place a clerk with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “wins.”

Okay, that should suffice for now. For paid subscribers to Original Jurisdiction, I share actual clerk names—which won’t mean anything to most readers—below. As you can see, I’ve picked up a good number of hires since my prior roundup in February.

To repeat, please reach out with any hiring news that I have not yet reported (or any corrections, of course). You can contact me at davidlat@substack.com or 917-397-2751 (texts only—no calls). Please include the words “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring” in your email or text message, perhaps as the subject line of your email or the first words of your text.

And here’s an incentive: if you provide me with a hire I don’t already know about, I’ll give you a complimentary six-month subscription to Original Jurisdiction, which will allow you to access all of OJ’s content (paid and free). Thanks!

[UPDATE (2:35 p.m.): I’ve explained this many times in the past, but I do not identify sources for my SCOTUS clerk hiring news—and would even go to jail to protect a source (at least for a few days).]

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A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission. The detailed footnotes contain material that did not appear in the Bloomberg Law version of the piece. You can think of the footnotes as a form of “bonus content” for Original Jurisdiction subscribers.

Lawyers leaving the federal government have flooded the market with résumés over the past few weeks, causing the supply of those with government expertise to outstrip demand.1 And with Attorney General Pam Bondi de-emphasizing white-collar enforcement, which will presumably reduce work for firms in this space, federal prosecutors with this background could have especially challenging job searches.

Government lawyers seeking new opportunities would benefit from expanding their horizons beyond Biglaw white-collar practice. They should consider litigation boutiques, which are handling some of the most interesting cases in the country. And if they have national-security expertise, they should look into anti-terrorism litigation—a field poised for growth over the next few years.

Next week, Raj Parekh, former Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, will join Sparacino PLLC, a D.C.-based boutique that represents more than 5,000 Americans in civil litigation arising out of terrorist attacks. It’s a natural fit for Parekh, who worked on national-security and terrorism issues in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Counterterrorism Section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Central Intelligence Agency.2

Parekh’s docket at Sparacino, where he will lead the firm’s newly created E.D. Va. National Security Practice, will be different from his past work as a prosecutor, despite the shared subject matter. Anti-terrorism litigation on the civil side takes the form of lawsuits for money damages brought by victims of terrorism or their survivors, who are represented by firms typically on a contingency-fee basis.

The vast majority of cases are brought under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). Passed in 2016, JASTA amended the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) to allow victims of terrorist attacks or their families to sue not just terrorist groups—who are often impossible to locate, judgment-proof, or both—but anyone who “aids and abets” terrorists.3 In passing JASTA, “Congress expressly stated that civil lawsuits brought by terrorism victims serve national security by deterring support of terrorism,” Parekh explained.4

“I’m very much of the view that we are advancing national security by bringing these cases,” said Joshua Branson, a partner at Kellogg Hansen and prominent anti-terrorism litigator. “Congress made the judgment that there need to be civil remedies against companies that go into conflict zones and pay money to terrorists.”5

So even though Parekh will now be pursuing multinational corporations rather than ISIS leaders, he sees what he’ll be doing at Sparacino as a continuation of his work as a prosecutor.

“I’ve spent my prosecutorial career pursuing justice for victims and seeking to hold accountable those who threaten our national security,” he said. “It’s a rare opportunity to be at a law firm pursuing these goals in the private sector.”

Managing partner Ryan Sparacino launched his firm eight years ago this month, after seeing the market opportunity presented by JASTA’s creation of secondary liability for terrorism. Since then, the Sparacino team has grown to include former CIA officers, former counterterrorism officials from the Treasury Department, and former DOJ prosecutors like Parekh—who joins at an exciting time for anti-terrorism litigation, according to Sparacino.

“The pace of ATA litigation is set to dramatically accelerate in the next 12 to 18 months, and 2025 will be our busiest year ever,” Sparacino told me. “We’ll be filing at least half a dozen major new terrorism lawsuits in the next six months.” And a number of these cases will be filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, making Parekh’s expertise as a senior federal prosecutor in that district especially valuable.

What’s driving increased activity in the space? Sparacino cited three developments.

First, there has been a significant amount of terrorist activity in the past few years. Most prominent was Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—and Sparacino’s firm represents a number of clients affected by what happened on that tragic day.

Second, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh is making itself felt in the lower courts. Although the defendant social-media companies won that case, defeating claims they aided and abetted ISIS, Sparacino described Twitter as “easily amongst the most Pyrrhic victories any defense bar has ‘won’ in my lifetime: they defeated the case against Twitter, but sacrificed some of their most-cherished arguments.”

Justice Clarence Thomas’s unanimous opinion in Twitter is the Court’s most detailed analysis of JASTA to date. As Josh Branson explained, “It closes the door on imposing liability on a social-media or communications company simply because the company failed to prevent all terrorists from using its services.” (And both Branson and Sparacino told me they’re fine with this, claiming that they don’t bring cases unless there’s evidence suggesting the defendants acted “consciously, voluntarily, and culpably,” to use Justice Thomas’s words.)

But Twitter’s discussion of aiding-and-abetting liability also contains language that rejects two main legal theories of the ATA defense bar, according to Branson. It forecloses what he calls the “receipts” or “dollars to bombs” argument, in which a defendant claims it can’t be held liable unless the plaintiff can show that the specific money the defendant paid to the terrorist group was used to fund the specific terrorist attack at issue.

“Money is fungible,” he said. “And terrorists don’t keep bookkeeping records like that.”

Per Branson, Twitter also rejects any notion of “specific intent.” It’s now clear, he said, that a defendant can be held liable even if it wasn’t “one in spirit” with the terrorists—that is, even if the defendant didn’t want Americans to die, but instead had another motivation for entering into financial transactions with a terrorist group. For example, a company that paid bribes or protection money to a terrorist group—not because it wanted to fund terrorism, but simply because it wanted to make money—can be held liable under the ATA. (ATA defense lawyers disagree with Branson’s interpretation of the Twitter opinion, arguing that their clients are unfairly being held liable for acts they do not condone, and these matters are being litigated in district and circuit courts.)6

Third, although Ryan Sparacino described anti-terrorism work as nonpartisan, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, he said President Donald Trump’s administration should benefit the field.

“With the Trump administration de-emphasizing traditional corporate, white-collar matters in favor of national security- and border-facing matters, we expect the pace of terrorism-related enforcement matters to surge,” he said.

Sparacino is particularly optimistic about the new administration’s hard-line approach to Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism: “There’s no question about it. The Trump administration is taking the threat of Iran-backed terrorism more seriously than the Biden administration.”

Sparacino pointed out how the Trump administration has already thrown its weight behind private litigants who are pursuing claims against Iran. In a February 4 executive order, Trump directed the attorney general to “pursue all available legal steps to identify Iranian governmental assets in the United States and overseas, and help American victims of terrorism, including Gold Star Families, collect on Federal judgments against Iran.”7

Sparacino’s firm represents more than 1,000 Gold Star families—those who lost an immediate family member as the result of active-duty military service. Since the 9/11 attacks on American soil, most U.S. victims of terrorism have been members of the military serving overseas in conflict zones, where they are subject to attacks from groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.8

“We feel we have the best clients in the world,” Sparacino told me. “Our clients are heroes. And our cases are often the last chance for them to hold people accountable for what happened to them or their loved ones.”

“I love my corporate clients, but there’s something different about representing soldiers and Gold Star families,” Branson said. “They have all sacrificed immensely for our country, and very few have gotten what they are due. So it’s very humbling to work on these cases and to try and do the best that we can for them.”