Congratulations To The 2025 Bristow Fellows

If you aspire to a Bristow, try clerking multiple times—24 out of the 25 most recent Bristow Fellows completed two or more clerkships.

The U.S. Department of Justice, home to the Office of the Solicitor General (photo by David Lat).

Congratulations to D. John Sauer, Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as Solicitor General of the United States, the federal government’s top lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court. Sauer, 50, is a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Law graduate who clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia and served as both a federal prosecutor and Missouri solicitor general. He has the credentials you’d expect from an SG, and I’m expecting him to be confirmed.

Next summer, Sauer will meet five young lawyers who will be working in the Office of the Solicitor General (“OSG”) through Bristow Fellowships—prestigious one-year fellowships that allow lawyers to work on Supreme Court cases just a few years out of law school. Bristows often go on to other high-powered positions within the legal profession, including but not limited to coveted Supreme Court clerkships.

(Speaking of SCOTUS clerkships, I plan to publish my latest clerk hiring roundup shortly after Thanksgiving. If you know of any hires that did not appear in my last roundup, please send them to me by email (davidlat@substack.com) or text (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.)

Here are the Bristow Fellows for October Term 2025 (2025-2026):