Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Meet The October Term 2024 SCOTUS Clerks

Yale Law bests Harvard, D.D.C. trounces S.D.N.Y., and other trends in SCOTUS clerk selection.

A clerk walking the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court (photo by David Lat).

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On Monday, Notre Dame Law School announced that two of its graduates, Kari Lorentson and Elizabeth Totzke, will clerk for Justice Amy Coney Barrett during October Term 2024. It’s great news for Notre Dame Law, which now ranks #4 nationally for placing its graduates into prestigious federal clerkships. In the 2024 U.S. News law school rankings, ND Law was the biggest mover in the top 30, going from #27 to #20—and I suspect its clerkship-placement prowess contributed to that rise.

The news about Lorentson and Totzke was exciting not just for their alma mater, but for those of us who follow Supreme Court clerk hiring. It means we now have a complete roster of SCOTUS clerks for October Term 2024—and I can crunch the numbers about their demographics, as I do each year. So let’s get to it.

1. Gender. The OT 2024 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). Of the 38 clerks, 22 are men and 16 are women, making for a class that’s 58 percent male and 42 percent female. This breakdown is very similar to the OT 2023 class, which was 61 percent male and 39 percent female, and it’s roughly in line with the recent historical average.

In conducting this analysis, I made assumptions about the gender identities of clerks based on the gender traditionally associated with a given name. For clerks with ambiguous names, I figured out their gender by looking up sources containing their pronouns. I’m guessing that in the future I’ll encounter a non-binary clerk—but as far as I know, these 38 clerks identify as either male or female. (Of course, if you have a correction for me on this, please email me at davidlat@substack.com.)

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

• Yale (14)

• Harvard (10)

• UVA (3)

• Duke (2)

• Notre Dame (2)

• Stanford (2)

• Columbia (1)

• Michigan (1)

• Northwestern (1)

• Penn (1)

• Scalia (1)

Yale was the clear #1, with 14 clerks in OT 2024—up from 10 in OT 2023, when it tied with Harvard. Harvard again produced 10 clerks—but since its J.D. graduating class is almost four three times larger than Yale’s (804 560 versus 210 for recent classes), YLS produces far more SCOTUS clerks than HLS on a per-capita basis. Regardless of what lower-court judges might be up to, the justices are definitely not boycotting Yale Law when it comes to clerkship hiring. [UPDATE (7:22 p.m.): Corrected the HLS graduating class size; the 804 figure includes non-J.D. grads.]

In OT 2023, Stanford and Chicago were #3 and #4—with five and three clerks, respectively—but they dropped a bit in OT 2024. Stanford produced two clerks, good for a three-way tie for #4 (behind UVA), and Chicago got shut out entirely—which I found pretty surprising, especially since it’s the #1 law school for federal clerkship placement generally.

But note that there’s what I’d call “lumpiness” in SCOTUS clerk placement, in terms of both feeder schools and feeder judges. Because there’s a certain element of randomness in terms of when clerks make it to SCOTUS, sometimes a school or judge might have a weak Term followed by a strong one.

Take Chicago. If you look at the SCOTUS clerk hires listed for OT 2025, it already has four on the board—and OT 2025 is only around a third of the way done, with 13 out of 38 clerks hired. (As always, that’s just the hires I’ve learned about; I don’t learn about all hires in real time, and some hires I don’t find out about until months after the fact—holla, Crystal Clanton.)

3. Feeder judges. The 38 clerks for OT 2024 completed 71 prior clerkships with 47 different judges. That’s basically even with OT 2023 (48 different judges), but higher than the 43 in OT 2022, 46 in OT 2021, and 39 in OT 2020—which suggests to me that the trend of serving multiple clerkships before making it to SCOTUS is alive and well (for better or worse).

Here are the 16 feeder judges with more than one clerk at the Court for OT 2024, with the number of clerks noted parenthetically:

• Katsas (5)

• Oldham (4)

• W. Pryor (3)

• Srinivasan (3)

• Friedrich (D.D.C.) (3)

• Grant (2)

• Millett (2)

• Newsom (2)

• Park (2)

• Pillard (2)

• Thapar (2)

• J.R. Walker (2)

• Watford (2)

• Moss (D.D.C.) (2)

• Oetken (S.D.N.Y.) (2)

• AliKhan (D.D.C.) (2)

So for OT 2024, Judge Gregory Katsas (D.C. Cir.) took the #1 spot—up from #2 in OT 2023, when he was runner-up to Judge Amul Thapar. Judge Andrew Oldham (5th Cir.) also made a strong showing in OT 2024, taking second place to Judge Katsas after doubling his feeding from two clerks to four.

Of these 16 judges, eight previously appeared on the “two or more clerks” list for OT 2023 and/or 2022, while these eight judges are new:

• Millett (2)

• Newsom (2)

• Park (2)

• J.R. Walker (2)

• Watford (2)

• Moss (D.D.C.) (2)

• Oetken (S.D.N.Y.) (2)

• AliKhan (D.D.C.) (2)

But again, note the “two or more clerks” qualifier, as well as my earlier caveat about “lumpiness.” I’d consider four of these eight judges—Judges Patricia Millett (D.C. Cir.), Kevin Newsom (11th Cir.), Paul Watford (9th Cir.), and Paul Oetken (S.D.N.Y.)—to be established feeders. (But Judge Watford, who left the bench to join Wilson Sonsini, is no longer an option for law-school gunners aspiring to SCOTUS clerkship glory.)

I expect the remaining four judges—Judges Michael Park (2d Cir.), Justin Walker (D.C. Cir.), Randolph Moss (D.D.C.), and Loren AliKhan (D.D.C.)—will grow in stature as feeder judges in the years ahead. Also, note that Judge AliKhan placed two clerks at SCOTUS while still on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, a non-Article III court that is D.C.’s version of a state supreme court. In December 2023, Judge AliKhan got elevated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (D.D.C.), which will only increase her feeding power.

Speaking of D.D.C., it’s interesting to see how it has gained the upper hand over the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) as the top district court when it comes to minting SCOTUS clerks. If you look at all the hires listed below—for all future Terms, not just OT 2024—you’ll see 11 D.D.C. clerks, almost double the six S.D.N.Y. clerks. Is D.D.C.’s domination here to stay? Time will tell.

Okay, that’s all for now. For paid subscribers to Original Jurisdiction who appreciate the “inside baseball” of actual clerk names, you can check out the lists below.