SCOTUS Clerks, 2000 v. 2025: Differing Demographics
In selecting Supreme Court clerks, much has changed over the past 25 years—but one thing has not.
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.
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.
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.
