New site launches allowing young lawyers to review the judges they worked for and give law students a way to learn which judges have good — or bad — reputations as employers. | Practice Source - Legal News and Views

The Washington Post

A database is launching next month that will allow young lawyers to review the judges they worked for and give law students a way to learn which judges have good — or bad — reputations as employers.

The site, open only to current and former clerks, is a crowdsourced effort started by a former law clerk who says her career was derailed by an abusive judge. It comes seven years after two famous appellate judges — one liberal and one conservative — were accused of sexually harassing female clerks, part of the wave of #MeToo revelations.

Aliza Shatzman, who founded the Legal Accountability Project in 2022, says she has already gathered over 800 surveys since she began soliciting them last April.

“You can be almost irreparably harmed” by a clerkship with the wrong judge, Shatzman said. She had planned to become a prosecutor in D.C. But her job offer was rescinded after a negative appraisal from a local judge who called her “bossy” and compared her unfavorably to his wife, a story she recounted to the House Judiciary Committee in 2022 as she advocated better protections for clerks. The following year, she launched her nonprofit with the aim of improving workplace conditions for judicial employees. While the Legal Accountability Project (LAP) has advocated for Congress to make it easier to sue federal judges for discrimination, it is also hoping to help would-be clerks avoid experiences that lead to lawsuits.

Some individual law schools have similar databases, Shatzman said, and there is an informal “whisper network” of former clerks who warn acquaintances about particular judges. But she says that leaves out many applicants, particularly those who don’t come from prominent schools or have connections to lawyers who have held prestigious