Fixing Our Clerkship System

Clerkships are typically described in the rosiest of terms—fostering a lifelong mentor/mentee relationship between judge and clerk, and affording only professional benefits. Few former clerks are willing to speak openly about the potential downsides to clerking: when judges mistreat their clerks, abuse their positions of power, and negatively impact their former clerks’ lives, careers, and reputations.

Join NYU Review of Law & Social Change on Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 1p.m. in conversation with Aliza Shatzman, President and Co-Founder of The Legal Accountability Project, a nonprofit aimed at ensuring that law clerks have positive clerkship experiences, while extending support and resources to those who do not. Aliza will be in conversation with RLSC, Professor Noah Rosenblum, and Professor David Glasgow of NYU Law. Aliza will share her personal experience with gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation by a former DC Superior Court judge to combat the culture of silence in the legal community that discourages law clerk reporting and to explain the circumstances that led her to launch her nonprofit with her law school classmate, Matthew Goodman.

Aliza will discuss the scope of the problem of judicial misconduct. She will then propose solutions, including The Legal Accountability Project’s resources, which will transform the clerkship landscape for the next generation of attorneys and ensure they can pursue careers they love, in workplaces free from discrimination and harassment.