Fostering Transparency and Accountability in Judicial Clerkships

So, you want to clerk? How will you access candid information about judges’ managerial styles, chambers culture, work environments, and treatment of clerks?

As recent judicial accountability news underscores, the importance of identifying a good fit and avoiding judges who mistreat their clerks has never been clearer.

Join Aliza Shatzman, President and Founder of The Legal Accountability Project (LAP), the first and only nonprofit working full-time to ensure that judicial law clerks have positive clerkship experiences, while extending support and resources to those who do not, for a candid conversation about judicial accountability and clerking. Aliza will explain the reforms LAP works on – in collaboration with law schools and the judiciary – to ensure transparency, diversity and equity, and accountability in judicial clerkship and the judiciary.

After graduating from WashU Law, Aliza clerked in D.C. Superior Court during the 2019-2020 term. In March 2022, after Aliza was harassed, terminated, and retaliated against by a now-former D.C. judge, Aliza testified before Congress about the necessity of extending federal anti-discrimination protections to more than 30,000 federal judiciary employees. Aliza launched LAP soon after to correct injustices she experienced as a law student and law clerk.

Learn how you can get involved with LAP’s clerkship transparency movement right now. By fostering candid dialogue about workplace conduct, LAP is transforming the clerkship system and legal profession for the next generation of attorneys, shining a spotlight on historically under-discussed issues, and innovating in slow-to-change spaces.