 Ethics for Lawclerks, an introduction. Hello. I'm delighted to welcome you to spend a little time considering the very important subject of ethics. The Judicial Conference Committee on the Codes of Conduct was very pleased to work with the Federal Judicial Center on this program, and we hope it will be of use to you. To succeed as a law clerk requires more than just being a bright and skilled lawyer. It also demands that you have a clear sense of the ethical principles that govern your conduct in your very important position. In this field, you cannot simply rely on your instincts. Not all the rules are that self-evident. To avoid embarrassment to yourself and potentially to your judge, it's important that you educate yourself in this area. This program is not designed to give you all the answers, but rather to alert you to some issues that are likely to arise, to help focus on this subject and to stimulate dialogue between judges and their law clerks. You'll need to familiarize yourself with the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees and the other references cited in this program. This video presentation and these materials cannot anticipate every situation that may arise. If you have an issue that you believe is not clearly answered by reference to the Code or other materials discussed in the presentation, please feel free to contact the Codes of Conduct Committee for advice. Of course, you'll also need to learn your own judges' preferences. Every chambers is different, and something that is permitted under the Code may be prohibited in your judges' chambers. To those judges who are watching this program with your law clerks, I encourage you to fill in the blanks. Talk with your law clerks after the program about what's particularly important to you. And to the law clerks, I encourage you to ask questions without hesitation. Ask them today. Ask again as you've had more time to consider these matters. And yet again when the issues arise, as surely they will. As a new law clerk, you have a lot to learn in a very short time. I've moved to a new city and I was the latest clerk starting. So I had a bench memo do the day after I started and I had no idea what I was doing or what I was supposed to do or what a bench memo was. I had never seen anything like the number of cases on my judge's docket, and I couldn't get my computer to work. And how the courtroom procedure worked was all new to me. How I might help the judge in the courtroom or out of the courtroom. Everything was new. With so many questions that need immediate answers competing for your attention, it may be tempting to put ethics on hold. To worry about that subject when you run into an ethical dilemma. The problem with that approach is you may not recognize the ethical dilemma until it's too late. What do you need to know to prepare yourself? Well, to start, how about what are the areas where ethical issues most often arise for law clerks? The Codes of Conduct Committee has identified several. They are maintaining the confidentiality of the judicial decision making process, conflicts of interest, restrictions on outside activities of various sorts, legal, political, professional, social, and community, restrictions on receipt of gifts in honor area, and dealing with prospective employers. In this program we'll explore these areas. For each, we'll first take a quick look at any authority. Usually starting with a canon from the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees. When they're relevant, we'll also refer you to advisory opinions from the Codes of Conduct Committee and the Ethics Reform Act gift and outside employment regulations. Remember though that we're paraphrasing and summarizing. For the full text, read the authority. The code is included in your materials for this program, as is the selection of items referring to law clerks from the Compendium of Selected Opinions from the Committee. You can also find the code at the back of the center's Chamber's Handbook for Judges, Law, Clerks, and Secretaries. And all of these references can be found in Volume 2 of the Guide to Judiciary Policies and Procedures. How an ethical issue looks on the page of the code may be very different from how it feels when it lands on your lap. So to help you recognize situations in which ethical issues may arise, we'll also present descriptions of some of the ways in which other law clerks have confronted these issues. We'll hear some of these as recollections from the law clerks who were involved and others as recreations of events that have been described to us or to the Committee. Canon 3D states that you should avoid making public comment on the merits of appending or impending action should never disclose any confidential information received in the course of official duties except as required in the performance of such duties and should never employ such information for personal gain. Many courts have local rules on the subject as well. People tend to think about the dramatic situations, someone skulking through the chambers at night making copies of files. My brother-in-law kept turning the conversation around to this huge class action I was working on. He was asking some pretty specific questions looking for me to predict how things were going to go. And then a little later he told me he'd had some bad luck with his investments and really needed to turn things around. And then he started asking about the case again. I was just, duh, and it finally dawned on me. He wanted me to tell him things so he could invest. And I was so stunned that I just blurted out something like, I can't tell you that. That probably won't happen to you, although it could. But something less dramatic in a grayer area almost certainly will. Most law clerks have to refuse to disclose something to someone at some time. Your position will give you access to confidential information that many others will want for a variety of reasons. Lawyers want to know how their cases are going and they want an insider's view of how they can improve their client's prospects. If an attorney calls and starts asking right away how my judge feels about something, that's a real tip-off. Generally, my standard response is I am not liberty to discuss a case with counsel over the phone. If there's something you would like to convey to the judge, you're welcome to come to Informal Matters and discuss it with them personally. I think a lot of the times the attorney who's calling doesn't realize that what they're doing has placed the law clerk in an ethical dilemma. And that's why I think it's important for the law clerk to be able to recognize the situation and put a halt to it. Lawyers will call up and give their arguments to the law clerk to try to lead you into a discussion of the merits. They want to get a sense of whether they're on the right track, whether you think the judge will be receptive to their strategy. You just have to say something like, if all those points are in your reply, the judge will read it and consider them. It can be more difficult if the voice on the phone is familiar. I will give phone calls from people who are associates of my husband or who know my husband and say, you know, start off with a nice lovely social conversation and then say, by the way, we have a case before your judge. We filed a summary judgment motion a couple weeks ago. Do you have any idea how the judge might rule on it? Particularly in a court that I came from, which is a very small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it was sometimes difficult. You saw these people out on the street. You knew them from past acquaintances. But it was a situation where the professionalism had to play a part, where they knew that they were calling you not as a friend, but as a member of the court family. You know, I think if somebody calls you that you knew in law school, but that you just said hello to every once in a while and just had maybe chatted with once or twice during your three years of law school, and all of a sudden they call up and are very friendly. For me, bells and whistles go off. I'd like to think that I'm not a paranoid person, but I immediately think to myself, why? Why is this person calling me out of the blue? I think it sneaks up on you when a good friend or somebody that you hang out with socially outside the courthouse calls you up and engages you in regular social conversation like a million conversations you've ever had. And then it starts to take a turn to, oh, by the way, you know, so and so in my firm asked me if you might know something about this case that he has before your judge. Sometimes there's a fine line between procedural information that it may be part of your job to give and more substantive advice that's of value because of what you know. A litigant would call or an attorney for a party would call wanting to know when a decision was going to be issued. And while that obviously is not a question about the merits of a case, it still seems to go to matters that are not properly discussed with the parties in advance of a decision being issued by the court. A disclosure that seems quite harmless can backfire. I do know of a situation where it was an innocent enough new law clerk did tell the attorney how the judge was ruling because the order had been written and the law clerk had no reason not to think that the order was going out that day or the next day. It just so happened for whatever reason the order was changed. And as you might imagine the attorney once he or she got the order was convinced it was a mistake. And of course called and no it wasn't a mistake and it put that law clerk in an awful position. You may be involved in cases of interest to the press. Reporters may think that you have information that can make their stories more detailed, more accurate, more compelling. In the past I've had reporters call me up both here in the courthouse and my office. I've even had reporters call me at home and start asking me about the case. You know, substantive questions about the case. And I'm probably a little more direct with the media than I am if an attorney is calling. And I'm probably a little more direct if they've called me at home. We had a death penalty case and reporters kept calling to confirm facts that they had heard elsewhere. Like, did the judge call the prison to try to speak with the prisoner? It was tempting to go ahead and confirm really simple things or if it was totally false you just want to say, where did you get that? But those kinds of facts can be important to appeals and the way you remember it happening may not even be right. The law clerk is an employee of the judge and only the judge should speak for the judge. The law clerk may think, well, since it's just on background, what's the harm? But there's always the possibility of being quoted when speaking to a reporter and it's something that may not reflect favorably upon the chambers even if what the law clerk has to say is actually entirely true since someone else is speaking for the judge. One reporter who always covered the courts who would come down that day with the judge's opinion for what was issued that day and he would ask for us to highlight what would be good, what's good in this opinion. He didn't want to read it, I guess, and that was always difficult. I said, well, you know, I think he could just read the summary and that'll tell you really where the judge was going and if you look at the back page, that'll tell you. I actually had a reporter from one of the local newspapers over there, I guess, figure out that since I was in the courtroom every day, all day long, next to the judge and every time he left the bench, I followed him out that I had a connection to the judge. I actually had this reporter follow me out of the courtroom down the hallway yelling at me, you know, can I talk to you, you seem to work with the judge. I have a few questions about the case and I was astounded that somebody was just yelling this at me down the hallway and I turned around and I simply stated I do not talk to the media if you have questions about the case you need to talk to the judge and I turned and walked off. Your friends and family want to know what you do all day. Usually you can give them a pretty clear picture of the life of a law clerk without talking about specifics. The irony is that when family or friends asked about the court, they would ask more about what you do each day and you can talk about those things. When they got into specific cases, if they read in the newspaper that a certain judge had a case, they would possibly talk about what about that case and usually I always had a very trusted ant who would say he can't talk about those things but every once in a while you'd have to say well, either plead ignorance and say I don't know anything about it. That's a sign to the other law clerk and the judge is working with him or her on that one very closely. I can't even recall really ever telling my husband about a case and telling him who the parties were. I may speak of, we have a case involving a doctor and a patient from Illinois. I may speak of oh yeah, we have a really interesting bankruptcy case concerning this company that manufacture whatever. I try to keep it to generalities. I think law clerks whose spouses are attorneys can't help but speak about law over the dinner table. But I try not to mention any names. Sometimes it can be tempting when you happen to know the latest scoop on what people have read in the papers. I was out with some old friends from high school. It's funny, most places I feel like my job commands some respect but with them it just didn't click. It's so far into them they didn't even know they were supposed to be impressed. But they do watch TV and so the conversation turned to the media star of the latest DC scandal. Which happens to be a case before my judge. I was surprised at how much I wanted to say oh when she was in our chambers yesterday for the pre-trial conference she said. But of course there are very good reasons to resist. In order to do our job we need to know the judge's thinking also. We need to be fully aware of where he's coming from because it's very hard to work on an opinion when you're not really, you need to know what the judge's reasoning is. And so the judge needs to have a very trusting relationship with his clerks. And he needs to feel that whatever he says is confidential and won't leave the chambers. It's almost like thinking out loud we're really there to help him think. Then there are your fellow law clerks. Sometimes it may seem like they're the only people you can talk to freely. But even there, lines exist that shouldn't be crossed. No discussion of any cases whatsoever outside of the chambers. If you're out with your fellow law clerks even you think it's okay because you see them every day in the chambers. But when you're having a beer at the end of the day and you start talking about a case, bad, bad policy, someone can overhear something. You might have a slip of the tongue concerning what you think of a brief or what you think of the abilities of a particular counsel on it. Always to be excluded. Always everything that had to be anything to do with any case law should be done within the chambers and no place else. If you're an appellate law clerk you'll have an extra set of issues to think about. I was researching an area I wasn't familiar with. I knew that Judge X's law clerk knew it better. I wanted to ask for some guidance but I wondered if I told him enough to make it clear exactly what I was trying to sort out it would be pretty clear how my judge was looking at this issue at this particular time. Did it matter? Could I ask it in such a way that he wouldn't know? Should I ask my judge if I could ask? I'd ended up just doing the research myself. Canon 3F1 tells you to avoid conflicts of interest. Defined as a rising when you know that you or your spouse or other close relative might be so personally or financially affected by a matter that a reasonable person would question your ability to perform official duties impartially. That section applies to all judicial employees. Canon 3F2 adds additional restrictions to law clerks. You should not perform official duties where you have personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts. You or a lawyer with whom you have practiced has served as a lawyer in the matter. You have a financial interest in the subject matter of a case or in a party or you or someone you're closely related to is a party, lawyer or witness or has an interest that could be affected by the outcome. Some conflicts are predictable. You may know now some things you'll need to watch for. I worked in a local law firm, a fairly large firm for almost three years practicing civil litigation before I began my clerkship. So many of the attorneys with whom I'd worked regularly appeared in the court and before the judge. So it was a limited part of the judge's docket that they might appear on and my usual role in that kind of work was to prepare bench memos for the judge when I would pick up a motion and identify that it was someone I knew or had worked with at the very beginning I would say to the judge, here is Mr. So and so I worked with him and I might just not prepare a bench memo on that matter. I've had instances where the corporate entity my husband works for was a party to a case. We've had occasion, I can only think of twice in the past couple of years where a lawyer my husband was working with actively on some type of litigation that his company was involved in was representing a party to a case that was not only before Judge Limbaugh but was a case that was assigned to me to work on. And we felt that there was too much, too close of a relationship there and we reassigned the case. At the time of my clerkship my brother-in-law was also practicing law in the local area and although his firm didn't appear too regularly in federal court I remember on occasion when one of his partners was before my judge and I made sure that the judge knew. Other conflicts may be entirely unexpected. My wife's mother started a trust for our kids and a lot of what went into the trust was one company's stock. Well, wouldn't you know, I was working on a case involving not that company but one of their major competitors. If she had just given the kids the stock we would have probably have sold it but the way it happened we couldn't do that without making a big issue with my wife's mother so we ended up reassigning the case. It required some juggling and I felt kind of silly about it but the judge was understanding. Many years ago when I was young and single I've actually had on two occasions jurors, male jurors, express an interest in seeing me socially. I've actually had parties to a case ask me out and that really threw me for a loop. It happened twice with cases that were presently being tried before the judge and that was definite. I can't think of anything more improper for a law clerk to date the plaintiff or defendant in a case that's being tried before your judge. You're flattered but I was sort of taken back by it. My immediate thing was, no, I'm sorry I simply cannot engage in any type of social relationship with anybody who's involved in a case actively being tried. I immediately went and told the judge only because I thought it was important that he should know it. When I was a junior law clerk the first civil case that was given to me was also the first week that I came to work for the judge. The weekend before I came on I was at a wedding with a number of friends and we had a wonderful time. Everyone was dancing and had a very good time. Monday morning I walk in the judge gives me the first civil case and says I want you to just participate in this settlement conference or really just watch the settlement conference and see how settlement conferences is conducted. I looked down at the paper and realized that one of the dance partners that weekend was one of the litigants concerning a personal injury case and it would have reflected on their ability to at least dance in this case and it really needed, I felt very uncomfortable after I recognized the name and saw that there might be a possible problem. So the first thing that I did was to sit down with the judge and identify the fact that I knew this person. I did not go into the context of how I knew them or what their abilities were physically or how it would even play upon the case but just that I recognized this individual and I felt uncomfortable about the situation. Keeping the judge informed is crucial. You see the witness list and there's a name on it which is your next door neighbor or the parent of your child's classmate or whatever. I think it's important you let the judge know. It may mean nothing. It may have no bearing whatsoever but that's up to the judge to decide. Canon 4D generally prohibits you from practicing law but it does permit pro se action, routine work on your own and family matters and pro bono services on civil matters. When restrictions apply, such legal work can't present an appearance of impropriety, it can't take place in your workplace or interfere with your responsibility as a law clerk and it can't be compensated. There are also restrictions and appearances in court that vary according to the type of legal work. I had worked at a law firm before I started clerking and had spent most of two years working on a piece of litigation where our client lost the case. The partner called me up in chambers to ask if they could keep me on retainer to help with the appeal. It was one of those situations where I was thinking, did I hear that right? Did you really ask that? I was allowed to represent myself on a traffic ticket which of course I never would have hired somebody to do. It was quite a change of scene to go to traffic court. I volunteered at an AIDS clinic. Part of what I did was help the clients get their social security benefits. I was able to continue that work during the clerkship. I just had to let the clinic director know that if a court appearance was needed, they'd have to get someone else. Canon 5 prohibits both partisan and nonpartisan political activity, not just running for office yourself, but also public endorsement or opposition of political candidates and contributions to political organizations, candidates and events, and see advisory opinion 92. It's not so much that I'm politically active, but before I clerked, I would give money to political causes or I would go to political events just because I feel like you should put your money where your mouth is. I still have some pretty strong beliefs, but when you're clicking, you're not allowed to give money to any political causes and you're certainly not allowed to go to any political events. You're not allowed to fundraise. You sort of have to cut yourself off from politics. At first I found that a little bit... I didn't find that really intuitive. What's the problem with just giving money to a cause that I believe in? What's the harm in that? But I guess you have to think of yourself as a representative of the judge and you have to think about what would it look like to the public if the judge were giving money to this political cause. So we avoided it in many respects and it became actually a benefit in a small town because everybody and their brother might be running for an office and we would be solicited for money and we would say, gee, I'd love to contribute, but I really can't because I'm a law clerk and it really wouldn't be appropriate. My husband contributes regularly to some campaigns here in St. Louis. It just so happened that a good friend of his that he had been in private practice with who's a lawyer is seeking re-election to a political office here in St. Louis and I wanted to make sure to judge that was okay for my husband to make a contribution and I ran that by the judge and the judge asked me a couple questions and based upon those questions we decided that was okay for my husband to make the contribution out of his checking account which does not have my name on the check. Most law clerks will be law clerks for only a year or two and most feel that complete abstinence from politics for that period of time is an acceptable sacrifice but sometimes personal circumstances like the identity of a candidate can make it more difficult. My wife was running for city council and part of her platform was being sensitive to the concerns of families so she didn't have much patience telling her I couldn't appear in a family photo that would go on her poster. Luckily it turned out that I could appear I just couldn't be identified as a law clerk and I had to stay away from the meeting she had at her house. The need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety may lead judges to forbid actions that at first glance hardly seem to rise to the level of political activity. It was easy to say okay I won't run for office I won't carry signs for a candidate or even give money but I'm just politically minded I think a lot of people who become law clerks tend to be so I had to be very careful even of what I said one day I was in our work area in chambers and I said to my co-clerk how can the mayor be such a cold-hearted idiot? It was a spontaneous outburst but the judge who was in the secretaries area overheard and she reminded me that someone else could have been there too and she suggested that I curb future outbursts. I remember one day we went out to lunch and one of the local candidates because the courthouses in the downtown area was out there handing out I think it was sponges and it said Joe Smith running for mayor I'll clean up Scranton Pennsylvania and it was on a sponge and we jokingly handed this and we would take it up and we had it in our hands as we walked in with our lunch that day on the table and the judge came out of his chambers and looked down and saw these sponges and said, guys that's very nice but you got to get rid of them you just throw them in the waste paper basket no political signs nothing even as harmless as a sponge can really should be in the chambers so we understood ate our lunch and cleaned up the table with the sponge and threw it away so we always stay away from the political process Canon 4A states that your outside activities should not interfere with the performance of your official duties or adversely reflect on the operation and dignity of the court subject to those standards and other provisions of the code you may engage in a wide range of activities charitable, religious, professional, social and so forth speak, write, lecture and teach if the proposed activity concerns the law or the legal system consult first with your judge during the second year of my clerkship I was allowed to work as a legal writing instructor at Temple University and before I took that position I discussed it with Judge O'Neill and what guidelines he set out for me were that as long as that position would not interfere with my doing my work at the court and as long as I did it on my own time then it was acceptable it's a good idea to keep your judge informed of your non-law related activities as well even if you know of nothing that will take the activity off the approved list my friend who worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office had a holiday party a perfectly respectable event but when I asked the judge about it he said he had just been assigned a case from them so he said maybe next year through casual conversation you would say oh this weekend I'm going to help them out with the race for the cure and he wouldn't have any hesitation concerning that but actually I think it was a good thing that you're getting involved in the community but it was really more anything that had to do with litigation whether a particular sponsor or what have you is before the judge I thought that was alright during the clerkship I did some freelance writing for a news publication I wrote a story about Camden I even wrote a story about Philadelphia which is where I was working and I also wrote a story about Court TV which during the time of my clerkship was in its inception before I did any assignment from that magazine I discussed that with Judge O'Neill about the nature of the work and the subjects that I was going to write about I would discuss with him in advance what those subjects were just to let him know who I might be talking to and what I might be writing about so that there would not be the possibility of improper communication with someone who would be, was a party in a matter before the judge or writing about a matter say pending before either Judge O'Neill or some other judge in the court and sometimes you won't even need to ask during the time that I was a law clerk I began baking cakes first just for nieces and nephew birthday parties things like that and it was starting to be a real hobby and something that I was sort of toyed with the idea of whether there could be a business in that friends of mine of course knew that I was doing that and one day I got a phone call from one of the office managers at my former law firm and she reminded me that the firm had monthly birthday parties and said I hear that you're baking cakes we just as well you know we'll buy our monthly birthday cake from you instead of the bakery and you know at first I thought and then without going to the judge I had to say no I I guess I'd better not have a business relationship even revolving around cakes or anything like that with the law firm so I didn't do it before I went to law school I was an actress and even while I was in school in New York I did a whole lot of plays not a whole lot but I did a number of them and one of them was a very kind of controversial piece with nudity and homo eroticism and drug use and all sorts of things none of them by my character but they were in the piece and the director and the producer who had done it in New York was from the city where I was clerking and she wanted to do the play again while I was there and she wanted to do it while I was clerking and I just felt that it wasn't appropriate I didn't even need to consult with anyone it was sort of clear there's no harm in doing a play and there's no prohibition against artistic activities or anything like that but anything you do do is not supposed to detract from the dignity of the judiciary and I just sort of felt that any play that was this controversial maybe it was from I was a member of a local volunteer organization in the community where the court was and my assignment in that organization at one point was to solicit ads and donations for a booklet that was being put together for a holiday event and I said no to that without going to the judge and explained to the other volunteers that I couldn't solicit funds and I certainly didn't make the calls from chambers in any event so I stayed away from that but I continued to be a member in that organization and just did different types of activities with them you need to be particularly sensitive to political overtones in charitable or community organizations and activities the trouble is that a lot of things bleed over into political activities and a lot of law related activities or associations will have political positions and they might even lobby the state for those positions you know there are religious organizations that have strong political beliefs what if you want to be in a bar association that lobbies the state for gay and lesbian rights or for if you want to be in a religious organization that lobbies on issues like abortion or right to die or something like that these are all political issues and you can't just sort of rely on the label well this is a charitable organization so it's okay or this is a bar association organization so I'm fine you have to sort of look into what the organization does Canon 4C2 says you should not solicit or accept a gift from anyone seeking official action from or doing business with the court the restriction also applies to your family the gift regulations under the ethics reform act prohibition even broader prohibiting giving, solicitation and receipt of gifts that are not subject to any of the enumerated exceptions and the regulations on outside earned income and employment prohibit honor area for purposes of this introduction we'll confine ourselves to a couple of examples but we recommend that you read the regulations my old high school english teacher called and invited me to come make a speech on career day they offered me a hundred dollars I couldn't accept the money but I told her I'd be happy to do it anyway a very nice couple who were pro se debtors wanted to take me to lunch after their plan was confirmed I hadn't really done anything for them that they needed to thank me for and the case was over I think they really wanted to just disconnect from the court in a friendly way but I had to say sorry I couldn't go this lawyer sent us a huge box of candy for Christmas it was really strange he was a fairly new lawyer and I guess he thought it was perfectly okay but we just sent it back immediately Canon 4C4 permits you to seek and obtain employment to commence after the completion of your clerkship after consulting with your judge and observing any restrictions imposed by the judge some judges don't permit formal acceptance of employment advisory opinion 74 81 and 83 discuss various aspects of future employment several issues that we've already considered are likely to arise in the context of seeking and accepting employment first, maintaining confidentiality may be a particular challenge when you're interviewing interviewers would ask how much do you write of the judge's opinions and it wasn't just idle chit chat my writing ability was crucial my ability to manage a workload was crucial I wanted a job I was attempting to think if it were really so bad to disclose this the interviewer would know better than to ask but it was bad and I didn't disclose it but I needed a writing sample and I had done so much writing during my clerkship that I really wanted to use something from that but of course you have to worry about the confidentiality of your work product and of the parties and of the cases so I had to go into the judge and find out if there was anything that I could use I couldn't just take a bench memo and change the names and send it out I really needed to check with him I ended up using something it was a very short bench memo that was a kind of a routine criminal issue and it was so generic that there was nothing not only did I change the parties names to Doe and Smith to make it obvious that it had been changed but it was such a generic issue that I could trace it back to these parties there was nothing really unique about it to make it clear that it was involved with this case so I was able to use that but it took some digging and the question of benefits comes up here too is a gift still a gift when it's given to all of a law firm's new employees? I was interviewing with firms in town who of course had business with a court and of course they wanted to take me to lunch and sometimes even dinner it was a regular part of their interviewing routine and it was alright once I had accepted an offer it was also alright for them to pay for my bar expenses The conflicts of interest rules apply here what happens when the firm handling a case you're working on becomes your future employer? I had a co-clerk who had already accepted an offer from a law firm in the city and it was one of the bigger law firms so there were a couple of cases that came before our judge where that law firm represented a party so of course he had to be isolated from those cases which is pretty simple to do you get the briefs you see the law firm's name on the brief and you can isolate the clerk sometimes it can get trickier if that firm is involved in some secondary way they're not representing a party but they have some other interest in the outcome of the litigation or one of the parties is a client and theirs on another matter maybe they file an amicus brief or something like that that clerk had to be very aware of his firm and what clients had been with his firm when he had spent a summer there so he just had to keep on top of that Near the end of my clerkship there was a conference on a matter with Judge O'Neill where he requested that I not sit in on an open court conference where that law firm and several other law firms were attending because he wanted to avoid the appearance that I was possibly giving advice or assisting him even in this capacity of any decisions he was going to be making during the course of the hearing and I of course exceeded to his request and that's a situation where not only was it important for me to not create my employment situation to not create a possible conflict or an actual conflict by working on matters involving this law firm but to avoid the appearance of such a conflict Confidentiality issues can continue to arise even after you've left the clerkship and started your new job under Canon 3D the restrictions on disclosure and information apply to former as well as current judicial employees I took my files with me when I left what I thought of as my files and I didn't get around to looking through the boxes until a couple of years later at that point I realized that I had taken my drafts of some opinions with pretty extensive handwritten comments by my judge it really seemed like they should have stayed in chambers or in the trash or wherever my judge wanted them so I called her and apologized for sending them back Lawyers in my firm would stop by to consult on various aspects of cases that were before my judge for a year after the clerkship I wasn't allowed to appear before my judge I think the time period varies from court to court but as soon as it had expired a partner showed up in my office to bring me into a case that the judge was hearing I've just had to find tactful ways to remind people that I can't give them any information that's not public and I certainly can't guarantee them the sharing of their cases just because I clerked for the judge We hope this program has helped you prepare for what you may encounter Talking with your judge will help you more Litigants, lawyers, and the American public rely on the integrity of judges Judges in turn rely on your integrity and your vigilance and your communication to the judge of your concerns because everything you do will reflect upon your judge Whatever you take as a law clerk will help shape the nation's confidence in its federal judiciary It's truly a unique opportunity Thank you for watching I hope you found today's programs informative and helpful The second day of this orientation seminar will consist of a workshop on legal writing and editing with Stephen Armstrong of the law firm of Sherman and Sterling and Timothy Terrell of Emory University School of Law I have taught many judges, perhaps yours I hope you will find this presentation as useful as have the judges One final thing, before you leave please complete the evaluation form for today's programs which is included in your written materials Then please fax it to us at the number shown on the form We value your feedback We use your comments to ascertain what you need and to make our programs most effective for you Thank you very much for helping us