 Thank you so much for coming today. I mean, the last row of the program, that class is like running sprees. We know that you have a lot of events going on today, so we recognize that. And that's why we're also videotaping this, because we know time is limited as we get 20 in the semester. So we are very fortunate that we have four of our graduates here who either are currently clicking or have first. So just before we get started, just since we have guests here, we can close laptops, turn on phones, or turn them down, make sure they're off, so that you can get your undergraduate attention that would be appreciated. So judicial clerkships traditionally are for one year after you graduate from law school, and they are a great way to learn about the judicial process. If you want to be a trial attorney, to see the good, the bad, be ugly, to have someone who's going to be a mentor for life. There are a lot of reasons why judicial clerkships are a great thing to do. We're very lucky that we have a lot of success with our alumni securing clerkships on a lot of different courts. So we have the Workers' Comm Court in Rhode Island covered, the Rhode Island Law Clerk Department covered, the Rhode Island Supreme Court covered, and Connecticut Superior Court covered just on this panel. But we also have a lot of our alumni who clerk in New Jersey who clerked in Massachusetts. We've had clerks of the U.S. Virgin Islands. We have clerks down in Maryland and a lot of other places. So geographically, this is a great opportunity for you to start working in a legal community, start working at the highest level of the courts there, and sharpening your legal skills. It's a great opportunity for you to really have that opportunity to be behind the bench with the judge and learn from that experience. So we'll go ahead and start with Drew. So this is Drew Redmond. He graduated here in 2011, and he clerked on the Connecticut Superior Court for three years, and he's actually starting back at the courts in a different office that he'll talk about very briefly. He starts on Friday, so we're lucky to get him today. Peter Spencer is also a 2011 man. He's currently working for a firm in Providence. He worked for, was it Justice and Delia that you were at? With Rhode Island Supreme Court for one year. Danielle Default is at a firm in Providence as well, specializing mostly in business law. And she worked in the Rhode Island Law Clerk Department. So they hired typically 15 to 16 clerks that get assigned to all the judges in the state of Rhode Island. And Brett Vodian is a graduate from last year's class, as some of you may recognize him. He's currently working for the Rhode Island Workers' Health and Station Court. So we'll go ahead and we give him a list of things to talk about, but in terms of what did you do during your clerkship on a day-to-day basis? What advice do you have for students who are considering? Who would like to apply for clerkships? What should they be doing? Classes, experiences, et cetera. Application process, anything along those lines would be wonderful for you to share with our students. Thank you. Thank you for having me today. It's the second time I've actually been on campus this week, after four years of O.A. I actually met with Veronica on Monday to talk some career stuff. So just to make the point before I start, you guys have a tremendous resource here in the faculty and staff that work here. So I encourage you to really take full advantage of that. I'm six years out. I'm still meeting with them talking about career stuff. So it's definitely an adventure while you're here on campus. Just to briefly overview Connecticut, there's three courts and three clerkships that you can do. We'll first with the Superior Court, which is what I did when I graduated from law school. You're part of a pool of about 30 clerks and you service all the judges on the Superior Court. There are about 177 judges on the Superior Court in Connecticut, but you don't work with all of them. Some of those people are on the criminal docket, family docket, housing. It's mostly civil law. What do you guys do? What would you do for a Connecticut function? We're also going to coach you with the Appell Court and the Connecticut Supreme Courts. There's three main courts in Connecticut. And those are, you apply for an individual judge and work with one judge for those. Like I said, I worked in the Superior Court for two years following graduation, and I have some contacts that have clerks in the other courts. So if you're interested in finding more information about that, I can definitely pass along your names or information to my contacts. About the clerkship itself with the Superior Court, like I said, it's about 30 people. They make about 20 to 25 new hires a year. And then some people stay on for an additional year. So it's made up of first year clerks and then people have been there for a few years. The program is based in New Haven. That's where the home office is. So at the beginning of the clerkship, you go down to New Haven for two to three weeks and do an orientation in a small group of like five or six people. So you become really close with those people. You go through what a typical assignments are. The supervisor really go over everything with you. In Connecticut we have, we don't follow the blue book. We have our own book called The Red Book. So we learn all about that and other things that are specific to Connecticut. So it's really good in that way. After that you're assigned to what's called the judicial district. There are 15 JDs, they're called JDs. There are 15 JDs throughout the state, Hartford, Stamford, New London, New Haven. They all vary in size. So some of the bigger ones are Hartford and Bridgeport and New Haven. Some of them are tiny. Typically you'll be in an office with about five to ten clerks in some of the bigger JDs for your year. Others are two to three. I think there's one where you just look at one person. So normally that's a second year clerk that gets that position. You get to request your preferences about where to work. You get to list your top two or three choices. So if you're living in Rhode Island you might want to work in the New London courthouse or I know some people who are working in Stamford now live in New York City. So you don't have to be resident of Connecticut. You don't have to have really any connection with the state at all to get one of these clerkships. So that's something to keep in mind. Typical week at the clerkship is Mondays we have what's called short calendar. Those are where the judges hear the arguable motions. So in the motions to strike, motions to dismiss, motions for summary judgment. And you attend court, sit in the jury box, everyone wonders who you are. And you listen to all the arguments. Then you meet with the judge afterwards in chambers, talk about what the arguments were, what the judge thinks about it. And that's where you get your assignments. Typical caseload is anywhere from maybe like you're working on five to dozen assignments at a time. And you get most of those assignments from the issues that are presented at oral argument. The parties present briefs, you look at those, you look at your argument notes. You get most of your assignments from the arguments that you hear or the arguments in your JD. Sometimes you get specific cases from other JDs. So they're really good in Connecticut about assigning you types of cases that you might be interested in. For instance, when I graduated, I was interested in employment law. So during my orientation, I said, I'm interested in employment law. I get some employment cases there, I'm sure. And so they actually funneled me cases from throughout the state that involved employment and labor issues. And I think in two years, a third of my work was involving labor employment law. I did some kind of work in the clerkship, you know. And so if you have an interest in anything specific, they take that into consideration and they'll assign you stuff from throughout the state. Like I said, 85% to 90% of the work is civil. You do get some criminal assignments every once in a while, but if you're mainly interested in criminal law, it's not really, you're not going to get a lot of that. The rest of the week is spent doing research and writing on the issues. We're basically writing a memorandum of law addressing it to the judge. It really depends on the judge what the assignment is. Some judges will ask you to research a specific issue or a split of authority. Others will just have you write a whole memorandum of all the arguments. And you submit it in the language, like it is submitted to the court that the court should create the motion or submit along those lines. Some judges, their style is they take your work and they read through and they sign off on it and it goes out and it's legal precedent. So it's really cool when you're researching and you see when your case is out there and you know, I wrote that, people rely on that. So it's a cool feeling. In my two years, I worked with 26 different judges of the court. So you get really exposed to a lot of different legal minds, legal opinions. I think that's a great advantage of this versus working, you know, obviously the public and Supreme Court clerkships are nice too. But I think it's an advantage of the Superior Court that you get to work with so many different judges. That's 26 judges. There's some of the top minds in the state, legal minds in the state. They're all connected. They're appointed by the governor. So they're all politically connected, connected with law firms. And those are 26 judges I worked directly with and I'm on a first name basis with. So I think that's a great advantage of working in the pool. As far as relationships with judges, they're all different. Some judges are friendlier than others, just like law professors. Overwhelmingly, they're all very nice. You know, you get pretty close to the judges in your judicial district. And I consider some of them friends and I still talk to them. I see them in court, I say hi. We fund out socially too. So it's really nice. There are some judges that have a reputation of being a little bit temperamental, but the program, it's a nice structured program. So the supervisors that you have and the permanent clerks really know who those people are and they take, who the judge is and they really cover that. So in terms of the structure, there's permanent staff that kind of run the program. And then there's supervisors. At the beginning, you kind of submit your first sentence to supervisors. They're permanent research attorneys who review your work, then submit it to the judge. After a couple weeks, you're basically submitting your work straight to the judge on your own. And supervisors cover a few judicial decisions at a time. In addition to the judges, you develop really great contacts and you become really close. If you get lucky in a good group, you're editing each other's assignments, you're bouncing ideas off each other, you're hanging out all the time if you want to. You get really close to these people. They share office space through your co-workers for a year or two years. And you become really close. In terms of preparing in law school, I would definitely recommend doing the judicial externship. I did that my two-year. I worked with Judge Clifton on the Superior Court. I know he's retiring. I know he's in residence here. I actually saw him the other day in the lobby, which is nice. You remember who I was, which is kind of cool. In that position, you really get to really interact with the law clerks. I remember I did it if you're on the criminal docket. I basically shadowed for a whole semester two Roger Williams graduates who were clerking there. They gave me all the tips, all the insight, ideas, information. And Judge Clifton actually gave me an assignment at the end of the semester about what he would actually give a clerk. So I got to do an actual assignment for one, which was really cool. If you don't do that, honestly, anything that involves research and writing would be great. I know some judges just take summer interns. I know one of my classmates, he had a few different internships in the summer and he just went and worked with a judge for like a month and just followed it around. You get to interact with the clerks that way. So anything that exposes you to judges, anything that involves research and writing, even at a law firm is beneficial. Classes that are good. Civil procedure, obviously. It's mandatory. Remedies is a good class that I took and kind of go over what judges can and can't award parties. That's good to know. Administrative law is also really good. In addition to those basic motions that you handle, the Superior Court and Connecticut also handle administrative appeals and state agencies and local agencies. So you might be doing like a land use appeal or like, you know, town ordinances and stuff like that. So just having a sense of that kind of language is good if you end up working on an assignment like that. The application interview process, it's a pretty straightforward process. It's online. I have cards here if anyone's interested in the website on it. But it's a three-step interview process. You apply at the beginning of three all year and the first interview is really straightforward. You kind of just go over your resume. I did that in person in Boston at Suffolk. But now I just took it to my old boss yesterday and now they're doing those interviews by Skype. So it seemed easier. You don't have to go like one. If you get selected for a second interview, that's a new haven. You go to meet with the administrative staff and the director and some of the clerks who work there. You have a chance to ask a lot of questions. And as part of this second interview, that's where you kind of you get three cases ahead of time, a case law and you read through them and you're all prepped on it. And they give you a prompt and you ask if you like a sample memo based on one of the principles and the cases and you write to a judge. It's just kind of another way to kind of see what you're all about. But it's usually pretty straightforward. It's like your legal methods class. Pretty similar to that. And then offers are made in March so that's really nice because you get the job, you know about it way before bar prep even starts. So you don't have to worry about looking for jobs at all when you're studying for the bar. So it's really nice. The person knowing it off is just Kyle Manning. She's in charge of recruitment. Again, if you're interested in talking more about that individually. Anything else about clerking? Just want you to know that there's no standard formula for who a clerk is. I kind of had the picture of my mind that it was someone who was really introverted or argument or something like that when I applied. But that's not true at all. There are all types of clerks. There's introverts, extroverts, people who like writing, people like arguing. It's people from all different schools with all different types of experiences. There's no one standard idea who a clerk is. I met a lot of different people when I clerked. There's no mandatory requisites. I wasn't on law review. So that's something that shouldn't hold me back if you're not going through something like that. The one kind of theme that I find in clerks is that they really enjoy the process of researching writing. So if you're into that, it's a good job to have. You'll be passed about your work and then you'll produce a good work product if you're into the process. Connecticut takes people. Like I said, you don't have to have any connection to Connecticut. They take people from all over the country. I work with people from Minnesota, California, Michigan, DC, Florida and Canada. So they come from all over. And if you have a connection to Connecticut, that's great. You can mention that, but it's not required. So, all the other things you know is that sometimes they make mid-year hires. So the hiring, if you don't get a push-up on the first try in the winter and spring after you graduate, they people leave the program. They don't have a contract for one year, but sometimes people get other offers and they leave. So they look to hire people to fill those positions. So some people enter the program in the winter or spring. So if you go through the bar and you don't have a job or you have one you don't like, you can always apply again. So keep an eye on the website if they look for people midterm. Also don't be afraid to think outside the box. If you don't have a contract and just like, oh, you're from Connecticut, why don't you just apply? So I applied and I got the job. The student that I actually know is Professor Rensberg. Oh, sorry. She's part of the, she's chair of the judicial worship committee. Professor Newman is on that committee as well, as Lauren and Jenna Hatchway. Thank you. But she does a lot of prep work directly with students who are students of Susan, Professor Newman. So this is good to have that name on the reader. She's not visiting the building, but she does a lot of film. Sorry, I forgot. And then, you know, I really encourage you to apply. Most of the clerks are right out of law school, so you kind of only get one chance to do this. And it's something that's really valuable to you throughout your career. It's an advantage that you have throughout your practice or whatever you decide to do. So I really encourage you to apply. You know, again, if you're not really thinking about it. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. That was great, Drew. Yeah, so I'll just kind of describe to you what my experience was. I clerked for the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and I'll talk a little bit about what I did in law school and what I did to try to get that job and what it's done for me. The Rhode Island Supreme Court is the highest court of jurisdiction in Rhode Island. There's five judges who sit on the Supreme Court. Each judge, every year, typically has two clerks, except for the chief judge, has three. And I think the chief judge keeps one clerk. Kind of as a rollover every year. So there's a total of 11, right? 11 clerks each year at the Rhode Island Supreme Court. And I clerked with Justice Ndalia, who is an incredible person in a great legal line. So I was there for one year after I finished law school and it was myself and another Raj William grad who graduated a couple years before I did. Actually, Amanda was her name. She clerked one year in the third pool and then applied to the Supreme Court and then she joined me up there. So she had one year of clerking experience at the trial court level before she joined with me the year that we clerked for Judge Ndalia. And the way that the typical week when I, you know, at the Supreme Court in Rhode Island was every week during the term there would be all arguments in front of the entire court, right? So you see some of the top jurists at the state argue their cases before the judges and we attended each of those, right? So you had a little pocket of like, you know, a dozen law clerks watching these lawyers argue in front of the Supreme Court. We did that once or twice a week to make notes and try to pay attention, but mainly just to see and then we'd go back and we'd review all the briefs that were filed by old parties and then the Chief Judge would choose which of the five judges would actually write the decision. And so when we got that information Judge Ndalia would come and say, Peter, Amanda, this is our case, right? And go review the case of the briefs again and, you know, here's what I'm thinking. You know, go review, research and come back to me. So that's kind of how the process went. You had the briefs come in before the oral argument the parties to the case would meet with a single judge of the Supreme Court. They'd make an appointment, they'd come and they'd sit with the judge and back at the courtroom area and we'd be about to go to that when our judge was the duty judge that day. So we would sit there, we would hear the different, you know, attorneys discuss with the judge the aspects of the case. And then at that point we would decide whether it would go to be a full brief argument, which is 30 minutes or a short brief argument, depending on the complexity. So we'd have that meeting with the judge, which was neat, to see what the judge would ask them and then after the meeting was over we would talk to the judge and ask him about, you know, why didn't you bring that up or anything about this case? And then they'd actually have the oral argument and then we'd find out which cases we would have to write the decisions from. And then we would, at that point just work with the judge and just talk with them about which cases. And there's everything, I mean criminal cases, civil cases, everything gets funneled to the Romulan Supreme Court. And a really neat thing is that, you know, Judge Endalia, I think all the judges are the same way. Like, you would really listen to us. You know, at least he made it look like he would listen to us. We'd have like real candid discussions and he'd say, Peter, you know, what do you think about this case? What do you think about this legal precedent and how it applies in this case? And so it was really interesting to have those conversations with my co-plur and the judge. And I remember one time in particular, you know, we had the oral argument. We all came back, had a little pow-wow. The judge said, okay, this is what I think we're going to decide it as, go, right? And each of us got a sign of our own case, right? So I had some cases. I was the lead on some cases. In the one case I looked at, I reviewed the cases, I reviewed the case law, and went back to the judge and said, Judge, I don't think we just, I don't think that's right, Judge. I think this is actually the way that we should decide. I think I did. But he said, okay, let me think about that, Peter, take it back to the other judges, and who knows what happened, but eventually that's what the decision was. But it felt, it felt, it was great to feel like you could actually make a difference in some small way like that. I did associate a lot with the other clerks, right? So you're up on the side of the floor of the Supreme Court House, and there's, you know, the other clerks with the other judges you'd see every day. Each of us were in our own little chambers, in the kingdom with the judges, the king. But really it was the judge, his secretary, and then the two clerks, and it's close proximity. I mean, so I was sitting across from Amanda every day all day, you know, with the secretary behind us and the judge in his own room behind us there. So it was close, but it was fine. I mean, and so our day was typically that we saw the oral arguments, maybe we sat in on one of those end chamber conferences with the attorneys. The rest of the time we were reviewing, trying to come up, and really, literally just drafting the decision. And we'd draft one, draft, give it to our other court clerk, we'd review it, and improve it, and improve it, and take it to the judge. He'd mark it a lot, we'd come back and, you know, do, you know, many, many versions of the decision before the judge would say, okay, this looks about right. Then he would circulate it through the other judges, they would come back with their input, and it would evolve slowly to actually have the final decision, which would be three or four months later. So that's kind of like, in a nutshell, what we did on the Supreme Court, and it was really neat. It was when you guys could know your court clerk really well, the secretary, as well as the other judges, you know, it's a pretty quiet place up there, so when you walk down the hallway, in fact we would know who was walking down the hallway by, like, the cadence of the steps. And so, it was fun to kind of get to know the judges in Hawaii. Okay, so at that law school I just did the typical stuff, you know, I did my best, like, you know, I tried to get as good at it as I could. I was on law review, which was great. And I think it really improved my writing. I mean, I think, you know, that's what they're looking for, I think, are people that can think about complex things and that can write coherently. And I think that's one of the, you know, obviously the big things that they're looking for. But, yeah, law review I think helped. The writing sample I submitted, I think they all have different roles. I submitted, I don't know what it was, but I submitted it, it must have been okay. But I do know, I've had a few reviews with different judges. Some of which I got the job, some of which I didn't, but a couple of just funny things. So, in one of the, I applied for clerkship with the judge and the district court and I submitted, like, the same stuff I had the prior year, mostly. And whatever the writing sample was, it was, like, a year old. And in the interview, the judge was like, oh, it's interesting about this. Why did you come up with that in that way? And I just, I didn't know what to say because I hadn't read it in so long. So I was like, yeah, let me think again about what that was. What was the name of that case again? So, that's one piece of advice is to, it wasn't that bad, but to be familiar with the material that you submit, that was something that you submitted a while ago. And the other bit of advice as well is you'll hear it time to time again, but it's so, so important that, you know, edit every single thing that you submit, right? So, for example, on another interview I had, my resume was perfect. It was perfect. Except, I was inconsistent with my commas, right, where it's like, it's an option, right? And you have a list of, like, two or three things. The last comma is an optional comma. Is this making sense? Oxford comma? I don't even know this comma, right? I was inconsistent. On the interview that, on these two paragraphs, you had, you know, anyway. So, I mean, but it's just that, like, I mean, that's the fine tune that these judges are looking for and ask clerks that we do, you know, is they really want to have precision and all those things. And then another quick thing is, like Drew said, apply to everything, right? Whenever you think you're interested in, you know, whether you think, you know, you're super qualified or not, I would suggest talking to the people here at the school and they'll give you a good idea of what would be good for you to apply to. But I think a lot of it just boils down to fit, as well. So at the end of our clerkship, in the middle of it, Judge Adele was interviewing next year's crew, right? And so he would have me and Amanda talk to these people for a few minutes before they went in to their interview with him. And then he'd always ask us what our thoughts were about, you know, and a lot of it was just fit. A lot of it, you know, a lot of people are going up there and they've got wonderful credentials and they're all super smart. And a lot of it, I think, just depends on your fit with the judge. You know, they're looking for someone they can associate with that they can talk to and they can laugh about things with. And so I think that has a lot, so just my recommendation would just be yourself, whatever that is, good or bad. Because you're going to be stuck with that in those chambers for a long time, you know, so you want to be yourself. Judge Andelia loves dogs, apparently, in life. My co-clerk, Amanda, loves. I mean, she had like four pictures of dogs on her desk and the secretary loved dogs. And I got a dog person. But I knew, like in the interview, I didn't bring that up in the interview. Somehow I knew that the dogs were a big thing and I was like, yeah, that's a great challenge. It's a beautiful-looking dog. I went to your desk, you know. I don't know if I would have lost the job or not, but I just kept that to myself. Yeah, whatever it is. Anyway, so those are some thoughts. I mean, I'm sure things would come to my mind as we go along, but... So I have a question for you guys. So how many of you are thinking of applying for a clerkship in Rhode Island? That's a side of it, but... So I, as Veronica said, I was in the Rhode Island Supreme Court law clerk department. It used to be called the pool. I don't prefer doing it as the pool anymore. Apparently, I just don't call it. But it's the Rhode Island Supreme Court law clerk department trial. So, basically, if our years have been, Peter and I, my years have been reversed, you can probably be reviewing some of the draft decisions that I wrote. So I, in Rhode Island, in the law clerk department in Rhode Island, you're not assigned to a judge. You're never assigned to a judge. I was like, hammered into it. You're assigned to a calendar, a county, or a calendar, or both. So it's four counties in Rhode Island, Washington, Newport, Providence, and Bristol are combined, and Kent County, which is like four-way up. Kent County has the out-of... out-of-business calendar that's out-of-providence. There's the in-state, the out-of-state business does everybody else, and Providence does, basically. Providence, Cranston, Ork... I'm not Ork, but Orks in Kent County. So I was originally assigned to the MERS calendar, and if you don't know what that is, don't bother learning it right now, but I was at the MERS calendar in Kent County, and it was a pretty slow calendar. It was a lot of dealing with the fall-out-of-leg mortgage foreclosures and challenging the assignments of loans and, you know, very, very interesting stuff. But it actually was very interesting, but... So I was originally in there, and then I got moved to Providence, and it was kind of like a floater, worked with a little bit of everything, and then got assigned to assist, and then, basically, we second on the motion calendar in Providence with Judge Leach, who was on it for, I think he had the longest run on the motion calendar. So motion calendar is all of your dispositive, non-dispositive, so non-dispositive, all your discovery motions, motion compel, all that stuff, dispositive motion to dismiss, motion for summary judgment, those types of motions, and he had those, and then he was a very active judge, so he would pick up, if there was something like another judge couldn't fit on their calendar, or they were going away, he would pick up, you know, things like that, me and my friend John, Ryan, who went to Suffolk, that was on the motion calendar from the beginning, we would have to have more work, but it was great, he was, so not being assigned to a judge, being assigned to the motion calendar, I was with Judge Leach for that whole time, and he is amazing, I really loved working for him, I probably owe most credit for my current job to him, which I'm eternally grateful for, because I landed in a great spot, and so with Judge Leach, he's very, I would say, just like Justice Sandelia, and I described Justice Sandelia, it was, he really listens to you, and he'll put you to your paces and he'll discuss the case, you'll read the papers, you'll discuss it, but then it's really up to you to write, you know, for Judge Leach, a draft decision, most other judges for the motion calendar would be like a memorandum of law, but Judge Leach would read the entire decision into the record, it was very thorough, kind of closing the grounds for appeal, we weren't careful opening the grounds for appeal, but we worked very closely with him, I got to see everything, we got to see zoning appeals, we got to see, that's why when she was referencing an admin law, I mean, take it, don't take it, but it would be helpful if you were to get a position on the motion calendar, or any position in the trial floor, clerk department, but I had a great time with the judge, you're considered a state worker, there's great benefits that come along with being a state worker, I did not keep state worker's hours, I worked very long hours, I worked on the weekend, that was because the work had to get done, we were looking at like 14 dispositive motions a week, which you can imagine the papers on that are huge volumes of papers that you have to read, but I learned so much, my writing improved, I guess in my opinion, I'm thinking the judge's opinion too, it was very helpful to that, and then, so how I got there, and I agree with everything that Drew and Peter said, you know, you should, I was not on law review, I was on rule of court, I'm married, I have two kids, this is my second go-round as a competitive figure skater for that coach for 18 years, so this is like my do-over, or whatever, reinventing myself, so I had choices, I couldn't do both, and I really enjoyed the oral argument in the court and getting on my feet, but I made a very conscious effort to supplement not doing law review with taking every clerkship I could possibly get my hands on, whether it was just an internship, so the summer after my 1L year, I had an internship with Judge McConnell, who's a federal district court judge, he was amazing, not all judges do this, but he allowed us to use the decisions that we drafted for him as a writing sample, so I had two writing samples that were published opinions, he actually at the end of our clerkship framed the first page for us, so it's like hanging on the wall in my office, he's a tremendous, tremendous man and a great mentor. I did my first semester 3L year, I did a judicial externship with Justice Goldberg on the run in the court, that was so good to see what Peter's talking about, you get very, very close, the externs are in a little closet, that's like the opening of the table and there's three of us, but I learned a lot watching oral arguments and going through the process with the judge and their law clerks is very interesting and there's a lot at stake, so there's a lot of responsibility that comes along with it and then I applied for the trial law, we're not on the Supreme Court, I was in the clerk's department and I applied for that, like Drew said, one of the great clerks got it by March, you know, whether you have a job, that was wonderful, not having to think about that going into bar prep study and filling out applications, so I would just say that if I look back on it and talking about it to you all today, I actually really miss it, like, excuse me, I miss my judge, but you become very close, we're called his team, we're his team and whoever's birthday it is in the team, which is the court stenographer, the sheriff, the law clerks, who else do we have, his court clerk whoever's birthday it is in the team, we all go out for lunch and he invites us to attend seminars I think there might even be some prepping that they'll speak at and it becomes like Drew said, a little family, like you get to know them really well so it was a very, very good experience I would recommend it especially if it's one year it's not going to, if you're lucky to get it you'll be a better writer, a better researcher coming out, you'll know you'll see everything in one year we see everything you could imagine like they're doing zoning appeals and then actually, this is one of the, I'll leave you with this, as I said Judge Leach was a very active judge, where he would love to just take someone who could have fit something into their calendar he would volunteer to take it and I ended up writing a 62 page decision after a four month now this is on the motion calendar so this is a little awkward it's not the trial, this wasn't a trial motion regarding the discovery rule when the plaintiff wanted the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered their injury on a wrongful adoption case and it was a wrongful adoption just like tort of misrepresent negligence misrepresentation or negligence was that if the adoptive parents knew of the child's medical and social history if they had known they likely would not have adopted the child that's the claim can say they never got rid of their child but it is so intriguing very very long process that the judge and I bonded over because there's a lot at stake and it was hard and you had a lot of facts to consider so that was probably a great swan song to end my clerkship so I would recommend going for it try everywhere apply everything so briefly I just want to a lot of this overlaps obviously so I just want to touch on sort of my back story and how I am having a clerk at the workers' comp court and then briefly about the workers' comp court and how it's different from the other courts I didn't set out to be a clerk in fact my primary target was the Navy Jag all before law school and through most law school did an internship at the Navy base in Newport my first summer and then in Sicily with the Navy Jag which is fantastic love Sicily it's amazing and if you haven't been you should definitely go better than the rest of Italy wine's better, food's better anyway but didn't love the Navy as much as I thought, didn't apply and got back to my 3rd year and started to scramble and say okay you know what am I going to do now because I was pretty sure I would have gotten picked up so fortunately though along the way in law school I loved researching and writing and arguing and I did the moocore thing under Daniel's excellent leadership and loved that and then wrote out the law review my 3rd year even though I didn't know before I managed to convince the editor at the time to publish something that I really felt strongly about and I took every writing and litigation class I could while I was here I ended up getting bored with the traditional classes and so I took criminal lit and drafting class and appellate advocacy class and just wrote as much as I possibly could which you should do even if you don't want to go into clutches, that's what you're going to do if you're going to practice and I credit that experience with basically getting me into the Workers' Comp Court at the last minute so the Workers' Comp Court is different from other courts in Rhode Island in that it is one of two courts that has its own direct appellate process the traffic tribunal I think is the only other one because so there's no intermediate court of appellate review around general jurisdiction it goes right into the spring court we're going to have trials with the Comp Court and then the division within the Comp Court will take direct appeals and it's also an appeal of right so it's busy because if you lose what does it cost you to appeal but whatever the filing is so I get a trial record of each party and basically have to dig through the stuff and figure out who's right and who's wrong just like they do with the spring court we will have oral arguments on the appellate on the case there's a panel of three judges I work for technically Chief Judge for Aries, the Chief of the court but Deborah Olson, Judge Olson is the appellate author on all the decisions so she doesn't take any trials and that would be too confusing so she handles all of the appeals and then the other two members of any given panel are two trial court judges except for the Judge that worked out the case so they rotate through so most of my day job consists of writing the appeals and we do the pow-wow thing discuss the case I get to have input on where I think the outcome should be and then research the issues in the law and I think I'm close to changing somebody's moment but we'll see and you know it's great because you get to have that sort of interaction and you're not just told to go and do something so you do feel like your input is valued and I like to write in research so it's also very helpful those decisions take a few weeks at a time maybe a month or longer another primary responsibility of the law clerk there basically a bench memo for the oral arguments before you know you write the decision so the case will get appealed and at that point you're not doing much research you're just looking at the record identifying the issues and putting together at every page you know a bench memo but at the same time I do get some trial experience because although I'm not required to write trial decisions there are eight trial judges below and a lot of times they'll come by ask me to figure out some discrete issue and you know take a day and just answer this question of that so I get some variety there and I get to network with the rest of the judges and you know I think that as everyone said clerking is just great to basically start your career if you're not sure exactly where you want to go next or if you're not promised a big law job in Manhattan it's just great it's great experience researching and writing and getting to know people so you know between the judges that I've met and the attorneys that come into the court and even across the hall criminal court or family court I'm in the building you're seeing these people you're going out to networking events and you're hanging out with the other clerks so it's incredible it's been a great experience questions I just wanted to add a couple so as much as we all made it sound like it was amazing and it's changed or it was a great way to start our careers it's not for the you know thing of heart you will work a lot there is a lot of writing there's a lot to do and in anything that you do what I found through my experience and this is what I did in law school in the clerkship and now in my current job I said yes to everything I can you help do this I got that wrongful adoption case I said we were sitting with John and myself were sitting in the judge's office and he's like I got this thing it might be on this month it might be on next month you know any of you would you want to do this like wrongful adoption I'm not that familiar with it I'm like I'll do it 4 months later 15,000 medical documents later I'm combing through it but you say yes so it's someone that is not afraid of hard work if you're someone that knows there's an answer somewhere that you want to get to the closest you can get within to the truth to where you know the law is not black and white it is gray otherwise we wouldn't have jobs but if you're that person that wants to narrow in on the discreet issue and make help the judges make good law you know then and you you do that tirelessly this is the job for you if you're someone that doesn't that's like I don't really I only get paid for 8.30 to 4 and I'm supposed to have a half hour lunch every day or whatever it is and you don't like to take work home it wouldn't necessarily be the job for you but I promise you and I think that you're on your way there too but it personally it's into a great job I'm happy where I am I'm happy with the knowledge that I am asked over the year I'm so proud to have worked with that judge I'm so proud to have had an internship with Judge McConnell like it is your network into an island especially and it's the people that help like build you up and kind of carry you to the next level of your career so you know what the benefits are for me it's been amazing yeah I mean you're certainly going to be supported and the judges in my experience at the Concord I'm sure it's the same you know everyone's interested in getting to know you and your backstory and where you come from and what you want to do when they're you know I would even say you know aggressively willing to basically put you out to people that need to meet and so it's you know there's really I'm treated well I landed in this position and definitely recommend it whether it's you know it's a great first step to add on to that too I know Connecticut I've been on numerous interviews I know sometimes the firm say well we only have clerks or the last four hires we've all been clerks and I've heard that multiple times so it's not like that with every firm don't be worried if you don't get a clerks job you're not going to get a job but some firms do like that and it gives you an advantage in certain situations it's not like that so as you may have done this in that so Rhode Island only has about 25 to 26 clerks shifts from year to year New Jersey has 485 every year so that just gives you an idea so Connecticut and Rhode Island law firm departments New Jersey has one clerk per judge typically in more than one so we have a lot of our students from the New York New Jersey area we have students that have never stepped foot in New Jersey and again I think Peter alluded to this our students who are currently clerking are looking through the applications for next year so there's a great pipeline that we have students who open up letters first when they see it's from Bristol, Rhode Island and they know it's one of ours they're going to look at that letter so just know that that network does exist recognize that Rhode Island and even Connecticut have only 30 clerks for their entire court system is pretty small Massachusetts hiring has been a little bit unpredictable in the last few years there's a little bit more now but they have had consistent hiring in the last two years but they're moving more toward a research attorney clerkship pool so instead of having just one year term clerks they're looking to hire more what are called research attorneys which would be permanent positions so they have more reliable budget funding for it whereas the term clerks are considered temporary so sometimes if there's budget freeze that's the first position to go but they don't anticipate going to fully research assistant attorney positions there's still opportunities to be at the current grad hours I was just clarifying right now there's a great resource in Massachusetts of interest to you as well so there are a lot of great resources some of them are highlighted in this handout the Vermont guy clerkship still in state by state getting a lot of deadlines for next year how to come up yet but very reliable they're very busy so you can look at that certainly work with our office so that you are as prepared as possible tell us when we get these opportunities because from year to year we have great success in our grads so I wonder whatever we can to help you in the fall we do have Carol Barnoli we also had the attorney from Massachusetts who does hire come and talk as well so there are states that you're thinking Tennessee let me know and we'll figure out what we can do out there we have a lot of opportunities everywhere it's a great experience so we're here to help so Amanda Jacobor I met with her in anticipation of her interview I know she met with a couple other alums and I met with her I can't repeat most of what I said but when you've gone through it and you know what to expect with the interview and just in general like how I said to you you are never assigned to a judge so when you're asked well I'd like to be in this county or that county so we worked on that she did a great job but she was very prepared in my opinion we went through we practiced and we talked and there were things I said say away from this, definitely mention this so there's a good network of law clerks that will make themselves available to help you make our law degree more valuable more clerks I know that there's 15 so it was always we wanted to have more than half of them from Roger Williams but then someone came in mid-year last year so it was tied and I tried my John who went to Suffolk and I was like well we would joke about that but we take a lot of pride in it and there are limited spots but you could go from Rhode Island to New Jersey or New Jersey back into it's a really good experience one thing I will say when Carol does come in the fall she does not allow us to videotape her so if that is something I'm sure you know why so if it is something you're interested in doing I was trying to encourage you once on a date once it's secured that's a great opportunity if you don't see her in action get an understanding in terms of what she's looking for writing samples interview crowd so she doesn't really need to be back so that's just something to just plenty of seed in the future but then obviously if you do get an answer alumni like Danielle so Drew and Brett depending on where you're going so anything else? thank you so much for coming thank you