Once or twice a term, a Supreme Court justice will pick up the phone and dial one of their former clerks with an unusual request: are they available to come in and argue a case that they know nothing about?
On paper, it might seem a tough sell if you’re an ex-Supreme Court clerk enjoying a lucrative career at a major law firm. You won’t get paid. It’s going to be extremely time-consuming. There is no prior counsel to review your work. And you’ll spend months drafting briefs and preparing for an argument where the best case scenario is achieving a victory on behalf of a client that does not exist.