Advice for Law Students From State Supreme Court Justices 

In February 2024, the Brennan Center for Justice, State Court Report, and the NYU Law Review hosted a symposium dedicated to state constitutional law. Several state supreme court justices who participated sat down for interviews with State Court Report. Among the questions we asked them was “What advice do you wish someone had given you when you were in law school?”

Some gave practical answers: Get good grades. Enroll in a legal clinic. Try to clerk after you graduate.

Others offered timeless advice: Appreciate these years. Don’t be too convinced of your own views. Lighten up! 

As law students head back to the classroom this fall, we hope this guidance from the highest echelons of the bench is both helpful and comforting. 

California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin H. Liu: When it comes to career considerations, be open-minded and don’t be afraid to follow your passions. The biggest hurdle we often face is not lack of opportunities. It’s worrying that you should be doing something else. Listen to your inner voice and follow that.

Also, it’s helpful not to be too convinced of your own views, especially when you’re in a learning process, as law students are. You come to law school, I hope, not to find confirmation of all the things you already believe, but to consider a broader range of viewpoints and perspectives and knowledge bases you perhaps did not have. There’s the trite saying that the older you get, the less you feel you know. As you get older, you realize a lot of things are a lot more complicated than they seemed when you were younger. I’d tell my younger self that having more humility would have been good.

North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls: I didn’t appreciate what a unique period of time those three years were. I was so eager to get out there and practice. I took three years off between college and law school, and in those years I got married, and then pregnant. I was pregnant my first term in law school, and I was just so focused on the need to get a job and make some money to support my family. I had huge law school loans, but there was a six-month grace period before I had to start repaying my loans, and I could get a mortgage during those six months because the loans weren’t on my credit record. But then my loan repayments were bigger than my mortgage. I was so focused on practicing that I didn’t realize what an incredible opportunity law school is to engage with the intellectual side of the law. I wish that someone had said, don’t worry, you’ll learn everything you need to learn about practicing law in the first two or three years after school. It’ll be really hard, but you’ll do it.

Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Pariente: I would encourage law students to include clinical experience in their law school education. Those experiences were some of my most meaningful times. In law school I worked for a clinical program where we did landlord-tenant work. I worked in legal services for the poor. I worked for the public defender’s office. The clinical experience really expanded my view of what lawyers were capable of. There are so many more options beyond being a corporate lawyer. I enjoyed the real-life interaction between the law and individuals.

And when I talk to lawyers or law students who say, “I want to be a judge,” my response is always that they should first be the best possible lawyer they can be.

Being a lawyer is hard but can be very rewarding. If someone had told me how difficult it would be, I might not have done it! I just never envisioned how difficult being a lawyer was, especially for me in the 1970s and '80s. The firm that I joined after a federal clerkship had no women. When I gave birth to my son in 1977, nobody talked about maternity leave. I was back after three weeks. But I found satisfaction in being a trial lawyer, and always felt how important it was to have dialogue between lawyers and judges.

Former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson: I wish I’d been advised to clerk — for an appellate court, or district court, but just clerk for a year. Because you learn so much during that clerkship. You gain a mentor in whatever judge you’re working for, ordinarily. And it sets the stage for the rest of your career. I just didn’t know how important that could be until I had law clerks and understood how much they were learning in that very first year out of law school.

If you’re from a family of lawyers, I think you understand that a little bit better. And if you’re not, you’re a kid thinking, “How am I going to pay off my student loans?”

Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta H. Rush: That sometimes there’s not an answer — I was always looking for an answer. I studied a lot. I think I would have told myself to lighten up some back then!

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor: I tell students all the time: You learn as much about what you should be doing by figuring out what you don’t want to do. In my own career, I like to say I spent time trying things on and seeing if they fit. And if it didn’t fit, I put it back on the rack. Eventually you land on something and say, “Okay, that’s a good fit.”

Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick: I would have advised myself to get better grades. After I discovered that law school was neither about the practical practice of law nor much about constitutional law, I was not a very motivated student. Looking back now, I realize that opportunities are foreclosed if you do not get really, really great grades. For example, clerkships. But I did manage to obtain a very practical legal education through internships, so that by the time I left law school I was ready to hit the ground running.

Former New York High Court Judge Albert Rosenblatt: I don’t go around giving advice unsolicited. But if anybody asks about law school and the path of one’s life, the answer I’ve come to is: Try to imagine yourself at the very end of your career, taking your last few breaths of air on this earth, and ask yourself, “If you look back, is that what you wanted to do?” It’s better to consider that question when you’re 25, even if you don’t yet have an answer, than think about it for the first time when you’re about to expire.

I think of the tale The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Tolstoy. He died unhappy. You don’t want that to happen. So, make your choices now with that in mind. When you’re taking your last breath, you want to feel like you took the right path.

Interviews were conducted by Erin Geiger Smith, a writer and editor at the Brennan Center; Doug Keith, a founding editor of State Court Report and a senior counsel in the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center; and Gabriella Sanchez, writer and editor at the Brennan Center. Additional excerpts from the justices’ interviews can be found here. 

Suggested Citation: Erin Geiger Smith, Douglas Keith, & Gabriella Sanchez, Advice for Law Students From State Supreme Court Justices, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Sept. 9, 2024),  https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/advice-law-students-state-supreme-court-justices.