Orin Kerr (UC-Berkeley; Google Scholar), Thoughts on the Declining Numbers of SCOTUS Clerks Becoming Law Professors:
From 1940 to 1990, about one third of Supreme Court law clerks became law professors. But in recent years, Brian Leiter and Jeff Gordon note, that percentage has dropped considerably. Sarah Lawsky has some numbers of clerks entering legal academia in the last decade or so that Brian recently posted:
Even if Sarah is missing some former clerks in her numbers, that's a noticeable drop. What explains the trend? Over in the comments to Brian's post, Professor Dan Epps has a suggestion that I think explains a lot: The increasing separateness of the law clerk and law professor track. …
It used to be, decades ago, that getting a top clerkship and getting a top professorship were the same track. If you were a law student and you wanted to be a law professor, you got the highest grades you could and tried to use your grades to get a clerkship with the most prestigious judge you could. The clerkship acted as a sort of graduate degree in law. If you hit the jackpot and clerked on the Supreme Court, that was reasonably likely to lead to a professorship at a very good law school. … This was the era of 1940 to 1990 … when about one third of clerks later became professors.
These days, by contrast, the paths are a lot more separate. First, there's more of a multi-year process of planning for a Supreme Court clerkship. … Meanwhile, biglaw firms await with what are now apparently $500,000 clerkship bonuses if you join them.
If you want to become a law professor, on the other hand, the pathways today tend to be different. Law schools are now evaluating potential entry-level professors much more on their scholarship than on their grades or clerkships. As a practical matter, you need to have spent a few years researching and writing scholarship to get ready to go on the market for a tenure-track job. … As Sarah Lawsky has found, about 90% of new entry-level hires have either a fellowship or a doctorate. Many have both. …
[T]he single path of decades ago has largely divided into two separate paths. Once you're in law school, the way to maximize your odds of getting a Supreme Court clerkship is different from the way to maximize your odds of getting a professorship, especially at a top school. I think this largely explains why we see fewer people today succeeding on both tracks, first clerking at the Supreme Court and then later becoming an academic.
