Congress is making a move to broaden the opportunities for law school graduates. Last week, Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), John Hoeven (R-ND), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to create congressional clerkships — analogous to judicial clerkships — for law school graduates.

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Working to make congressional opportunities elite ones that attract the best and brightest has been a challenge, and what the Steering Committee of the Congressional Clerkship Coalition hopes this legislation will address:

“The problem is not that Congress does not have enough lawyers,” the Steering Committee [comprised of Larry Kramer, former Dean of Stanford Law School; Robin West, law professor at Georgetown University Law Center; Bill Treanor, Dean of Georgetown University Law Center; Abbe Gluck, law professor at Yale Law School; and Dakota Rudesill, law professor at Ohio State] noted. “Rather, the problem is that Congress is not competitive for the opportunity to apprentice lawyers on the fast track to the legal profession’s most influential ranks. Congress is missing the opportunity to shape the constitutional perspective of the law’s future leaders. That is because unlike the federal courts, federal agencies, law firms, and law schools, Congress lacks a regularized apprenticeship program that is readily accessible to any top new law graduate, on the basis of objective qualifications,” the Coalition’s Steering Committee emphasized.

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