Professor Pamela Karlan is quoted on clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court and the role it can have in a lawyer's career. Robert Barnes of The Washington Post filed this story:

Solicitor General Elena Kagan's membership in an exclusive club is causing trouble for her Supreme Court nomination. But that is unlikely to defer future applicants.

Kagan is part of a vast network of lawyers of all political persuasions who clerked for a Supreme Court justice. It is a group that grows by about 40 lawyers every year and plays an increasing role in the workings of the court -- as practitioners, analysts and law professors whose work centers on the institution.

"You never get over it," said Pamela S. Karlan, who clerked for then-Justice Harry A. Blackmun and now regularly argues before the court. She is co-director of Stanford Law School's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.