WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A former board member at the Legal Accountability Project (LAP) is not surprised that Yale Law School has barred the use of student organization funds to subscribe to LAP's "Centralized Clerkships Database.”
“The organization has picked the wrong battles," said Edward “Coach” Weinhaus, who funded the clerkships database as the organization's founding social venture capitalist.
According to the LAP, its database contains "nearly 1,500 candid post-clerkship surveys submitted by former judicial law clerks nationwide about more than 1,000 federal and state judges.” The list includes LAP board member Maryland Appellate Justice Douglas R.M. Nazarian.
LAP president Aliza Shatzman
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In his criticism of LAP, Weinhaus referred to Legal Newsline’s reporting on a Feb. 15, 2024, advisory opinion of the federal judiciary's Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference stating that judges distributing LAP's post clerkship surveys to current and former law clerks, and other aspects of the "LAP Pledge," "gives rise to ethical concerns."
The pledge, which Weinhaus says his publishing company Judiciocracy created, asks judges to participate by circulating surveys to their clerks who would provide basic details, as well as answer more profound clerkship experience questions to draw out positive and negative information. Surveys would elicit answers on workplace environment, work/life balance, overall clerkship experience and each judge as a manager - positive, neutral or negative.
Judges also would agree to allow their names to be searchable on the LAP clerkship database and to appear on the LAP website.
"When the federal judiciary came after the LAP Pledge, the organization sat idly by," Weinhaus said. "Now Yale is just singing the same tune.”
In a Jan. 14 opinion piece at Above the Law, LAP president and founder Aliza Shatzman wrote that Yale's decision was "a thinly veiled, pathetic attempt to ensure that the students who need LAP’s clerkship information the most, may not be able to access it, and will remain beholden to YLS (Yale Law School) for whatever crumbs of information are tossed their way."
She accused Yale of not wanting "students to access negative information about clerkships, fearing it might dissuade students from clerking for certain prestigious — and abusive — judges. Of course, YLS students will always get clerkships: they can afford to be choosy. And, frankly, it’s not 'choosy' to decide not to subject yourself to abuse."
Weinhaus said that the LAP has a messaging problem.
“The organization hasn’t cracked the code on managing its messenger quite yet," he said. "Once it does, Yale and other schools will gladly participate.”
Weinhaus resigned from the LAP board last year to pursue litigation against the Illinois Judges Association. He also has worked to halt the perceived bias of Chief Judge Stacey G. Jernigan of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas for her alleged hedge-fund bashing novels in a case before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.