State judiciary abandons plan to fill law clerk jobs

As a result, the seven trial-court departments across Massachusetts begin September with a considerably smaller complement of clerks, who help judges with legal research and drafting memoranda, than usual. As of June, the judiciary had 105 full-time clerks; now it will have about 75 full-time and about a dozen part-time clerks, said Kenney.

It will be particularly hard for the superior court, which uses about half the clerks for serious criminal and civil cases, to operate without a full complement, ``but it will manage by sharing resources to the extent it can,'' Kenney said.

A spokesman for the Ethics Commission would neither confirm nor deny that Mulligan had sought an advisory opinion, saying such inquiries are confidential under state law.

Mulligan had proposed the arrangement in the spring because of two related employment trends.

Tight finances had forced the state to rescind job offers it had made in December to at least 24 recent graduates who wanted to work as law clerks. And the bad economy had prompted some law firms to defer bringing on first-year associates at full salaries.

Many large firms around the country are paying such ``deferred associates'' stipends of about $60,000, less than half their regular salaries of about $150,000, to hold onto them until the economy improves. Some firms have recommended that the fledgling lawyers volunteer at nonprofit groups or engage in public service. And several asked Mulligan whether their associates in waiting could perform their public service as law clerks.

Some legal specialists had said an arrangement that involves a law firm paying a judicial employee raised thorny ethical questions; firms that donate lawyers to the courts might appear to be currying favor or expect preferential treatment.

``I would think there would not only be an issue for the judge who hired the law clerk under the Code of Judicial Ethics, but an issue for the lawyer who accepted the appointment under the rules of professional conduct for lawyers,'' Andrew L. Kaufman, vice dean for academic programming at Harvard Law School and chairman of the Massachusetts Bar Association's ethics panel, told the Globe in June.

But Mulligan won the approval of the Committee on Judicial Ethics of the Supreme Judicial Court after he proposed a special ``double blind'' arrangement.

The Flaschner Judicial Institute, which provides continuing education to state judges, would have dealt with the law firms that supply the interns. Judges and court officials would have had no contact with the donating firms, and the firms would have been instructed not to identify the interns on their websites. The interns would have been barred from disclosing which firms were paying their stipends.