Jurists expand mentorship program to research attorneys

A nearly 5-year-old program run by California judges to mentor attorneys through the process of applying for a bench appointment has been so successful that it is being expanded to people who would like to become research attorneys for a court of appeal.

Justice Helen Zukin of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 4, was the architect of the original program that began as a pilot in the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2019. She said she got the idea to expand the mentorship when she was sitting pro tem at the Court of Appeal and saw applications for a research attorney position.

"I looked around and said, 'This research attorney applicant pool is not that diverse.' And you know that research attorneys are an integral part of what happens here," Zukin said in an interview.

There are 106 Court of Appeal justices in California, and each has three research attorneys. Additionally, each of the divisions within the six Courts of Appeal has two writs attorneys. Research attorneys help the justices research and write opinions and are at the table when some of the weightiest legal issues of the day are being hashed out. These jobs are often seen as pipelines to appointments to trial and appellate courts.

Guillemet

Justice Shama H. Mesiwala of the 3rd District spent more than a dozen years as an attorney for the court, including 11 working as a chambers attorney for Justice Ronald B. Robie. Justice Victor Rodríguez of the 1st District was a staff attorney with the California Supreme Court for more than 12 years. Justice Danny Y. Chou, also of the 1st District, is a former staff attorney with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Presiding Justice Teri L. Jackson of the 1st District Court of Appeal, Division 5, said most people find out about research attorney positions by word of mouth. There has been no systematic way to reach a broad and diverse pool of applicants.

"We are missing a lot of talented people," said Jackson, who stepped down earlier this year as co-chair of the mentor program for the courts of appeal.

Presiding Justice Lee Smalley Edmon of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 3, also stepped down earlier this year as co-chair of the courts of appeal mentor program. She said it is important for potential research attorney applicants to know what the job entails.

Jackson

"Why not let everybody find out what it is like? It is a good job for some folks and not for others," Edmon said.

On May 15, justices will hold their first webinar to talk about the mentor program for research attorneys. Gov. Gavin Newsom's judicial appointments secretary, Luis Céspedes, will speak. The panel, chaired by Jackson, will include Mesiwala and Rodríguez.

Efforts to diversify the California judicial system have been in earnest since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration. His judicial appointments secretary, now-retired San Diego County Judge Sharon Majors-Lewis, traveled throughout the state to meet with attorneys to try to demystify the process. Many attorneys, especially women and minorities, said they did not understand the process and often said they felt like they might not be qualified.

Those efforts were expanded by successive judicial appointment secretaries to governors Jerry Brown and Newsom. According to annual diversity numbers released by the Judicial Council, between 2007 and 2023 the percentage of California judges who are women jumped from 27% to 41%. Over the same period, Black judges increased from 4% to 9%, Latino judges from 6% to almost 13%, and Asian or Pacific Islander judges from less than 5% to 10%.

Wilson

Zukin said she got the idea to get jurists involved in 2019 when she was on a Judicial Selection Advisory Committee (JSAC) for Brown's judicial appointments secretary, now-Justice Martin Jenkins of the California Supreme Court. Zukin, who had chaired the Judicial Nominees Evaluation (JNE) Commission, was working with Jenkins on implicit bias training for judges.

"How diverse is the applicant pool [for trial judges]?" Zukin recalled asking Jenkins.

"Not diverse enough," Zukin recalled Jenkins telling her.

He said that he had traveled up and down the state to meet with attorneys and explain the process for applying to the bench but still wasn't getting enough applicants to superior courts from diverse backgrounds.

"I thought, we can't expect one person, the appointments secretary, to be the only one delivering that message and encouraging people to apply - qualified people and diverse backgrounds. I said, 'Let me go out and test a mentor program idea. So, I did talk to the community. To affinity bars; got back to him with a written proposal of what I thought would be helpful. And he and I worked on it together. And then ultimately, we decided that the pilot program should be at the LA Superior Court, where [then Presiding Judge Kevin] Brazile embraced it fully."

Zukin

The pilot program at the Los Angeles County Superior Court was so successful that it was expanded to all 58 trial courts and then the courts of appeal. So far, 256 people have been mentored statewide. Nine people who have gone through the program have received bench appointments.

Judge Kimberly Guillemet leads the Los Angeles County Superior Court mentor program. She said they are now trying "to pair mentees with judges only on the bench two or three years so the appointment process is very fresh in their mind."

"Our goal is to demystify the process, so you don't self-select out," Guillemet said. Some people who go through the program decide not to apply, "but they understand that they are qualified to apply," she said.

The governor's office doesn't run the program and there is no guarantee that the mentorship will lead to an appointment, although Céspedes does speak at some events, including a webinar about imposter syndrome for aspiring Los Angeles County Superior Court judges scheduled for this Wednesday.

"The appointments secretary may never know that you ever went through the program. It's irrelevant by the time he interviews you," Zukin said. "But it's helped to increase the diversity of the applicant pool. And we say that in the broadest sense of diversity."

There are no criteria for being mentored for any facet of the program beyond the state requirement that judges must have been a lawyer for at least 10 years and a member of the California Bar. Zukin said they have tried not to emphasize trial work when selecting whom to mentor and instead look for other transferable skills.

"There's a recognition that women don't always first chair on the civil side at the same rate men do, or people of diverse background," Zukin said.

The process for applying to be mentored is simple. Fill out an online questionnaire. If selected, a mentor will meet with the applicant at least twice within six months. Mentees for judicial appointments or research attorney positions are urged to ask any question they have about the process and the work.

"The idea is to provide some transparency to our work so more candidates will apply," said Justice Charles Wilson of the 6th District Court of Appeal, who is co-chairing the research attorney mentorship program with Zukin.

"One of the challenges historically was unless you were friends with a sitting justice you didn't have an opportunity to reach out to someone to find out about the job," Wilson said.

Reached on Friday, Jenkins said judicial mentoring is focused on finding not just minority candidates, but attorneys from a variety of backgrounds and specialties. Like joining the bench, the process of obtaining a research attorney or clerk or position within a court can be "opaque" to many people, Jenkins said, and having someone to "walk you through the process" can be very helpful.

Jenkins noted the relative low entry pay for court attorneys may put off some attorneys, particularly if they are carrying law school debt. He encouraged lawyers to think of research attorney jobs as a role one could move in and out of during their career, perhaps after paying down loans.

"There are some really attractive assets of this work," Jenkins said. "If research attorneys leave the court, they are certainly attractive to a wide variety of employers because they have that experience."

He added, "This is not just an issue in the California courts, and particularly on the appellate courts. It's an issue on the federal side. I spent 11 years as federal district judge and tried to be focused and intentional about getting the word out."

Jenkins pointed to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's appearance at Berkeley Law School in February as an example of how some law school graduates don't look at career paths working directly for judges.

"I did not understand, graduating from law school, how important clerking was, and I had a mentor at the law school who tried to explain it to me, but I was poor," Sotomayor said in conversation with Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. "I hadn't made any money. I needed to pay off student debt."