Lovely One

In Ketanji Brown Jackson’s memoir Lovely One, she provides a thorough chronology of her legal career, from her education as a Harvard law student to her current position as a Supreme Court justice. Jackson explains how each of these positions added to her knowledge of the law, and she discusses the tasks and responsibilities of each position. 

After graduating from law school, Jackson’s first professional position was as a law clerk to Judge Patti Saris, a judge in the US district courts. In the United States, law clerks are lawyers who are responsible for assisting judges with a variety of tasks, such as legal research, writing and editing, preparing memos, assembling documents, and more. Jackson explains how becoming a law clerk provides new lawyers with invaluable real-world experience: 

A litigator’s work involves persuading a judge or jury to rule in a client’s favor, and being able to spend a year inside a judge’s chambers—becoming her ‘elbow’ clerk—is an incomparable way to fortify one’s writing and analytical skills while also learning how the system functions from that side of the bench (183). 

While working for Judge Saris, Jackson was primarily responsible for aiding her with legal research on cases such as Guckenberger v.