Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.
During oral argument in A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, which involved disabled students’ rights against school districts, Williams & Connolly’s Lisa Blatt – one of the most experienced advocates to appear before the court in the modern era – accused opposing counsel of mischaracterizing her position. Justice Neil Gorsuch admonished her to choose her words more carefully, raising his voice. Blatt was unapologetic. She told him that experienced advocates should have their positions represented accurately. She later withdrew the specific remark.
The exchange was unusual by the standards of the Supreme Court bar, where decorum is so prized that Chief Justice John Roberts routinely instructs advocates to refer to opposing counsel as “my friend on the other side.” But it was also, in its way, revealing. Blatt has argued more than 57 cases at the court, has won over 85% of them, and is considered a SCOTUS legend by those on both sides of the political spectrum. She does not need to perform deference. She has already done the work.
So what does that work look like? And, relatedly, who are the lawyers that reach the top of the Supreme Court bar, and how did they get there? Using data on top ranked attorneys from Chambers & Partners in its appellate practices, along with argument counts compiled from Oyez.org, it is possible to sketch a fairly detailed picture of that pipeline, and to understand where, exactly, these folks are coming from.
What the justices say they want
Before turning to the data, it is worth spending a moment on what the justices themselves have said about what separates good appellate advocates from great ones. Their advice is remarkably consistent.
Roberts (who argued 39 cases before the court in his prior life as an advocate) has said that counsel should be able to tell the court “in simple English … exactly what it’s about and why you should win.” He has also emphasized that a skilled advocate should actually want the hostile questions – the ones from the justices predisposed to rule against you – because those are the questions that define the argument. Justice Antonin Scalia put it bluntly: “good counsel welcomes, welcomes questions.” He was equally direct about preparation: “point number one is to be very clear about what the issue that you’re urging upon the court is.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy focused on credibility: “the most important thing in a brief when you state the facts is you must be fair.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said simply: “First, be scrupulously honest.” Justice Clarence Thomas, who famously went years without asking questions from the bench, offered pragmatic advice about answering them: “Just say ‘yes,’ or say ‘no, but I’d like to qualify that,’ or ‘I’d like to explain.’”
The advice converges on a few core principles: clarity, honesty, and a genuine willingness to engage with the hardest version of the opposing argument. It also converges, implicitly, on the importance of credibility – the kind that can only be built over years of repeat appearances. Which is why the pipeline to becoming such an advocate matters so much.
The pipeline
The picture revealed by the data is one of substantial concentration – in institutions, in geography, and in a handful of career pathways.
First, there are only a relatively small number of firms with Supreme Court advocates. Gibson Dunn leads significantly, followed by Munger Tolles; Orrick; Latham; King & Spalding; Kellogg Hansen; and Arnold & Porter. The long tail of firms with only one advocate illustrates that elite Supreme Court practice is both institutionally clustered but individualized enough for standout lawyers to emerge.
Second, the vast majority of such lawyers can be found (unsurprisingly) in Washington, D.C., which accounts for 61 of the 75 office locations (several attorneys list multiple offices) represented – a commanding share. New York and Los Angeles each have three. Every other city has two or fewer. The Supreme Court bar is, with rare exceptions, a Washington-centered professional world.
Third is how many advocates in the dataset previously clerked for each Supreme Court justice. Scalia leads with seven former clerks among the ranked advocates, followed by Roberts and Kennedy at six each, and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen Breyer at five. The pattern reflects not just ideological preferences but the emergence of certain chambers as especially reliable feeders into elite appellate practice.
Fourth is law school. Harvard leads with 19 Supreme Court advocates, Yale follows with 13, and the University of Chicago forms a distinct third cluster at seven. Virginia, Michigan, and Columbia each have four. Every other school has three or fewer. Indeed, the top two schools alone account for more than 45% of the dataset.
Undergraduate institutions are not particularly diverse either. Yale (at nine), Harvard (at eight), and Princeton (at six) lead, followed by Georgetown, Duke, and Dartmouth at four each. Elite formation thus begins well before law school for many of these advocates.
The argument distribution
If the biographical data tells us how advocates entered the pipeline, the argument data tells us what the pipeline actually produces – and how steep this internal hierarchy really is.
Most Chambers-ranked advocates – themselves already an elite group by any reasonable measure – cluster in the range of 5 to 20 arguments. A smaller number have argued 20 to 40 cases. And then there is a thin tail extending all the way out to 124.
As for those with the most Supreme Court arguments (per Oyez’s data), there is (as of last week) Paul Clement (at 124), Seth Waxman (at 90), Carter Phillips (at 90), David Frederick (at 63), Lisa Blatt (at 57), Neal Katyal (at 54), Donald Verrilli (at 53), Gregory Garre (at 51), and Jeffrey Fisher (at 50).
Four paths to the top: a closer look
Perhaps most instructive comparisons involve advocates who arrived at the top by somewhat different routes.
Let’s take Paul Clement, Seth Waxman, Carter Phillips, and Lisa Blatt – four of the highest-argument advocates in the Chambers dataset who are currently in private practice. They are, by any quantitative measure, some of the most experienced Supreme Court advocates at the private bar. But their biographical profiles contain some telling similarities and differences.
Clement and Waxman perhaps represent the most conventional version of the pipeline: both clerked at the Supreme Court, both served as solicitor general of the United States, and both attended elite law schools (Harvard and Yale, respectively). Clement graduated from Harvard Law after completing a degree at Cambridge, clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and then for Scalia before joining what would become a storied career at the Office of the Solicitor General and eventually in private practice. His 124 Supreme Court arguments are the most in the dataset by a substantial margin.
Waxman, a Yale Law graduate who clerked at the district court level but not at the Supreme Court, nonetheless also served as solicitor general and has argued 90 cases. Both men are institutional exemplars – products of every major box in the conventional pipeline.
Phillips represents a geographic and institutional variation on that model. He attended Ohio State as an undergraduate, went to Northwestern Law, and clerked for Judge Robert Sprecher on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit before clerking for Chief Justice Warren Burger. He served as an assistant to the solicitor general and has also argued 90 Supreme Court cases while managing the Washington office of Sidley Austin. He is, by the numbers, as accomplished as anyone in the field, but he arrived without an Ivy League credential at either the undergraduate or law school level.
Blatt is the most interesting case study – not only because she is the only female on the list of top 10 advocates by Supreme Court argument. She attended the University of Texas as an undergraduate (summa cum laude) and went to Texas Law (also summa cum laude) – making her the only one of the four whose educational formation was entirely outside of the Northeast. She did not clerk at the Supreme Court, but did clerk for Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, then spent 13 years at the Office of the Solicitor General before returning to Williams & Connolly, where she chairs the Supreme Court and Appellate practice.
What the Blatt profile illustrates – and what the aggregate data confirms – is that serving in the Office of the Solicitor General is, in many ways, a more powerful credential than a Supreme Court clerkship. Nearly 70% of the advocates in the Chambers dataset with government backgrounds served in the OSG or as solicitor general. A Supreme Court clerkship matters, and the data shows that former clerks of Scalia, Roberts, and Kennedy are especially well-represented. But OSG service is the more universal common denominator. It is where elite advocates learn to argue on the court’s docket, often many times per year. It is hard to think of better training.
What the data tells us — and what it doesn’t
This all captures a particular slice of the Supreme Court bar. It does not capture every important Supreme Court advocate, and it does not capture the bar as it existed decades ago. The geographic concentration in Washington, the dominance of OSG alumni, and the law-school distribution all reflect conditions that have developed over the past several decades and may continue to evolve.
What the data does tell us, with considerable clarity, is that the modern Supreme Court bar is structured – not random. There are pipelines, and the pipelines run through a small number of institutions: Harvard and Yale at the law school level, a handful of appellate chambers at the clerkship stage, and the Office of the Solicitor General as the dominant pre-private-practice training ground.
For the lawyer who genuinely aspires to practice at this level, the data offers a sobering portrait. The gates are narrow, and they are narrow at multiple points. The few who make it typically have several qualities: an education at some of the country’s most elite schools; credibility built over time, typically in government; and the kind of training that makes hostile questions feel like opportunities rather than threats.