Want to become a legal analyst for network television? Follow these rules. And always, always say yes to makeup. Andrew Cohen knows he has a lawyer’s dream job: CBS News legal analyst. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided the presidential election, the Tiffany network sent Cohen to the marble steps. Ditto for the trial of [...]

Q: My brain’s experiencing brownout. Analysis, creativity, memory—everything seems sluggish. How can I sharpen my mental ax? A: Dr. of Law, himself a frequent sufferer of stupid sieges, looks forward to the day neuroprosthetic smart chips become available at RadioShacks everywhere. For now, sadly, we all must soldier on with the miraculous “wetware” nature’s given [...]

Can you tell your Chardonnays apart from your Tuscan reds? The facts of wine every lawyer should know. Wine, like great books and a full collection of Coltrane discs, is one of those things a person of the world needs to own. There are clients and bosses to impress. Dates to woo. Toasts to toast. [...]

Clerk at the Place Becoming one of the 36 Supreme Court clerks—the so-called shadow justices—remains the single best move for those who aspire to one day cast their own shadows (three of the current justices—William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, and Stephen Breyer—did clerk duty). Riding shotgun for the Supremes is the first step toward a [...]

Predictions about Supreme Court appointments are about as reliable as predictions about who will win the manual recount in a presidential election: They tend to be based on no empirical evidence at all. But although it’s hard to say whom President George W. Bush might nominate to the Court when the next vacancy occurs (Justices [...]

Being selected to serve as a law clerk to a judge is among the most prestigious and career-enhancing honors a graduating law student can receive. The higher the court, the greater the prestige, with the Supreme Court topping the list. Naturally, these elite clerkships are extraordinarily competitive, not only among law students but also among [...]

Seen one chick judge, you’ve seen ‘em all Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg may not look like twins, but male lawyers arguing before the high court have a tendency to confuse the two. Attorneys Laurence Tribe, Walter Dellinger, and the late Bruce Ennis have all made the faux pas. The mix-up happens [...]

You are en fuego! You aced your on-campus interviews with your favorite firm, and your formal grillings at firm headquarters have been going great. Next on the agenda: lunch or dinner with an associate. Slam dunk, right? It’s just an associate—not a recruiting director or a partner. He or she may well have gone to [...]

On the list of things people do not generally look forward to, the job interview ranks right up there with root canals, strip searches, and John Tesh boxed sets. But with the proper preparation, it doesn’t have to be that way. The central skill is to know how to answer the damn questions. This sounds [...]

The Criminal Court building in lower Manhattan is a stolid 17-story Art Deco structure built of granite in 1941. Located at 100 Centre Street, it stands among a cluster of other imposing court and government buildings between Chinatown and the Brooklyn Bridge. An overhead walkway connects the court building to a city jail called the [...]