{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=DBBD26D6-D6A1-47AA-97E0-0B8E05BA0C6F", "Senators Introduce the Daniel Webster Congressional Clerkship Act of 2016", "2016-12-06", "2016", "2016-12", "Republican", "House", "UT", "Mike Lee", "L000577", "www.lee.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), John Hoeven (R-ND), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced the Daniel Webster Congressional Clerkship Act, Monday, a bill that would improve the business of Congress and increase the public\u2019s understanding of its work by establishing a structured congressional clerkship program for recent law school graduates and young lawyers.\u00a0\r\n\u201cUnlike the Executive and Judicial branches, Congress currently lacks a structured program for recruiting and hiring recent law school graduates,\u201d Sen. Lee said. \u201cToo often this means that new attorneys, who are otherwise qualified and eager to work for Congress, do not even consider a congressional career and are instead pursuing other opportunities.\u201d\r\n\u201cA clerkship can provide invaluable experience to a young lawyer at the start of his or her career,\u201d Sen. Leahy said.\u00a0 \u201cThe federal judiciary has long had a clerkship program that teaches recent law school graduates the workings of the judicial branch.\u00a0 Yet there has never been a formal clerkship program in Congress.\u00a0 Creating a pathway for more young lawyers to gain an understanding of how Congress works and the value of public service will lead to a greater embrace of public service.\u00a0 I am proud to be introducing once again bipartisan legislation to encourage more young lawyers to work in the Congress.\u201d\r\n\u201cWe want to attract the best and the brightest to public service,\u201d Sen. Hoeven said. \u201cThe Daniel Webster Congressional Clerkship Act will create a formal program to bring young, energetic and talented recent law graduates to work \u00a0in the Senate and House and see firsthand representative democracy at work.\u201d\r\n\u201cFor many years, the brightest young minds coming out of law school have flocked to the federal courts and the executive branch for clerkships and fellowships,\u201d Sen. Cruz said. \u201cUnsurprisingly, this has contributed to the legal profession\u2019s excessive focus on litigation and bureaucratic regulation, at the expense of legislative knowledge and development.\u00a0 The Daniel Webster Congressional Clerkship Act is a small, yet important step in the fight to change that trend.\u00a0 Ideally, the Act will better\u00a0position\u00a0Congress to obtain top-notch services from stellar law school graduates, and it will give those graduates access to\u2014and a much better understanding of\u2014the legislative process.\u201d\r\n\u00a0Committees in the Senate and the House will be responsible to select at least six clerks each year to perform a one-year clerkship. These committees would oversee the selection process in order to guarantee fair allotment between the majority and minority party offices. \u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u201cSenators Lee, Leahy, Hoeven, and Cruz are to be applauded for their vision in championing this bipartisan legislation,\u201d said the Coalition\u2019s Steering Committee, comprised of Larry Kramer, former Dean of Stanford Law School; Robin West,\u00a0law professor at Georgetown University Law Center; Bill Treanor, Dean of Georgetown University Law Center; Abbe Gluck, law professor at Yale Law School; and Dakota Rudesill, law professor at Ohio State.\r\n\u201cThe problem is not that Congress does not have enough lawyers,\u201d the Steering Committee noted.\u00a0 \u201cRather, the problem is that Congress is not competitive for the opportunity to apprentice lawyers on the fast track to the legal profession\u2019s most influential ranks.\u00a0 Congress is missing the opportunity to shape the constitutional perspective of the law\u2019s future leaders.\u00a0 That is because unlike the federal courts, federal agencies, law firms, and law schools, Congress lacks a regularized apprenticeship program that is readily accessible to any top new law graduate, on the basis of objective qualifications,\u201d the Coalition\u2019s Steering Committee emphasized.\u00a0\r\nThis bill, named after Daniel Webster, is considered one of the most admired and distinguished lawyers and legislators to ever serve in Congress.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=DBBD26D6-D6A1-47AA-97E0-0B8E05BA0C6F"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.1444580741226673, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}