Sorry, University of Maryland and University of Baltimore law school students – you don’t have a shot of clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

An ABA Journal story about the composition of current and past clerks at the highest court in the land quotes Scalia telling an American University Washington College of Law student earlier this year she should look elsewhere for a clerkship: 

By and large, I’m going to be picking from the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. If they come in the best and the brightest, they’re probably going to leave the best and the brightest, OK?

(The real chutzpah of the quote is that Scalia said it on AU’s campus after being invited by the law school.)

For this upcoming term, the Harvards and Yales of the world still dominate the clerkships, although Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “caused a stir” by picking a Seton Hall alumnus as his one of his clerks, according to the story. The universities of Georgia and Texas and George Washington University are also represented this term.

One former justice who didn’t automatically gravitate to top-10 law schools was Byron White, who hired ”interesting people,” including a man who worked in a coal mine.

“Look, there are a hundred people a year that could to the job adequately,” the NFL-player-turned-justice told biographer Dennis Hutchinson. “I might as well have someone who’s interesting, and that doesn’t mean the ones that the fancy law profes­sors recommend.”

Newsflash: apparently, it’s a teensy bit difficult to balance a demanding law job with a family!

Enter the stay-at-home spouse, with a twist. The American Lawyer has a piece today on high-powered female lawyers who have at-home husbands:

Barbara Becker, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York, is working late again. But she’s not fretting about her four children waiting at home on the Upper West Side.

The reason she’s so cool? Her husband, Chad Gallant, is taking care of the home front. “He’s been Mr. Mom for seven years,” says Becker blithely. “He’s great at it, and it allows me to do my job.”

In fact, Gallant–a former associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore–has morphed into an über-dad, embarking on a series of projects that would put Martha Stewart to shame. Not only does he volunteer to run a robotics program at his kids’ school, he also keeps bees at their country house, makes model rockets, and dreams up “interesting” math projects for his kids. And when he’s by himself, he works out at the gym, cooks meals (he honed his skills at The French Culinary Institute in New York), and does the family’s bookkeeping.

I’ve actually heard some anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon here in the Maryland legal community, too. Readers: would you want to try this in your house?

(Dubious use of statistics alert! The American Lawyer writes:

With recent layoffs in the legal sector, more female workers may be getting “the wife” they want. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that men have been harder hit by layoffs: a 10 percent jobless rate for men, versus 7.6 percent for women.

Those BLS gender stats are for all jobless people, not just jobless lawyers. We have no idea from these numbers if men are being hit harder by law layoffs.)

And another thing: please, can we banish “Mr. Mom” from our vocabulary? The movie that made the term famous was made in 1983. It may have been cute in those relatively unenlightened days (and I’m skeptical) but 26 years on, not so much.