Co-Founder of SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein, Kicks off the Chapman Dialogue Series

September 26, 2014

Tom Goldstein

The
2014-2015 Chapman Dialogues Series
is off to a great start, with a visit by Tom Goldstein, co-founder of SCOTUSblog and partner at Goldstein & Russell, P.C. The presentation on September 22, 2014, addressed “Perspectives on Finding Your Niche and Personalizing Your Path in Law.”

“If you want to be involved in something, offer up a resource – like your time,” Goldstein said at the start of his presentation. He explained how he offered his time to get his first internship working at National Public Radio. Then, once he decided to work on Supreme Court cases, he offered his time for free when taking on cases. He continued to stress that law students should find something that is of interest to them and look for something that someone else is not already doing. He suggested that they make it their niche and try to focus on providing what others are not providing. In Goldstein’s career he realized no one had created a law school Supreme Court clinic, so he began teaching Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School in 2004. He previously taught the same subject at Stanford Law School for nearly a decade.

In 2003, when blogging became more popular, he started the Supreme Court of the United States Blog (SCOTUSblog) as a marketing tool for his work as a Supreme Court practitioner. He admitted that it failed as a marketing tool so he stopped writing about his own cases and instead objectively wrote about other cases, which was a great success and the blog became a trusted resource.

“The law is hard, competitive and draining on your time and relationships. Decide how to use your skill set to make yourself great.” – Tom Goldstein

Dean Tom Campbell and Tom Goldstein

Tom Goldstein
is an appellate advocate, best known as one of the nation’s most experienced Supreme Court practitioners. He has served as counsel to the petitioner or respondent in roughly 10% of all the Court’s merits cases for the past 15 years, personally arguing 31 cases. He is also the co-founder and publisher of
SCOTUSblog
– a website devoted to comprehensive coverage of the Supreme Court. It is the only web blog ever to receive a Peabody Award.

View the archived webcast of the Tom Goldstein Chapman Dialogue Series.