July 21, 1994

EVERGREEN LAWYER WILL CLERK FOR JUSTICE SOUTER

By JON SAVELLE

Journal Staff Reporter

When Riyaz Kanji finished college, he faced a personal decision that few people have to worry about. Should he go into medicine, he wondered, or into law?

Kanji's father, a doctor, had argued against medical school. He said his son's aptitude lay elsewhere and that the practice of medicine was not as satisfying as Riyaz imagined.

Kanji wrestled with the decision all summer. Finally, one week before classes were to begin, he chose law -- and proceeded to prove his father right. Since finishing law school in 1991 he has had a clerkship with Judge Betty Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, had a two-year fellowship grant to work on Native American issues at Evergreen Legal Services, and now will start a one-year clerkship with Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court.

``When I got the call from Souter's chambers, I was very much surprised,'' Kanji said. ``It's not that usual to do it when you're three years out of law school.''

Kanji's background, however, is not that usual either. He was born in Kampala, Uganda, where his East Indian family had lived for two generations. His father practiced medicine there, and founded the medical school at Makerere University.

But as conditions in Africa became worse, Kanji's father concluded it was not the place where his kids would have a future. He moved the family to England, and then to St. Catherine's, Ontario, a small town near Niagara Falls. From there both Riyaz and his younger brother went on to Harvard University, and Kanji continued at Yale Law School.

As a clerk for Justice Souter, Kanji's duties will be much like his clerking job at the U.S. Court of Appeals. There will be a lot of briefs to write, and a lot of analyses of cases before the court.

But unlike the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court can decide which cases it will hear. Much of the burden of deciding which ones have merit falls on the shoulders of clerks, who review petitions for certiorari and write memos on all of them to the justices.

Kanji said clerks also shoulder a lot of the work involved in death penalty cases, which he described as both legally exhaustive and emotionally exhausting.

``It will be busy,'' Kanji said. ``I imagine 80 to 90 hours (per week) easily, probably 100.''

That kind of schedule can wreck an attorney's personal life. Kanji said it helps that his wife of one year, Nina Mendelson, is also an attorney, but he worries that they will see little of each other once he begins work at the Supreme Court.

In a way the clerkship will be like the previous three years: Kanji put in long hours at Evergreen working on a case involving Indian shellfish-fishing rights, and worked similarly long hours at the Court of Appeals.

``She understands it's a very exciting opportunity,'' he said. ``But it was pretty much a disaster on the shellfish case.''

Career-wise, it went much better. Kanji impressed Judge Fletcher and the attorneys at Evergreen, who turned him loose on a very complex case.

``He was a superb clerk,'' Judge Fletcher said of Kanji. ``Not only was he brilliant and an able writer and researcher, but a wonderful person to be around.''

Apparently those qualities also struck Justice Souter. Kanji said he had applied to clerk for Souter and justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy, but was interviewed only by Souter.

``I just really enjoyed talking with Justice Souter,'' Kanji said. ``He's clearly a very thoughtful person. I was really impressed by his modesty.''

At this point, Kanji and Mendelson plan to return to Seattle after his year's clerkship is up. She has taken a year's leave from her job at Heller Ehrman, and he would like to work again at Evergreen or in another area of public-interest law.

``That's the plan,'' he said. ``It's hard to say for sure.''