And I didn’t think of my waiter job as being all that important, other than that it was a vital source of income.
But when I became a GS 11 federal clerk at the Eastern District Court on 500 Camp Street, I worked directly and only for Judge Adrian Duplantier.
He conducted the job interview, and it was his decision to hire me.
Several other judges in that court had said they wanted to interview me, but Judge Duplantier invited me first. (I later learned that Judge Duplantier did everything about five times faster than the other judges).
I had top grades, and was strongly recommended by some respected attorneys and even the Dean of Loyola Law School.
So, Judge Duplantier was ready to hire me at the interview. Which I wasn’t prepared for.
He said that I could have the job on one condition: I had to agree to clerk for two years instead of the usual one.
I knew that if I declined his offer, I wouldn’t get hired by any of the other judges with whom I had tentatively scheduled interviews.
The unwritten rule was that if you turned down a job offer with a judge in the Eastern District, the other judges wouldn’t make you an offer afterwards.
So, even though I didn’t want to clerk for two years, I agreed to. Plus there was another non-negotiable demand. I had to agree to do some work without pay before my official start date.
It wasn’t even law-related work.
He had mentioned in the interview that not all of my assignments would be typical law clerk stuff. I gathered that this meant administrative stuff like running bank errands.
(I’d heard that Judge Lansing Mitchell abused the personal stuff to a ridiculous extreme. He only hired law clerks that wore the same size shoes as he did so that he could have them break in his new shoes).
Judge Duplantier’s personal errand requests turned out to be milder and (in the case of the free work project) quite interesting.
His last set of questions led up to revealing the special project. “I see from your resume that you worked as a waiter at Commander’s, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Did you do any cooking there?”
“No, sir.”
“Was Chef Paul Prudhomme there when you were there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So you’re familiar with blackened redfish?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what about Bananas Foster?”
“Yes sir, I actually learned how to make Bananas Foster at Commander’s.”
“Great. That’s good to know. So block off three days for the first weekend of next month because you’re going to be flying to Washington DC to help out with a party that I’m hosting for some judges…
“They’re mostly chief judges from the federal court circuits, but there’ll be a few judges from the supreme court also. You’ll be helping out by cooking blackened red fish and making Bananas Foster.”
“Yes, sir.”
That’s when I learned that my first “personal errand” for the judge would be to act as a chef and waiter at a high-end soiree with dozens of the most powerful judges in the country.
But before performing the errand I had to be properly trained.
This consisted of me going to the judge’s house and having him teach me the proper way (i.e. the Paul Prudhomme-approved way) of blackening redfish.
There’s definitely an art to it, but it’s mostly about having a good cast iron skillet that scorches to a super high temperature.
The redfish have to be fresh and patted down with a special spice that, up until that point, only Paul Prudhomme knew the recipe for. After all, he’s the one that created it.
However, Judge Duplantier got to know Prudhomme and finagled it out of him. In fact, he got Prudhomme to give him large gallon containers of the special sauce.
So Judge Duplantier had the key ingredients for a Louisiana-themed party that he could host in Washington. He just needed to train some young knuckleheads how to cook the redfish and Bananas Foster.
Besides training me, he also trained his outgoing clerk Paul Nye, and my fellow incoming clerk Hunter Johnston. And he also trained Mitch Landrieu, who had agreed to clerk the following year.
All of us met at Judge Duplantier’s house a couple of times to practice our cooking. When the judge felt we were ready, he told us the next step of the plan.
He had arranged for Loyola Law School to sponsor the party, which meant they would pay for all of the expenses. They paid for the food, the liquor, our travel expenses, and the special polo shirts that we all had to wear at the party.
The party was a testament to Judge Duplantier’s organizational skills. There’s a photo I have of the inner circle of people he recruited to help with the party.
In addition to the aforementioned clerks, the picture includes the Dean of Loyola Law School and Judge Skelly Wright, a graduate of Loyola Law School who had once been a district judge in the Eastern District. However, he’d gone on to become a highly respected appeals court judge for the DC circuit.
The picture of us hung prominently in the judge’s chambers. After Judge Duplantier died, his wife Sally gave it to me.
The picture is but one fond memory I have of my time clerking for Judge Duplantier.
I learned a lot from the judge in my two years with him.
I learned to pay close attention to every word I wrote, because he wouldn’t sign anything I had prepared without carefully examining every word, then correcting any mistakes or poor word choices.
I sat next to him, watching him as he made the word changes one by one. Very methodically, like a surgeon.
It was pretty much the same way he taught me to blacken redfish. Which I took for granted when he was teaching me. I figured, what’s the big deal? It’s only cooking some fish.
But…
As he told me many times during the two years I clerked for him, if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
