From Deseret News archives:
Governor's 'general' leaves for Supreme Court
Lee will spend a year as Justice Alito's law clerk
For Mike Lee, 35, the chance to spend a year as a law clerk for the newest member of the nation's highest court was just too good to pass up, even if it meant stepping down as Huntsman's general counsel.
"I had to take it," Lee said of the clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that began in early July. "I've had a lifelong fascination with the U.S. Supreme Court. When I was a kid, I used to go with my dad to watch him argue here."
Lee's father, the late Rex Lee, served in the U.S. Justice Department under President Ford and as Solicitor General under President Reagan, and also as both the founding dean of Brigham Young University's law school and president of the university.
"I could sense the power and also the awe and reverence there is surrounding the Supreme Court of the United States, even as a kid," Lee said, comparing his chances of someday being a part of the high court as similar to playing for the Utah Jazz.
Although he was never drafted by the basketball team, Lee did get a call earlier this year from the high court. Alito — who had been an assistant to Lee's father when he was solicitor general — wanted him as a clerk.
Lee had clerked for Alito before, for a year in 1998-99 when Alito was on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third District. And Lee was one of some 29 Alito supporters nationwide who campaigned last year for his confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Alito, Lee said then, is "very nice, very genuine. If you could create an index that took into account one's qualifications and one's ego, he would be off the charts for both — absolutely minimum ego and maximum qualifications."
Lee himself earned similar praise from the governor's office. "Mike, in addition to being a superb attorney, is also a delightful individual and a colleague we enjoyed being with," said Huntsman's spokesman, Mike Mower.
While Lee spent the bulk of his time as the GOP governor's general counsel on serious issues including foiling Private Fuel Storage's plans to build a high-level nuclear waste site in Tooele County on Goshute Indian land, there apparently was time for fun in the office, too.
Take Lee's nickname, "The General." Mower described it as "a cross between respect for (Civil War) Gen. Robert E. Lee — and he has some of his traits — and the General Lee car in Dukes of Hazzard," Mower said.
