"former clerks do much, much better at getting their former boss's vote than expected, even net of the confounders you'd expect (ideological agreement, relevant

"former clerks do much, much better at getting their former boss's vote than expected, even net of the confounders you'd expect (ideological agreement, relevant case characteristics)." I don't see why this is surprising? To take an example from my experience with academia, I could write a paper by myself or I could have my advisor go over it give feedback and edit it (we would call it sprinkling his magic pixie dust over it). There was nothing necessarily informationally different in the paper (though there could be that too, he would motivate us to do explain certain things better or do different experiments). Why? Because he sat in the program committee meetings where papers were accepted and rejected, he now knows why people who sit on those committees accept or reject papers. He can then make sure the papers written by his students are tailored to those desires. I would expect the same exact results from a former clerk to their former boss. they know exactly the type of arguments that their former boss finds persuasive and those that they don't and would hence tailor the arguments in such a way, such that even someone with ideological agreement could not without that insider knowledge.