Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said yesterday that she sometimes feels like her job hasn’t “really change[d]” since serving as President Obama’s solicitor general, because in both roles she was thinking about Supreme Court arguments.

Kagan said that it was a challenge to master the “mechanics” of being a justice. “For me, I had never been a judge before and just figuring out the mechanics of a job [was difficult],” she explained during an event honoring Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court. “I had these four clerks; what do I do with them? What’s the best process for drafting an opinion? When do I read the briefs, do I read them the day before do I read them the week before?”