Anyone else kind of bored clerking? I liked law school and thought I liked research and writing, but so far this district court clerkship has been pretty boring—lots of state law issues that are poorly briefed. Though to be fair, most of my time has been spent on one big case that I’m 99% sure is going to settle but not until the eve of trial bc that’s plaintiff’s counsel’s m.o.; so my work resolving the insane number of SJ and Daubert motions seems like a waste of my time.

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Enjoy it while you can.

Unless you’re going to exclusively practice in Article III Courts post clerkship, the day to day trenches of litigation will consist of grinding away in state court-where the parties are lazier, the judges less qualified, and the courts are more understaffed.

And don’t think you’ll be able to escape terrible state court judges by styling yourself as an appellate attorney. Where I’m from, the intermediate court judges are often just as bad as the lower court.

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Yes, absolutely. Lately, the amount of frivolous filings, parties unwilling to agree on the most basic of issues, very poorly drafted briefing, and state law claims that shouldn’t be in federal court have been really frustrating.

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Just wait until you get into practice as a young associate. You’ll find that you suddenly went from resolving these high level motions on behalf of the court to now being given baby tasks. It’ll be years before you’ll be given the opportunity to write and argue one of the many SJ motions that you have spent your clerkship deciding!

How wild is our legal system haha

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Glad to hear you biglaw folks are getting excellent experience. I didn’t do biglaw for a number of reasons. Two big ones are the hours and having to bill. I only planned to go into biglaw to get a good public sector job, but when I found one straight out of school that would also accommodate my clerkship, I felt no need to do the whole firm thing. Everyone is different though.

I didn't, but your experience is pretty typical of district court work. I was happy doing that sort of work because I felt I was learning a lot, my judge was awesome, and I liked the work-life balance. I do much more interesting work at my job now and have zero desire to clerk again.

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I’ve been a clerk for four years and never get bored. I’m in an appellate criminal court, though.

Nope. But I did BL for a year prior to clerking and it sucked lol clerking is so much better

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