WHY are clerks SO RUDE?! I try to be as nice and kind to them as humanly possible. I understand they have a rough job. But they answer the phone and literally scream at you! Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.

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Court clerks? Because they DNGAF. And they don’t have to GAF. They have all the power in that relationship and are annoyed by the constant stream of questions that could have been resolved by reading the dept rules. So when you call with an actually good question, the well has been poisoned.

We get the same BS. Nothing worse than watching the parties on calendar right before your matter is called, work overtime to piss off the judge (who will take it out on you once you’re up)…

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Wow I can’t wait to be a clerk I love being mean to people who are mean to me (which I can’t currently do at my firm to the asshole partner I work for). I promise you guys that if you call my chambers I’ll be nice if you’re nice first tho! 🫶🏽

My experience has been that if you are kind and polite, they are incredibly helpful. Maybe try that.

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My experience is that some people think they are being nice and polite, but aren’t.

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Clerks are rude because they have to deal with rude customers all the time. It's similar to working in retail.

Kill 'em with kindness, I say. Always build up good relationships with court staff (and all other customer service employees in your life.) Later on, they will do things for you that they wouldn't necessarily do for other people, just because you asked politely.

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And I genuinely try to go that.

I have a great relationship with at least our top 10 most utilized counties.

Love our Lexis Nexis rep and court reporters.

But there are just certain clerks that you can’t do anything to please them.

Some of them are so mean! One time I called to ask about court terms because they had an outdated version online and the first person yelled at me that I should ask my attorney because it’s their job to know 🥲 I called back later and the second person was SO nice. It’s wild.

When she said I need to ask my attorney, internally I was like bestie I don’t know how to tell you this but my attorney was the one who asked me to call lol

On the other hand I’ve had clerks who scanned and emailed 200+ pages because their e-docketing site was down for days. Some people suck and some people are amazing, you just can’t take the terrible people seriously.

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Not a litigator, but used to do court advocacy prior to becoming a lawyer. For a year, one of the court clerks refused to call me by my name even though I said it daily on the record. I was “[org name] girl” until she thought I’d earned her respect. Power trip, but she did in fact have all the power

The screaming is very strange. I know when i clerked in federal court my judge had a policy to not take calls other than those from attorneys were were admitted as counsel of record on the case. Despite this attorneys would regularly have their paralegal (or more often their legal assistant) call with questions.

With that said I never would’ve yelled at anyone but there were definitely people in our chambers who’d spent their career with the judge who might’ve enjoyed the power trip.

Attorneys appearing before federal courts have applied for admission to appear before that specific court as I’m sure you know as you’re probably drafting the pro hac vice motions. But when applying for admission to the applicable district court they have an independent review done by the court. They typically have fellow attorneys vouching for their good character and the court knows whether they have been sanctioned previously, filed frivolous motions, etc.

By comparison none of that exists with someone who hasn’t gone through the process which could even mean an attorney who isn’t admitted to practice before the court. Every judge has their own ways of doing things but my judge was very formal.

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