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Future district court clerk here. My soon-to-be fiancee will be living in a different city a few hours away during my clerkship, and I'd like to make a some weekend trips to see her while clerking. For those of you who have done a clerkship, I am wondering: (1) How often did you have to work weekends? (2) When you did work weekends, did you have to actually go in, or could you work remotely? (3) If you traveled out of town on the weekends at all, did you have to give your judge a heads-up or did he/she not care?

As a quick aside, I know that judges vary a lot on these sorts of things and that some judges can be really demanding. I'm more curious about what a typical clerkship looks like in this regard than how bad it can get.

Thanks in advance!

Which district are you in? In general, although some district courts are really busy, you probably won't have to work too many weekends. I went in on weekends like 5 or 6 times my whole term, I think.

Anonymous User wrote:Future district court clerk here. My soon-to-be fiancee will be living in a different city a few hours away during my clerkship, and I'd like to make a some weekend trips to see her while clerking. For those of you who have done a clerkship, I am wondering: (1) How often did you have to work weekends? (2) When you did work weekends, did you have to actually go in, or could you work remotely? (3) If you traveled out of town on the weekends at all, did you have to give your judge a heads-up or did he/she not care?

As a quick aside, I know that judges vary a lot on these sorts of things and that some judges can be really demanding. I'm more curious about what a typical clerkship looks like in this regard than how bad it can get.

Thanks in advance!

This really is super judge-dependent. The vast majority of judges you won't have to work at all during the weekend. Some judges will be a super hard ass and make you work every weekend. This is a better question for the judge's current clerks (and an appropriate one, in my mind).

Yeah, I came in on all of one Saturday during my clerkship, but another judge in the same courthouse came in every weekend and so did his clerks. Entirely depends on what the judge prefers, so I agree that speaking to their clerks will be more helpful.

It is possible to work remotely and, anecdotally, I did some work at home over the weekend maybe 4-5x, but my judge didn't know or care what I did on the weekends as long as the work got done. (When I went out of town I usually told them, but mostly as part of making social conversation, not because I needed to account for my whereabouts.)

I was also long-distance during my clerkship (the judge knew this when they hired me) and the judge was super supportive, but that's also obviously going to vary by judge.

lawschoolftw wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Future district court clerk here. My soon-to-be fiancee will be living in a different city a few hours away during my clerkship, and I'd like to make a some weekend trips to see her while clerking. For those of you who have done a clerkship, I am wondering: (1) How often did you have to work weekends? (2) When you did work weekends, did you have to actually go in, or could you work remotely? (3) If you traveled out of town on the weekends at all, did you have to give your judge a heads-up or did he/she not care?

As a quick aside, I know that judges vary a lot on these sorts of things and that some judges can be really demanding. I'm more curious about what a typical clerkship looks like in this regard than how bad it can get.

Thanks in advance!

This really is super judge-dependent.

This. I know of two judges--one district court, one COA--where the clerks literally work 360+ days per year. No weekends off. You might get Thanksgiving or Christmas off, depending on how busy things are. And then there are judges who only come into chambers 2 or 3 days a week, and who only expect their clerks to show up on those days.

There's just a huge range here. You can't generalize.