surgery during clerkship Forum

[Anonymous User]

Anyone have a medical issue or surgery during a clerkship (federal or state)? I may need to get surgery, and because of scheduling the surgery may fall during my 2 year clerkship. The recovery period is 1-2 weeks. I've heard people going back to running within a week, so I should not be out for more than week. (surgery day, then 1 week recovery). Right now it's not urgent, but could become so.


I know the answer is to ask my judge, but I'm just looking for other people's experiences.

[jkech]

I would find it difficult to believe that your judge could be angry with you for needing to have surgery. You can probably work from hospital/home during your recovery time too, no? The beauty of the clerkship is that it's pretty portable: just need the briefs and a computer. To the extent that you assist in court and with daily orders, your co-clerk can help and the judge is capable of doing this all by himself.

[Anonymous User]

Totally depends on the judge, but both my judges would have been totally cool with a clerk taking a week off for legit medical reasons. Of course, there are judges like Kozinski for whom this kind of thing would be an issue.

[Anonymous User]

Yes, I know of a judge who (apparently) makes his clerks sign a thing before starting stating saying that they'll get all their doctors' appointments etc. out of the way before starting (I say apparently because it was career clerks in the same courthouse who told me this, so they could have been exaggerating about whether clerks literally had to sign something, but that was definitely his attitude). The judges I worked for would have been absolutely fine with time off for surgery, though might have wanted input on scheduling if that was possible (obviously for an emergency it's not but it sounds like this is something scheduled ahead of time). I've also heard of women having babies/taking off maternity leave while term-clerking (I don't think they took more than 6 weeks, but just for reference). So it will depend.

[bruinfan10]

Anyone have a medical issue or surgery during a clerkship (federal or state)? I may need to get surgery, and because of scheduling the surgery may fall during my 2 year clerkship. The recovery period is 1-2 weeks. I've heard people going back to running within a week, so I should not be out for more than week. (surgery day, then 1 week recovery). Right now it's not urgent, but could become so.


I know the answer is to ask my judge, but I'm just looking for other people's experiences.

your judge will likely be okay with it, things come up, but unfortunately you'll make life harder for your co clerks. if you're medically able, it might be nice to put in some extra hours before you take the time off to try and get a little ahead. but a week's not that bad, i know of people who've taken a month for medical stuff.