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Some recent posts have made me wonder....

Background: I'm a district court clerk who started last fall. We've had 2 externs in chambers, one last fall and one currently. Each extern came 1 day a week. We typically have semester externs work on social security cases. We try to have lunch as a chambers (often with the judge) on the day the extern comes in, and each of us tries to take time during the day to chat with the extern.

Am I the only one who doesn't feel like a semester externship really tells us much about how the extern would perform as a law clerk? We obviously know if an extern does awful work or is a complete ass, but we don't really get a great sense of what the extern would be like as a clerk. (I've been told, and it makes complete sense, that it's very different for our summer externs, who are in chambers 5 days a week for a minimum of 6 weeks.)

I also don't think that our externs have much basis for judging how intelligent I am or how intelligent they are in relation to me. I try to talk with them about interesting issues in my case and include them in interesting conversations we have about legal topics, but it's not as though I go to them for advice or to debate the trickiest issues.

I'd also appreciate any advice about how to make the externship more valuable for the students. I try to include the externs in the types of discussions I enjoyed participating in as a law student, and we encourage the extern to attend our proceedings and proceedings going on in other courtrooms.

And I know it's been said before, but remember that different chambers have very different personalities, and judges are looking for people who they think will be a good fit. I've been told that a clerk applicant got rejected from our chambers because everyone thought s/he wouldn't be a good fit, but s/he was hired by another chambers that was a good fit. (S/he was a HYS student with ties to the district, and the person who was hired by my judge was from a local TTT school.)

Former SSC clerk here. I had more significant contact with my externs than you seem to; 15-20 hours a week for some. Usually 2L's, though we'd get some 3L's and the occasional 1L summer. My metric for their performance was their ability to learn. If they brought me a bench memo, I would edit it heavily, but then pick a few select things to go over with them. "This is the facts section, and you're making logical leaps here. Don't do that." "You put 'only' in the correct place. Don't do that." "You screwed up your pincite here. Don't do that."

The ones who were most successful (and got my best recommendations) were the ones who didn't have the same mistakes on the next thing they turned in to me. Does that mean they'll crush it as a clerk? No idea. But the judge or justice they apply to can take my recommendation for what it's worth--he or she will probably have a good idea what it means that a candidate was a good judicial extern.

The chambers I clerk in will have externs for the (really my) first time this summer. Any advice on supervision or assignments would be welcome.

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JusticeJackson wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:The chambers I clerk in will have externs for the (really my) first time this summer. Any advice on supervision or assignments would be welcome.

Oh! Habeas and 1983 and anything handwritten!

I said externs, not worst enemies

JusticeJackson wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:The chambers I clerk in will have externs for the (really my) first time this summer. Any advice on supervision or assignments would be welcome.

Oh! Habeas and 1983 and anything handwritten!

oh god yes, the handwritten ones. I got those as an extern and it's the blind leading the blind.

JusticeJackson wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:The chambers I clerk in will have externs for the (really my) first time this summer. Any advice on supervision or assignments would be welcome.

Oh! Habeas and 1983 and anything handwritten!

I think R&R's (preferably contested ones) make good first assignments for externs. The standard is straightforward, they often have very long deadlines for the CJRA list, and the MJ tees up most if not all of the issues. Yet they still have to do some legal research even if they are given a healthy starting point and, if it's contested, have to make decisions other than just agreeing with the MJ in the order that they draft. It also depends on where they are in law school. I externed as a 3L and worked on an MTD and an MJP. I almost assuredly would not give either of those things to a 1L summer extern for their first assignment.

It also depends on how you and your chambers view externs. My view was that I didn't expect externs to reduce my overall workload (the time it would have taken becomes the amount of time I spend reviewing their work), but it can happen. Rather I try to ramp them up into more substantive assignments over the course of the externship so that they get good experience. That said, I know some chambers have externs to help trudge through the more "annoying" things (e.g., IFPs, pro pers, etc) and I've seen some chambers that are absolutely buried and need the help.

It can be hard as a clerk, especially a new one, to peel off assignments for an extern. When you don't know how complex your cases/motions are, it's hard to know whether an MTD for example will be very difficult or good for an extern without spending time reviewing the case in advance. Once you've been working for a bit, it becomes easier to see what upcoming motions are suitable for externs, especially if you plan in advance.

tag. former intern/incoming clerk. would like to know how clerks assign and assess intern work

bk1 wrote:

JusticeJackson wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:The chambers I clerk in will have externs for the (really my) first time this summer. Any advice on supervision or assignments would be welcome.

Oh! Habeas and 1983 and anything handwritten!

I think R&R's (preferably contested ones) make good first assignments for externs. The standard is straightforward, they often have very long deadlines for the CJRA list, and the MJ tees up most if not all of the issues. Yet they still have to do some legal research even if they are given a healthy starting point and, if it's contested, have to make decisions other than just agreeing with the MJ in the order that they draft. It also depends on where they are in law school. I externed as a 3L and worked on an MTD and an MJP. I almost assuredly would not give either of those things to a 1L summer extern for their first assignment.

It also depends on how you and your chambers view externs. My view was that I didn't expect externs to reduce my overall workload (the time it would have taken becomes the amount of time I spend reviewing their work), but it can happen. Rather I try to ramp them up into more substantive assignments over the course of the externship so that they get good experience. That said, I know some chambers have externs to help trudge through the more "annoying" things (e.g., IFPs, pro pers, etc) and I've seen some chambers that are absolutely buried and need the help.

It can be hard as a clerk, especially a new one, to peel off assignments for an extern. When you don't know how complex your cases/motions are, it's hard to know whether an MTD for example will be very difficult or good for an extern without spending time reviewing the case in advance. Once you've been working for a bit, it becomes easier to see what upcoming motions are suitable for externs, especially if you plan in advance.

Certainly they wouldn't work on uncontested R&Rs, right?

blahblewblah wrote:Certainly they wouldn't work on uncontested R&Rs, right?

They can. The USDJ doesn't just rubber stamp the USMJ's legal conclusions even if the resulting order is very sparse, so there is research to be done. I do agree though, and I'd suggest not giving them uncontested ones unless your intent is to hand off simple work.

bk1 wrote:

blahblewblah wrote:Certainly they wouldn't work on uncontested R&Rs, right?

They can. The USDJ doesn't just rubber stamp the USMJ's legal conclusions even if the resulting order is very sparse, so there is research to be done. I do agree though, and I'd suggest not giving them uncontested ones unless your intent is to hand off simple work.

My chambers doesn't refer much, for whatever reason.

We mainly give our extern SS cases, or maybe an easy MTD or MSJ. We spend more time explaining and providing feeback on am extern's work than it would take us to just do the case ourselves.

Anonymous User wrote:We spend more time explaining and providing feeback on am extern's work than it would take us to just do the case ourselves.

This was my default expectation unless I was working with a 3L. It didn't bother me because I felt that they were there to learn more than anything.

bk1 wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:We spend more time explaining and providing feeback on am extern's work than it would take us to just do the case ourselves.

This was my default expectation unless I was working with a 3L. It didn't bother me because I felt that they were there to learn more than anything.

I agree. It doesn't bother me at all. I'd just be pleasantly surprised if it weren't the case. I can't imagine anything we could give an extern that would actually save us time. (Poster quoted above)

So much of the experience (for the clerk) depends on the judge's hiring practices. Some judges limit the externs they'll hire to outstanding law students who have shown a lot of initiative and, if these individuals are motivated, they tend to do pretty well. Obviously, they are limited in what they know, but the written product is generally coherent. If the judges aren't as selective or is not as good at identifying students who are going to take the externship seriously, this can make the process challenging for the clerk.

In the former case, the intern may be able to do most of the functions that a clerk could do. In the latter case, the clerk needs to work harder to identify the scope of work that an intern can take on. Sometimes folks that look like they'd fit right into the first category are actually in the latter. I was surprised by this, but there are people who are academically successful and have jobs at prestigious firms lined up but will put very little effort into their internship with a federal judge.