Burnout and clerkships Forum
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Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are sharing sensitive information about clerkship applications and clerkship hiring. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.
Failure to follow these rules will get you outed, warned, or banned."
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Burnout and clerkships
For people who clerk/clerked for judges with particularly long hours, any tips on avoiding burnout? I maybe wouldn’t have taken an offer with my judge had I known what it would be like and I feel like I’m in some danger of burning out. And unlike at a firm, there’s no clear way to cut your hours by turning down work. I’m on a district court but I imagine a lot of the same problems come up with similarly hard-working COA judges.
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Re: Burnout and clerkships
Burnout clerk here (state court and two US Dist). I don't think enough people discuss the fact that a bad clerkship is a nightmare experience. Whether it is a difficult judge/large docket/or realizing you hate the actual job, it just sucks. I had a great clerkship experience in state court, but started to burn out towards the end. I thought the solution was to try for US Dist, and ended up burning out harder.
In terms of my professional career, when I realized that I was burning out (and I burned out hard) I started applying for jobs that I knew I would want, even though my term was not over. I ended up finding a job that I wanted and I would have been excited about, regardless of when I finished clerking. Your work suffers the longer you try and push through the burnout and, in my opinion, its better to embrace that fact rather than try and suffer through. I left a clerkship early, and my judge was a little upset by it. However, I was honest that I was not doing good work and that I had found a job that I was passionate about. So, in the end, leaving the clerkship early wasn't ideal, but it also wasn't treated as the cardinal sin that many make it out to be. The caveat being, I didn't clerk for a particularly prestigious judge.
Additional caveat, things worked out for me and my chosen career path in public interest work. If you're looking for private practice/litigation, then things might be different.
In terms of personal/mental health while in the clerkship, I had to find hobbies that were completely unrelated to law and lawyers. Successful lawyers (clerkships, particularly early in your career certainly count here) have a tendency to get tunnel vision about work and are only exposed to other lawyers. It helped me to engage with others outside the profession and realize that our way of thinking and work culture is not the norm. This helped me realize what stress I either needed to let go of, or prioritize in a way that was more functional.
But again, this was only my personal experience. So much depends on your personal situation. However, being proactive about burnout is a step not many stake.
In terms of my professional career, when I realized that I was burning out (and I burned out hard) I started applying for jobs that I knew I would want, even though my term was not over. I ended up finding a job that I wanted and I would have been excited about, regardless of when I finished clerking. Your work suffers the longer you try and push through the burnout and, in my opinion, its better to embrace that fact rather than try and suffer through. I left a clerkship early, and my judge was a little upset by it. However, I was honest that I was not doing good work and that I had found a job that I was passionate about. So, in the end, leaving the clerkship early wasn't ideal, but it also wasn't treated as the cardinal sin that many make it out to be. The caveat being, I didn't clerk for a particularly prestigious judge.
Additional caveat, things worked out for me and my chosen career path in public interest work. If you're looking for private practice/litigation, then things might be different.
In terms of personal/mental health while in the clerkship, I had to find hobbies that were completely unrelated to law and lawyers. Successful lawyers (clerkships, particularly early in your career certainly count here) have a tendency to get tunnel vision about work and are only exposed to other lawyers. It helped me to engage with others outside the profession and realize that our way of thinking and work culture is not the norm. This helped me realize what stress I either needed to let go of, or prioritize in a way that was more functional.
But again, this was only my personal experience. So much depends on your personal situation. However, being proactive about burnout is a step not many stake.
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Anonymous User
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Re: Burnout and clerkships
I have nothing to contribute other than the fact that I have a slow, flyover clerkship. It's my second clerkship and am nonetheless *very* burnt out. So I cannot imagine having a genuinely demanding job as well.
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Re: Burnout and clerkships
This is my second district court clerkship (IDK WTF I was thinking), and I'm just letting my work pile up. lol
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Anonymous User
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Re: Burnout and clerkships
I'm on my second of THREE - what was I thinking- but at least they're all different courts. The burnout is very real halfway through the three years.
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Anonymous User
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Re: Burnout and clerkships
I clerked for a judge whose hours were very reasonable but who personally was an absolute nightmare on almost every level (incredibly rude, but unpredictably so, slow to return comments leading to unnecessary rushes at the end, engaged in guess what I'm thinking games rather than just saying what they wanted). I definitely burned out and the last 2 months were a total slog, but I had a great job lined up for after and I just kept telling myself it would be over soon. The last month I had a calendar where I counted down days for motivation. Also will add that this judge had a terrible reputation with litigants but no prior clerks who I spoke with prior to interviewing mentioned that that spilled over to clerks too -- I have often wondered what I would say if an applicant reached out to me, but the danger of badmouthing a judge and it coming back to bite you later is real, so would probably send them unknowing to their fate.....)
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Re: Burnout and clerkships
Mine is perfectly nice, but I still have a calendar counting down days. In January.
