Regretting Clerkship Forum

[Anonymous User]

I know people who've had that experience as well - they drafted opinions, gave them to their judge, and heard nothing more until the opinion issued. Sometimes it looked like what they'd written, sometimes it didn't, but they never knew why things had changed or what their judge was really looking for. It was superfrustrating for them and I'm sure it must be for you as well.

I will say that I doubt you're actually stagnating - just going through the year and seeing the cases, working through the law, and ultimately seeing the decisions is useful experience. Plus I don't think most judges are actually providing the kind of in-depth mentorship in research/writing/analysis that gets talked up as the ideal (one of my judges gave almost no feedback on research/writing, mostly because they thought mine was good already. But tbf they were much more interested in talking about strategy and analysis, at least, for more substantive stuff). So it sounds like your expectations might have been a tiny bit high? Some judges do just see the clerks as there to help the judge, and expect them to learn by doing that rather than through active mentoring.

But no feedback/guidance at all is absolutely well below what you should be able to expect. And yes, if you turned down other clerkships for this one, they might have been better experiences. But there's nothing you can do about that part of things now.

I think I will chock a lot of it up to having high expectations. A lot of my mentors gassed this up as if it would be an enlightening experience, but it feels like more of the same. I know the judge is satisfied with my work, so that’s a plus, and I will credit that to some improvement over time. They are also an incredibly kind person and my hours are fantastic. So, even if I passed up other clerkships, they could have been miserable experiences without all these benefits.

My pet theory is a good clerkship is about 6 months of training you and giving you valuable experience and then the last 6 months is you just paying that back. I've only clerked appellate but at a certain point I was like alright I get it. But then I just changed my mindset to the idea that I should also be required to provide some value so I can write another bench memo about a BS issue im not interested in.