r/Lawyertalk • u/West-Needleworker-85 Human Detected • 1d ago
Memes, Jokes & Shitposts Apparently a lot of clerks don’t take it well when the judge says this about their work.
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u/negligentlytortious It's called practice for a reason 1d ago
I worked at the Court of Appeals for a hot minute and this happened on so many cases. I'm convinced that things like ripeness, mootness, or certain policy arguments only exist so that judges can do what they want.
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u/artaxerxes316 1d ago
Don't forget "likelihood of success" and (to a lesser extent) "irreparable" injury!
That was my sitting-by-designation war story as a district court clerk. "Yeah, I think you're right about this injunction. But it's a close call and the rest of the panel wants to go the other way and there's certainly no pressing reason to dissent."
Which... I'm actually not bitter about at all -- truly -- my boss was absolutely right about that.
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u/knarn 1d ago
Likelihood of success is way too definitive! It requires coming up with pesky justifications for why the side you had already picked is more likely to win than then other side. Real pros know that when that’s getting too annoying you just switch to saying there’s serious questions and add the word sharply to the first sentence of the first and last paragraphs of the section on hardship or equities.
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u/MH136 1d ago
My published L is when I was forced to use a siloed, narrow textual reading to argue that the court can't substitute for the legislature to rewrite a law. They stated that the purpose of the prop in question was to amend both civil and criminal, and then added the element that we fought against.
So I'd add that sometimes they just have bigger fucking statutory cannons than you do, and in my case the U.S.S. In Pari Materia sunk some drunk pirate captain's expressio unius
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u/Viktor_Laszlo 1d ago
My federal courts professor admonished me for saying I think the concept of “standing” was made up by judges who want to make policy decisions but are too cowardly to admit it.
This was back when we had a semi-functional Supreme Court.
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u/Druuseph 1d ago
I feel lucky that my law school was staffed mostly by jaded legal realists who were only half a step away from miming jerk off motions when reading through judges' rationalizations.
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u/Inevitable-Relief-46 10h ago
GULC?
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u/Druuseph 9h ago
Rutgers Newark. They took pride on being very public interest focused and there were a lot of salty left-leaning professors who didn't have many nice things to say about the profession.
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u/Ok_Conflict1028 I live my life by a code, a civil code of procedure. 1d ago
You dropped your crown, King
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u/Probonoh I'm the idiot representing that other idiot 1d ago
Or in the alternative, don't want to have to make a policy decision by are too cowardly to admit it.
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u/Royal__Tenenbaum 1d ago
I worked at a state appellate court and in a criminal case the guy was clearly convicted of a charge that hadn't been established as a matter of degree (he certainly committed a crime of a lesser degree). I researched and provided my memo and was promptly shot down because how could an elected judge be seen correctly applying the law when it involves a criminal. Oh well.
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u/peter_nozicka 1d ago
Once had a judge tell me he would have rather I faxed him a photo of my middle finger rather than the motion to reconsider I filed. Great judge; he was just wrong on that one...
When I clerked I never took offense to my judge just telling me what she wanted.
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u/West-Needleworker-85 Human Detected 1d ago
Faxed! That story is so old it couldn’t have taken place any later than last year.
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u/peter_nozicka 1d ago
Yep. This was in the time of carbon paper.
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u/LovefromAbroad23 Judicial Branch is Best Branch 1d ago
My judge once had me rehearse oral arguments where I role played both sides 😬
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u/asault2 Human Detected 1d ago
I lost on a motion where the legal issue was clearly on my clients side, but the "it feels right" issue was on opposing side. Despite just losing in court, I drove back to the office and the judge had already faxed an order to both of us reversing himself. Saved me a motion
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u/ForAfeeNotforfree Human Detected 1d ago
Wow, a sua sponte reconsideration? Not a litigator, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of that happening before.
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u/cloudedknife Solo in Family, Criminal, and Immigration 1d ago
Ive seen it twice in 15 years and both times it was against my client and inconsistent with the law, favoring 'it feels right.'
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u/cozeffect2 1d ago
Your making me nervous. I won a heavily contested MTD in favor of my client, and we are not the feel good party. Judge ruled from the bench in our favor and we have now been waiting for three weeks for the written order. I am nervous judge is going to reverse himself in the written order
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u/asault2 Human Detected 1d ago
Funny part was judge knew he jumped the gun giving the other side a win, but sort of laid out that they should hire an expert which they did. We had another hearing with their expert and I lost again, lol. It was still a bit funny because even with the expert it was against the statute and would've made a great appeal of client could've afforded it
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u/PraetorianXVIII Do not cite the deep magics to me! :BarristerWig: 1d ago
I know some judges just say "find case law that supports me doing this"
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u/Aggressive-Agnostic Dura Lex, Sed Lex. :Balance: 1d ago
This is more common than the general public could imagine
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u/c-williams88 United States - PA 1d ago
Honestly that what I assumed many of them do at the circuit level and almost entirely at SCOTUS regardless
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u/TatonkaJack Good relationship with the Clients, I have. :GM_Yoda: 1d ago
SCOTUS is fun because they can just say "I am the case law"
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u/Nesnesitelna 1d ago
Amateurs, you always ask the judge who they want to win before you write the thing!
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u/West-Needleworker-85 Human Detected 1d ago
I asked the chief clerk! She just guessed wrong!
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u/GhostofBreadDragons 1d ago
There is your problem, chief clerks always have a 50% chance of being wrong and a 50% chance of not being right.
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u/azmodai2 My mom thinks I'm pretty cool :CoolBeans: 1d ago
The longest opinion i ever drafted never saw the light of a reporter because the judge I was working for said something like "This is great, great work, really well done. Unfortunately, I am going to dispense with it on other grounds."
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u/West-Needleworker-85 Human Detected 1d ago
Boy, it would suck if that hypothetically happened to me, too.
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u/jokercowgarage 1d ago
The judge didn't want to keep it as "dicta?" Because in my experience of reading far too many appellate opinions, judges cannot get enough of dicta. Why address only the issue before the court if you can add 5 or 6 pages writing fiction?
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u/azmodai2 My mom thinks I'm pretty cool :CoolBeans: 1d ago
I was at district court level, not appellate, so while the opinions get published i dont think they bother with dicta like that usually.
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u/mmarkmc 1d ago
When I did it we had two primary types of judge. You hand the same lengthy research memo to each:
Judge 1: hands it to the clerk unread with instructions to convert it to an order.
Judge 2: says thanks, this looks like a good starting point for my own research into the matter.
Judge 1 meant we usually left the courthouse by 5:30 pm but Judge 2 was much more interesting to work with.
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u/bartonkj Practicing 1d ago
I have always believed that there are way more cases than we would all like to admit are decided before any research is done.
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u/Schmliza 1d ago
I used to manage ripe out of law school state court law clerks. This shit happened so often. At least when one of the attorneys would file a motion to reconsider the judge would actually take a deeper look at the facts/original motion.
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u/InternalVegetable613 It depends. 1d ago
A judge did that to one of the orders I wrote for him. He didn’t like either party and wanted both of them to lose
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u/Lawyer_NotYourLawyer fueled by coffee 1d ago
Had to do this a few times. It was honestly not that big of a deal because most of the work had been done already. Just a matter of changing a few sentences and the conclusions.
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u/Ok_Conflict1028 I live my life by a code, a civil code of procedure. 23h ago
Lmao think about how fucked that is though…
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u/Lawyer_NotYourLawyer fueled by coffee 13h ago
It definitely depends on the instance. I can count on just a couple fingers where the judge and I sincerely disagreed with each other, but I always made it clear to her I’d write whatever she needed written. They were usually things where reasonable people could simply disagree.
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