I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul. News analysis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, by Matthew Stiegler. Now is the time of year when new federal appellate clerkships start, which got me thinking back to my own clerkship for a wonderful Tenth Circuit judge. Irreducible complexity IC is the argument that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to preexisting functional systems through. Shea Butter The Path To Natural Healthy Skin Body Butters, Handmade Soaps, Lotions, Shampoo and more. Attempts to bring new voices and new ideas to the fore of Americas public discourse and seeks to reshape the American public debate by investing in outstanding. Archives and past articles from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly. The other judge I interviewed with was Chief Judge Becker here in the Third Circuit. So close My clerkship was one of the best years of my life, and Ive heard many other former clerks, before and since, say the same thing. If youre just starting a Third Circuit clerkship, youve probably heard lots of folks like me wax enthusiastic about clerking. Youre excited, and you should be. Walking into the courthouse that first day is a singular feeling. But when I started my clerkship I had a pretty hazy idea of what clerkships actually were like. All the misty eyed encouragement is nice, but it doesnt give you the whole picture. WHBFdfxIU/iTNepKVzwh_0/v9/1200x-1.png' alt='Reason And Argument Feldman Pdf File' title='Reason And Argument Feldman Pdf File' />Understanding a few realities going in can help you get the most out of your clerkship. So here are six things you should know 1. The applause is over. Law school is a firehose of feedback. Class rank, exams, jobs, law review, and on and on as a law student you were measured against your peers constantly and minutely. You came out on the winning end often enough to land a circuit clerkship, and those triumphant moments were intoxicating. But, when it comes to feedback, clerking is nothing like law school. Youre working just as hard, but suddenly theres no medal ceremony at the end of every race. No ones handing out prizes for the best opinion drafts. No ones telling you whether your bench memo was an A or a B, or why. Judges dont care whether you rank 8th or 5. In law school, you knew how you were doing down to the hundredth of a gradepoint. In your clerkship, you may wonder for weeks or months, without the barest hint. The competitive fire, the moments of triumph and affirmation that got you through law school they wont get you through your clerkship. Judges are busy. When I was a law student daydreaming about clerking, I pictured myself in the judges office, earnestly hashing out big legal questions with my co clerks and the judge. Afterwards, in my daydream, the judge would mosey over to my office, lean back in a chair with his feet up on my desk, and wed bat around reflections on the big opinion we just issued. That aint how it went. Every day, on average, my judge read 1,0. He estimated that he wrote the equivalent of two law review articles a week. So there wasnt a whole lot of time left to sit around and bullshit with me. Extroverts beware. One of my co clerks was a true people person, warm and social. For folks like her, a circuit clerkship can be a lonely bore. Coming from law school, appellate clerking can feel like a year of monkish solitude. You spend most days shackled to your computer, researching and cite checking and drafting. You get a bit of human contact with your nerdy co clerks, but a lot less contact with other chambers, and, unlike district clerkships, no contact at all with the lawyers. Thats fine and dandy if youre like me another of my co clerks dubbed me a Lover of the Law, and I do believe his tone was mocking. But if youre an extrovert, know that youre probably not going to get all the social sustenance you need at work, so try to get it somewhere. Accuracy before artistry. Law school rewards flash its less important to be correct than to seem brilliant. Most exam questions dont even have a right answer. Theyre a backdrop against which you dance and preen, outdoing your classmates with your elegant insights. No one cares too much whether you concluded in the end that Daisys negligence proximately caused Peters injury or not. But, as a clerk, your focus cant be your stardom. If it is, you can stretch too far to find and reach issues that seem important, even when especially when the parties havent briefed them adequately. You can spend too much time crafting grand Gorsuchian passages and too little time slogging through the record. If your focus is on standing out, youre prone to make more mistakes. Maybe that trade off was worth it when you were a law student, but not when youre a law clerk. Be your best self. A circuit clerkship is a nifty thing to have on your CV, but for many the credential ends up mattering less than the relationships they built during the clerkship. Of course you want to charm and impress your judge, but dont lose sight of your co clerks and the clerks in other chambers. In the decades ahead theyre going to be doing amazing things their friendship will enrich your life and maybe help your career. Do your best not to be an ass. Let the judge be the judge. One day down the road, after the initial panic recedes, you just wont believe how much power youve got as a clerk. You untangled how the case should come out, you persuaded your judge, and now its going into F. Its heady stuff. Thats all fine. You really do get to have an impact, and thats part of the fun. But keep it in perspective. Motherboard Manual Dell. Youre not the one who made it past the Judiciary Committee, and youre not the one whose name goes on the opinions. And thank god for that. Because, for all your jaw dropping Bluebook mastery, youre still a knucklehead with a careers worth of lessons yet to learn. Your job isnt to decide cases your job is to help your judge decide. Remember that, and youll do okay. For most, the cliche turns out to be true clerking for a federal appellate judge is an amazing opportunity. But chances are it will be a different version of amazing than the one you envisioned beforehand. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be to appreciate everything your clerkship does offer. As I was working on this post, I also solicited input on the topic from others. Here are those thoughts, verbatim with light editing for consistency Some lawyers just arent very good. While it is true that you will marvel, on occasion, at the quality of lawyers briefs, you also find yourself marveling that someone had the gall to submit insert piece of trash here to the marble palace in which you now reside. The mean average of briefs hovers around adequate which, if you think about it, is probably ideal if it gets the job done. But theres some terrible lawyering out there, more terrible still when your independent researchand get used to doing independent researchsuggests that the party could have won IF ONLY. Such is life in an adversarial system. Despite the above most clerks come into a clerkship without extensive background in actual practice. You may not know why a lawyer did something you deem puzzling, but there may be a good reason. A lawyers mistake, or failure to notice a case, may seem inexcusable, but you also dont know this attorneys caseload. People make mistakes, and it is not the job of the clerk to punch downwards. Some appellate judges are lovers of the law, others emphasize practicality, and most are somewhere in the middle. Dont interpret your bosss lack of enthusiasm for the intricacies of the FLSA as a suggestion that your work is not important or appreciated. Getting things right matters. Sometimes an opinion will have passed across countless desks, have undergone scrutiny by multiple pairs of eyes and it will still have a serious substantive mistake. The law is complex no one can be a master of all domains. Learn when to speak up, and how. With occasional exceptions, federal appellate judges do not decide cases on their lonesome. In each case, whether your judge is writing or not, you will have two other judges and their clerks to contend with. Some Circuits are known for their collegiality, and others for their frost. But unlike in District Court, your boss will not be her own fiefdom, and that will, for better or worse, affect how your chambers decides and writes cases both for the present and also the future, because federal appellate judges are the ultimate repeat players. You will make mistakes. You will receive pushback.