Some people may assume that judges and other court officials have predictable work schedules. Indeed, many civil servants only work Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Some people might think that court workers follow similar schedules. However, court officers apparently work very varied hours, and legal professionals must assume that court officers can carry out their judicial duties outside of normal hours.
Not long ago, I was trying to clean up my desk on a Friday after 5 p.m., getting ready to go out to dinner and start enjoying my weekend. Just before leaving for dinner, I saw that the court had uploaded an order regarding one of my cases. I was surprised as it was after 5pm on a Friday and I thought the clerks would be going home for the weekend at that time.
The order required me to do something in a short period of time, so I had to postpone my dinner plans to take the necessary steps before leaving my office. I was a little irritated that this order was uploaded after hours just before a weekend, and I saw no reason why the order hadn’t been entered sooner. However, I have no information on judicial functioning and perhaps the court had other urgent tasks earlier in the day and wanted to complete this task before the weekend.
Interestingly, a few hours later (well after 7 p.m.) I received an email informing me that a clerk on another case had just handled something related to this case. I doubt I would have received a notification even if the task was completed earlier in the day, because the e-filing system usually sends notifications as soon as an action is taken on a file. I wondered why a clerk would work so late on a Friday night, and luckily this task didn’t require me to do anything on my part.
I have a friend who told me he was working on a case years ago and had a midnight deadline to email something to a judge. The friend told me he stayed up late working on the assignment and emailed the document just before midnight. This friend said that the judge immediately emailed him back about the assignment around midnight, which impressed me. Either this judge suffered from horrible insomnia or he worked on his cases late into the night.
Another time, I appeared before a judge the day before trial, and the judge was trying to convince the lawyers and the parties to settle the case. The judge indicated that he works weekends and all hours of the night and if this trial moves forward, we will likely need to work weekends to get everything ready for trial on short notice. I’m not sure this convinced the parties, but the case was ultimately settled and we didn’t need to test the judge on his assertion that we were all going to work over the weekend. But I had no doubt that the judge was indeed working outside of office hours to carry out his judicial duties.
Overall, I think courts should try not to perform tasks outside of office hours, as this can impact other stakeholders in cases, especially lawyers. However, it is probably inevitable that court officials will have to work outside of office hours, due to the demands of the judiciary and the volume of cases before the courts. In some ways, it is also admirable that judicial officers sacrifice what could be their personal time to ensure that the judicial process runs more efficiently.
Jordan Rothman is a partner in The Rothman Law Firma full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student debt logsa website explaining how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan by email at jordan@rothma.law.
