DirtyLAWndry reader, “Lauren,” writes about her experience working as a legal clerk.

Hey DirtyLAWndry! I’ve been clerking for less than a year, but in that time I have formed the opinion that judges are required to abuse their power. There are quite a few legal clerks here and we have all witnessed the same over-reaction by overly-sensitive (sometimes insensitive) judges. Fridays are the worst days of the week for us. One judge in particular always shows up extremely late and falls asleep during cases, especially on Fridays. Today, he was extremely irritable when he came in to work. Within maybe 20 minutes on the bench, he fell asleep. He always tries to play it off like he’s reading documents or in deep thought (with his eyes closed). But, today he was snoring so loudly that it wasn’t fooling anybody. During a trial today, an attorney was admonished for waking up the judge. There was an objection that needed to be settled. You would think that the judge would be embarassed or at the very least stay awake afterwards. Nope. He fell right back asleep. He would get annoyed every time one of the attorneys objected and start yelling at them. It got to the point that the attorneys stopped waking him up and turned to me and the bailiff for assistance. So, I try waking the judge up. Next thing I know, I’m being threatened with contempt for waking up “your honor.” He’s screaming at me that I should spend time in jail over the weekend. I am sooo not cut out for this. I’m sure it’s not ALL judges, however, it seems like there is a vast majority that get a kick out of abusing their power.

Reader, what do you think?

UPDATE: I just saw a story over at the ABAJournal and I was reminded of “Lauren’s” submission. Douglas County, Missouri Attorney Carl Smith has been jailed for 120 days on criminal contempt charges for critical statements he wrote about Circuit Judge Robert Carter, County Prosecutor Christopher Wade and other court officials in an appellate brief for a client. Read more….

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