The Job of a Law Clerk
A law clerk is vital to the judicial process. These professionals provide invaluable assistance when it comes to legal research and writing. In the vast majority of cases, it is these people that draft its most important documents, such as opinions, for judges. They are seen as the right hand of a judge (or firm partner).
They are crucial to the decision-making process by making recommendations based on all the available evidence. While a law clerk does not actually make the decision, the judge (partner) places high value on those recommendations and prefers to follow them. These recommendations are usually well thought out and accompanied by extensive notes and references.
Many judges (partners) simply do not have time to read every case in their chambers before issuing a ruling. To be clear , this does not mean the judges (partners) do not read. It simply means everything from rules of evidence to any relevant statutes to motions to even routine paperwork that a legal professional is expected to read is too much for one person to handle in such a short period of time. The recommendation of a qualified, experienced, and confident law clerk alleviates a lot of time for a judge (partner) and can save literally weeks in preparation.
In some cases, they are allowed to hold court for a judge (partner), assuming the particular case is simple enough and the judge (partner) does not have a full calendar. For example, a law clerk may preside over an arraignment hearing where it is basically setting future court dates. In serious cases, it is the judge (partner) who makes the decisions. A law clerk’s principles and recommendations are not usually given much weight at those times. The judge simply makes the decisions without input. There are times when law clerks work on complex litigation during trials.
Significance of Legal Reviews
Legal reviews are performed to ensure that every facet of the law is abided by to the fullest extent. These careful examinations make certain that laws are interpreted correctly and that every duty is properly performed. To this extent, legal reviews serve as an essential part of the law as they help ensure that the directives laid out in statutes are followed.
It is crucial that these reviews are complete and correct. Errors in the legal system may carry dire consequences, which is why consultants often oversee every stage of the review process to gain essential insights. Law clerks in particular play an important role in this process. By helping to identify and evaluate legal issues, law clerks are able to perform analysis and gain valuable insights that impact law practice. Thorough legal reviews also help identify any gaps or inconsistencies in the law, paving the way for issues to be resolved before they come up in practice. This ability to communicate directly with clients and offer direct feedback on cases and issues is among the many reasons why legal reviews are so important.
Key Aspects of a Thorough Legal Review
The Components of a Comprehensive Law Clerk Legal Review
A right answer to the wrong question is still wrong.
-Carl Jung
More than selecting research topics, billing entries, and other information, a thorough law clerk legal review includes a compilation of all of the relevant information. It provides for a review of all of the data to be included in the search, as well as those that will not be included in the search. Thus, if there are documents of significance that do not show up in the search results, these will fall under the review of the law clerk and will be noted. We include citations to the cases or documents reviewed, alongside the date viewed and the specific database on which they are indexed.
The law clerk outlines the content of the written report they are preparing. These may be hand-written, or typed outlines, as long as they are clear. The outline should include the research question presented, as well as a list of the sources searched and the results of those searches, indicating which result or results is most relevant to the question presented. A comprehensive law clerk legal review will include specific citations to all relevant cases, with parenthetical explanations of the findings of each case, where appropriate. The results of the law clerk’s review of these documents are marked up to indicate the answers to the questions and issues presented.
As part of the intensive review by a proficient law clerk, all issues and questions not addressed in the articles or cases reviewed will be noted and answered. These related issues may have been noted by the attorneys in the deposition transcripts or documents produced during discovery. For example, an attorney may have reviewed an article created by the law clerk, deciding on further direction for the investigation. Thus, the law clerk will have reviewed the material cited in the research papers and provided a thorough legal digest of the attorney’s demand.
All of this information is compiled into a comprehensive guide outlining the critical points. Like a book written at an undergraduate level, a thorough law clerk review consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. Included in the introduction, the law clerk will also indicate the database or databases used in the initial search, followed by the keywords and search terms used and the dates of the search. Thus, the client or legal professional can see their precise methodology. The body of the law clerk legal review is the result of critical analysis of the materials reviewed. The benchmarks provided, based on extensive experience, indicate whether the submitted claim would exceed available policy limits, the probable range of expected settlement, the range of potential liabilities, as well as a discussion of those sources of potential liability that are unique and have no known limitations. In addition, the research includes an assessment of the exposure and potential liability in the courts where a case has the greatest likelihood of being filed. The conclusion includes a reference to those stages of the litigation and discovery that may require further investigation.
At this point, legal professionals will have two separate documents providing them with information: the attorney note and the law clerk review. The note, prepared by the attorney, will provide the key information essential for well-informed decision-making; the law clerk review will contain significant additional data and related documentation to ensure that decisions are based on as many relevant variables as possible.
How Technology is Revolutionizing Legal Reviews
The evolution of legal reviews, particularly those conducted by law clerks, continues to be influenced by new technology, and innovations in software and data management. As proven in our 4-part series with the American Bar Association, law clerks are often among the unsung team members whose contributions have the potential to result in increased efficiency and significant savings for law firms and clients. Law clerks are often the first individuals within a legal team to examine and summarize documents in a case. Historically, this process has involved a lot of manual work, whereby the law clerk would typically organize documents by type before categorizing and summarizing them into individual issue lists, and work through this process case-by-case. They might also implement document coding systems using Excel, Word, or other standard software in their work product. Such an arduous manual process can be extremely time consuming; if documents are not properly organized, and summarization is not accurately completed, much of the review process needs to be redone which can lead to delays and missed deadlines. All of these challenges can increase a firm’s legal costs, and the overall litigation expenses incurred by the client.
More efficiently presenting an organized bundle of documents to law firm lawyers makes a law clerk’s workload much easier. Technological tools that help law clerks focus on the most important issues at hand can help law firms cut costs, reduce time spent on reviewing and revising law clerk work, and ultimately save money for clients. Such tools should help streamline the law clerks’ work by allowing them to quickly organize data and summarize issues. Additionally, these tools should allow the law clerk to easily mark up documents, create issue lists for documents, conduct first pass electronic data searches, and index images with Bates numbering.
If document organizing and summarization manner merely ends up in another level of redundancy, it is likely that the legal review process would be too slow and tedious to be feasible. In cases where there are hundreds of thousands of documents to review, slow processes are not the most effective, both from a workflow perspective and on cost. The organization of factual research and records searching must be done in a way that law clerks can use them to build foundational brief summaries and later, analyses, motions, and pleadings.
Common Issues Law Clerks Face in Legal Reviews
Even the most efficient law clerks concede that a legal review can be a mostly unexciting (and arduous) process. Given the sheer amount of analytics to process and the limited time and resources offered by your firm, it is no wonder that law clerks face a number of difficulties during legal reviews. The first, and perhaps the most common of these, is the time afforded to carry out a review. Without sufficient time, it is near impossible for even seasoned professionals to dedicate the required attention and focus to the matter at hand. It is typically this lack of time that leads to law clerks reserves their reviews to material facts and contract points that they are already familiar with – often missing other crucial details entirely. Any legal reviewer will also know that a substantial amount of a review’s time will be consumed through the gathering and processing of relevant data. The largest contracts, or those which involve multiple countries , will usually contain hundreds of thousands of words and lifetimes’ worth of provisions and clauses. When faced with such vast amounts of data, the temptation for a law clerk is to simply copy and paste relevant clauses into a spreadsheet, as this is often seen as the easiest (and most time-effective) solution. This approach, however, is not without its shortcomings. Given the sheer amount of data offered, it is remarkably easy to lose concentration and motivation during a legal review. It is not uncommon to be surprised by particular pieces of key information that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, having failed to pay close enough attention to the detail. A lack of concentration also leads to inconsistent results; a contract may be inconsistency reviewed and organized, while only certain clauses may be identified and dealt with. As a result, the final project may require considerable additional work to ensure its quality and accuracy – ultimately increasing the review’s turnaround time and, thus, associated costs.
Effective Legal Review Practices
The best practices law clerks should adopt to conduct more effective legal reviews are:
- Read beyond the headlines: While it may be tempting to only read the first and last paragraphs of a document, a thorough analysis requires an understanding of the entire document. Take time to read and understand the entire document.
- Don’t focus on formatting: It can be tempting to focus on correcting typographical errors or formatting issues, but these changes take time. Instead, focus on the substance of the argument being made.
- Use citation tools: Many word processing programs have built-in citation tools that can save you time when formatting citations.
- Avoid writing in the margins: While it may be convenient to write in the margins of a hard copy document, it is not helpful for the attorney who will ultimately be using the revised document.
- Set deadlines and stick to them: For more complicated tasks, such as drafting a brief, it can be helpful to break the project up into smaller tasks with deadlines for each task.
- Ask for help if needed. It may be embarrassing to ask for help, but it is better to ask for help, than to miss something.
Law Clerk Legal Reviews in an Evolving Landscape
As the legal profession continues to face an unprecedented pace of change, law clerks will need to adapt to those changes in a managed and meaningful way that continues to earn and keep the respect of those ultimately responsible for the cases. As trends in the legal service market (such as digital transformation, alternative legal service delivery, growing demand, declining resources, price competition and client dissatisfaction) continue to evolve, so too will the role of the law clerk in the legal review process. Of particular note is the impact of these trends on the legal review methodologies employed by law firms.
Certainly these impacts will be felt by the legal review process two ways: Regarding the former, new tools and technologies that optimize efficiency or leverage advances in artificial intelligence will ensure that the law firm’s business model has demonstrable responsiveness to demands for efficiency and price competition. To the latter point, technology will also bring new ways to ensure the highest levels of quality via process-driven controls, both mechanical and human, and through rigorous and standardized performance monitoring of team members and their performance.
Along with these macro trends, local and long-term economic variables will have a significant impact on the future of law clerk legal reviews. The most significant of these variables are: Not surprisingly , macroeconomic trends will impact the availability of resources. In the short to medium term, declines in the attorney resource pool will inevitably lead to more and more work being done by law clerk resources and other non-attorney, legal professionals. These high-quality, low-cost, onshore resources will dovetail nicely with all of the macro trends articulated above.
In the medium to long-term, if the attorney resource pool returns to pre-2008 levels, the traditional, inefficient legal review process using hourly billing may render an unsustainable value proposition for both the client and the law firm. At that point, it will be even more important that law clerk legal reviews are performed efficiently and in a process-managed way that ensures quality and actual, accountable compliance with the attorney’s explicit instructions.
The law clerk legal review ahead will be an agile, scalable, process-driven quality control function that earns and retains the respect of the most demanding client. It will need to embrace technological advances and be an integral part of the continuum of legal service delivery, from pre-review analysis to final reporting. As with all things that are meaningful and successful, the old adage rings true: The only constant is change. Only through proactive and intentional change can an organization remain competitive, relevant and profitable.