Summer Series: Clerking for a Federal Judge

Our Summer Series continues! This series highlights different Latina students and law grads as they embark in their summer jobs and/or bar prep all across the country. We hope to provide a variety of work experiences, options for a healthy work-life balance, and general motivation through different guest contributors to help you to take charge of your summer and professional goals!  Today we hear from Xinia, a rising 2L from New York,  who gives us a behind the scenes peek of what it’s like to be a judicial clerk:

Hello everyone! My name is Xinia and I’m a rising 2L at Boston University School of Law. My first year of law school was most definitely one of the most emotionally and academically challenging years of my life, but I did it and I am incredibly proud of myself. I hope to work at a large global firm one day, specifically doing international financial services and regulation.

This summer, I am interning at the Eastern District of New York, the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York. I’m a born and bred New Yorker so being home for the summer for the first time in eight years is a thrilling experience. I got the internship through the Sonia and Celina Sotomayor Internship program, which places law students from diverse backgrounds and underserved communities in judicial internships in New York. I’m interning for a magistrate judge who was sworn in earlier this year, so she and the staff, interns included, are almost on the same learning curve, which is unique and great.

A lot of people don’t know what a magistrate judge does (I didn’t know much either to be honest); essentially, she handles pre-trial matters in both civil and criminal cases. In the five weeks I have been here, my judge has conducted countless status and settlement conferences,and even oversaw her first trial. Magistrate judges rotate criminal duty in federal court and although my judge was on criminal duty the week before the interns started, she has conducted a few bond hearings, a sentencing hearing and a change of plea hearing in the past few weeks.

All of this background information to get to what I and the other interns do in the office! I often get asked how my internship is going and I usually answer “interesting” because it is genuinely the best answer. When not observing one of the aforementioned actions, I have been doing a lot of research, reading and writing, quite often with fast-approaching deadlines. The first memo I was given was handed off to me from another intern; while she had thankfully done most of the research already, I still had to determine whether the Fair Labor Standards Act settlement agreement met the Court’s standards and write a memo about it in two days. After my clerk fixed some grammatical mistakes and Bluebook citations in my memo, I met with him and the judge before the status conference with the attorneys. I was totally (obviously) nervous about my work product. The judge asked various questions about the case and the precedent cases mentioned in the memo, and I answered them as best I could. Of course I thought I did horribly. After the meeting was over, my clerk pulled me to the side to tell me that he could tell that the judge was impressed not only by the memo, but by my ability to answer her curveball questions about the research, complementing me on a job well done. I almost busted out dancing. But professionalism.

Aside from the behind the scenes action, the internship has also been a learning experience of what not to do as a lawyer. I have lost count of the times when an attorney has interrupted the judge, ignored one of her orders, or even argued with her. I often wonder if she were a man, would they treat her in the same manner? The legal profession is notorious for gender discrimination and although it’s not just men who do it, I am horrified to witness the blatant lack of disrespect for a federal judge.

I had several options for my summer internship, including one closer to home in Massachusetts and another that was paid, but I am incredibly happy that I chose a judicial internship. I was very adamant about only doing transactional law, but this opportunity has opened my eyes to the world of litigation and has forced me to think twice about the field of law in which I’d like to practice. I encourage everyone to step outside your comfort zone because you never know what really makes you happy!