Gone are the days when our district would designate a particular magistrate judge who, along with his or her clerks, would handle certain pro se and inmate petitions. Those cases are now distributed among the district court judges, who in turn, have designated pro se law clerks.
The number of pro se petitions has grown exponentially and the district is in need of more talented law clerks. There are currently three open spots available and, if you are interested, I would encourage you to apply. The position is a good one in its own right (including the pay), but it is also a path to a more traditional law clerk experience. A handful of judges have already hired their pro se clerks to serve as term clerks.
Details for the openings can be found here: https://www.flsd.uscourts.gov/sites/flsd/files/jobs/2026-JDS-21%20Pro%20Se%20Law%20Clerk.pdf.
There are also other openings which may be of interest to the community, including term clerkships, listed here: https://www.flsd.uscourts.gov/job-listings.
8 comments:
I'd really like to better understand how these roles play out in practice. It seems SO inconsistent, at least in the civil arena. Half of absolutely looney-toons, batshit, "sovereign citizen" complaints get dismissed sua sponte by the court (presumably as a result of these law clerks' work) yet half just sit there and the defendants are forced to move to dismiss, almost always on shotgun pleading grounds, among others. Que pasa??
It typically comes down to whether the plaintiff is a prisoner and whether they are proceeding in forma pauperis. See 28 U.S.C. §1915A.
Well I was talking about civil and not "civil" post-conviction matters. So they're never prisoners. But if IFP status matters, it still seems wildly inconsistent.
For crim--those factors you identified don't seem to be doing much work given all the pro se 3582s (including repeat requests on the same legal basis previously denied, with no new facts or circumstances alleged).
When I was referring to prisoners, I was not talking about post-conviction, though that is certainly part of it. I was talking more about 1983s and cases filed for deprivation of civil rights while in prison, which take a large portion of the pro se law clerk time (from my experience clerking).
The pro se law clerks work only on civil prisoner cases in which the prisoner is pro se. Other (non-prisoner) civil pro se cases are automatically and randomly assigned to a magistrate judge, but either party can opt out, and then the case goes to the district court judges. In any case, if the case doesn't involve a prisoner, the pro se clerks don't touch it, even if there is a pro se party.
11:18 and 12:09 here. Thanks for the answers - very illuminating. I've still seen the court sua sponte dismiss non-prisoner, non-post-conviction, civil complaints. I assumed those orders were written by a pro se law clerk. But I guess it must just be proactive district judges (or mags) and/or their own dedicated clerks taking care of the truly insane ones.
I do wish this were more clear for practitioners, as I've sometimes waited til the last min to start retrofitting the same old shotgun pleading MTD, thinking someone was going to save me from that busywork.
Can you bill for it? If so, that's all that matters.
Touché. But, gov lawyer here. No billing for me :)
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