Yes­ter­day I interned at the Office of the Pub­lic Defender in dis­trict court. This was the first day of my new sched­ule, work­ing my 40 hours in 4 days and tak­ing Tues­days off to intern at the OPD. It was frig­ging fantastic.

Since I’m still wait­ing on my bar results the most I can do is act as a law clerk, but that’s still much more than I’ve had the chance to do before now.

The more I find out about the court and its pro­ce­dures (not civil, not crim­i­nal, but admin­is­tra­tive) the more igno­rant I feel. But at least it’s tem­pered with the knowl­edge that I’m in the right place to learn.
Turns out that the dis­trict court I’m work­ing at splits up the court­rooms by dis­trict. I was assigned to one court­room and I shadow the attor­neys who work that room.

Utter chaos started the day; peo­ple all over the place, lawyers snatch­ing con­ver­sa­tions with clients and their fam­i­lies before­hand and run­ning out of the court­room for min­utes at a time to fol­low up with clients after­ward.
Between the two attor­neys I shad­owed, there were about 20 cases dur­ing the morn­ing docket, but only 5 or so dur­ing the afternoon.

When the after­noon docket was fin­ished, one of the attor­neys asked me if I found it bor­ing or excit­ing. I told him that I’m still at the point where it’s all excit­ing, no mat­ter how bor­ing it is.