Has anyone worked as a court clerk?

Question

Just ttrying to determine if this is a job I would like or not. What is the majority of the work, is it filing or typing stuff? What did you most like about the job? What did you hate about it?

Answer 1

The answer to your question depends on what you mean by court clerk.  Do you mean the person who is at the window in the general clerk's office that takes documents from the public to be filed with the court?  Or do you mean the person who is behind the scenes?  Or the courtroom clerk?

The person at the window - a court clerk - takes documents to be filed with the court.  He/She types the information into the system and provides a file-stamped copy back to the member of the public (assuming said member of the public brings an extra copy to be conformed).

There is a person behind the scenes - also called a court clerk - that does filing and typing.  This individual may also bring a copy of the file-stamped document to another department for it to be imaged/scanned into the computer system so that the original goes into the file and the law clerk/research attorney can pull up the imaged copy from the computer as his/her own working copy (from which to use to conduct research, write legal opinions, etc.).

Then, there is a courtroom clerk - one who is assigned to a specific courtroom to work for a specific judge.  That clerk gets all the files ready for his/her assigned judge and keeps the judge's calendar.  This clerk also has access to other judge's calendars, in case something needs to be assigned to another judge.  He/She tracks what the judge says on the bench so that new date(s) can be calendared into the court's calendar (and also onto the register of actions).