Some people may assume that judges and other court officers have predictable work schedules. Indeed, many government officials only work Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Some people may think judicial workers follow similar schedules. However, court officers seemingly work all kinds of hours, and legal professionals should assume that court officers might be fulfilling judicial duties outside of typical hours.

Not too long ago, I was trying to clear my desk on a Friday after 5 p.m. I was getting ready to go out to dinner and start enjoying my weekend. Right before I left for dinner, I saw that the court uploaded an order to one of my cases. I was surprised since it was after 5 p.m. on a Friday, and I figured that court officers would be headed home for the weekend at this point.

The order required me to do something within a short timeframe, so I had to push my dinner plans back to initiate the necessary steps before I left my desk. I was kind of peeved that this order had been uploaded after business hours right before a weekend, and I could see no reason why the order was not entered earlier. However, I do not have insight into judicial operations, and perhaps the court had other pressing tasks earlier in the day and wanted to complete this task before the weekend.

Interestingly, a few hours later (well after 7 p.m.) I got an email notifying me that a court officer in another case had just processed something related to that matter. I doubt that I received a notification even though the task was completed earlier in the day, since the e-filing system usually sends out notifications the moment something is done to a case. I wondered why a court officer was working so late on a Friday night, and luckily, this task did not require me to do anything on my end.

I have a friend who told me that he was working on a matter years ago, and he had a midnight deadline to email something to a judge. The friend told me that he stayed up late working on the assignment and emailed the document right before midnight. This friend conveyed that the judge immediately emailed him back about the assignment around midnight, which was impressive to me. Either this judge had horrible insomnia, or he was working on his cases well into the night.

Another time, I appeared in front of a judge on the eve of trial, and the judge was trying to convince the lawyers and parties to settle the matter. The judge conveyed that he worked on the weekends and all hours of night, and that if this trial moved forward, we would probably need to work on the weekends to get everything ready for a trial on short notice. I am not sure if this was persuasive to the parties, but the case eventually did settle and we did not need to test the judge on his assertion that we would all be working over the weekend. But I did not doubt that the judge indeed worked outside of business hours to complete judicial tasks.

All told, I think courts should try not to complete tasks outside of business hours, since this can impact other stakeholders to cases, especially counsel. However, it is probably unavoidable that court officers need to work outside of business hours, due to the demands of the judiciary and the volume of cases courts have on their dockets. In some respects, it is also admirable that court officers sacrifice what might be their personal time to ensure that the judicial process runs more efficiently.

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothman.law.

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