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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12456 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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At one of our local courthouses a kid fresh out of law school applied to be a judicial clerk. For those of you unfamiliar, a judicial clerk is a mix of an assistant to the judge, and doing the judge's actual job for him, with the percentages varying with the judge and the clerk. Most of the judicial opinions that form the law of the land are written primarily not by judges in black robes but by anonymous clerks whose names are nowhere in the text.

This guy claimed all kinds of mental disabilities along those lines (ADHD and the gang), and before he even started the job, during the application process he was pointing to various accommodations he would need to function within the role of judicial clerk. He would need extra time on assignments, he claimed to be incapable of following speech and taking notes without a laptop or of engaging in live debate because he couldn't process speech fast enough or something.

To even ask for these things reflects an entire misunderstanding of how work works, of the whole idea of a professional. You don't get extra time on assignments, the assignments exist and you get them done. If you don't complete the work necessary in your allotted hours, you have to finish it outside of your allotted hours. If your allotted hours produce less work than the average worker, you are less valuable than the average worker. At no point in the application process did this young man seem to think of the problem as "I'm going to need to work more hours" but always in terms of "You're going to have to go easy on me." I know it's the government, but still, there's not even the illusion of caring about productivity or value for a dollar.

And what offends me most is to lead with it proudly! As @FtttG says below, Hyprocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. One ought to at least have the decency to be ashamed of being a slow worker, or disabled, and hide it until after one is hired in a cushy government sinecure from which one cannot practically speaking be fired.

I used to struggle with this in law school, the idea of extra time or drugs to help someone focus on legal work strikes me as absurd in a professional school that is explicitly preparing the majority of its students to function through billable hours. It seemed obvious to me that it was good to provide help to kids who needed it in elementary school, but that it should stop by professional school. I didn't recognize how slippery the slope was. Standards must be standardized, or they are useless. People we pretended were good at one level always trickle down to the next level and demand we pretend they are good at that too.

This young man is now shipwrecked, with a professional degree and probably a great deal of debt, and no real way to make money at it except by conning others into "accommodating" him. Left to his own devices, as the mythical solo practitioner with a shingle out, he will need to work absurd hours to achieve a livable income. Working for others, he will be fired repeatedly, or barely tolerated for fear of a lawsuit. That's no kind of life. And I don't know how you pull someone out of it.

We're well past the point of "a bunch of kids in colleges," this is now at the point of taking over the workplace.

I used to struggle with this in law school, the idea of extra time or drugs to help someone focus on legal work strikes me as absurd in a professional school that is explicitly preparing the majority of its students to function through billable hours.

Why are drugs (Adderall etc.?) at all akin to extra time, or generally the problem you discuss? Someone who takes Adderall to complete the job in the allotted time still completes it in the allotted time.

Not that the analogy is perfect, but if anything, the restriction of access to drugs feels more similar to "accommodations" here: rather than letting the law of the jungle do its work and give the job to whoever is willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to do it best and fastest, it artificially levels the playing field for the benefit of those who would not augment their performance with drugs, even if the job to be done suffers for it. Presumably the reasoning is that for moral/aesthetic/higher reasons, we value the undrugged equilibrium higher than the best possible legal work, just as disability accommodations are justified because for moral/aesthetic/higher reasons, we value equity higher than the best possible legal work.

(edit, I see @fmaa made the same point below. Should have refreshed before posting)

To be honest, it was a separate train of thought that was combined in my head incorrectly. Both are manifestations of doctor shopping based grubbing in law school, but you're right, the valence is precisely opposite.

I had a roommate in law school with a prescription for addies, and he started dating a friend of mine 1L year, and right before finals I caught her walk of shaming out of there when I was making Turkish coffee. I of course offered her coffee, she scurried out. My roommate proceeded to tell me that she had asked him if she could buy some adderall off him, and he had said "Oh, you'll find a way to earn it..." and I started laughing and said "Jeez, if y'all were black and lived in Baltimore they'd call this prostitution for amphetamines."

to even ask for these things reflects an entire misunderstanding of how work works, of the whole idea of a professional. You don't get extra time on assignments, the assignments exist and you get them done. If you don't complete the work necessary in your allotted hours, you have to finish it outside of your allotted hours. If your allotted hours produce less work than the average worker, you are less valuable than the average worker. At no point in the application process did this young man seem to think of the problem as "I'm going to need to work more hours" but always in terms of "You're going to have to go easy on me." I know it's the government, but still, there's not even the illusion of caring about productivity or value for a dollar.

A friend in a big city indigent defense office was telling me about the office hiring 2 recently-licensed attorneys who had attended top-10 law schools. Both ended up being unmitigated disasters who could not handle the work (that other attorneys from mediocre schools could handle). It appeared they had been "accommodated" for many years to get by and being given actual work with deadlines, clients, etc. was too much for them.

[There is the suspicion that anyone from a top-10 school applying to a public defense office is not the best from the school, but quite a few students end up doing that (or a prosecution job) to get a few years of trial work and showing they care about the little people or whatever before moving up in the world, so I don't think these two were from the bottom 10% of their schools (and per my friend, they had impressive transcripts/resumes).]

The alarming part of the story is that one went to HR and HR sided with them, resulting in their caseload being reduced and moved to other attorneys. This person is now being paid the same as those other attorneys to do much less work, and because of the way it all went down, all those other attorneys are very aware of everything that happened.

This sets up an unsustainable race to the bottom where every attorney is now incentivized to get a diagnosis and claim a need for accommodations to get less work, and any attorney who does not will end up with much more work. The justice system creaks along rather poorly, and defense offices are usually understaffed already. Requiring twice as many attorneys because caseloads are being cut in half to accommodate them is not practical, and it wouldn't be practical on the prosecution side, either (I haven't heard of it happening, but it seems like a matter of time until the knowledge of claiming a need for accommodation spreads).

People talk about it, but I don't think it has really sunk in for many what the legal system (or other systems) are going to look like when the Boomers/elder Xers are fully gone and they're replaced with people like those I discuss above.

The alarming part of the story is that one went to HR and HR sided with them, resulting in their caseload being reduced and moved to other attorneys. This person is now being paid the same as those other attorneys to do much less work, and because of the way it all went down, all those other attorneys are very aware of everything that happened.

Are you serious? I... didn't think it was possible for lawyers to hate money like this.

I'm confused why you're putting extra time and drugs into the same category here. He can keep taking the drugs for those billable hours.

In fact, I think being against performance enhancing drugs is part of the same confused attitude to work you otherwise decry. Where there's a "proper" way to study/practice law, and doing it on adderall is cheating. Instead of there being an actual service that he's performing with an output/price ratio.

It's "cheating" because the people of X nation don't want to open the door to the Deus Ex world where you have to pay to take the drug for the rest of your natural life or die from being unable to compete with your peers (that can afford it), hence the compact against doing that, and why taking the drug anyway is treated as defection.

Compare "but I can't afford insulin" in the US; while amphetamines are cheaper than that, the next generation of them may not be, in which case a norm that you take them to work might become very costly indeed.

Performance-enhancing drugs can also fuck up your judgement when abused. See DOGE, FTX among many others.

It's less that it's cheating and more that it creates perverse incentives to demand that all employees are on drugs (or that the load is too high for natties). It's why I'd object to performance enhancing drugs, anyway.

Most of the judicial opinions that form the law of the land are written primarily not by judges in black robes but by anonymous clerks whose names are nowhere in the text. (…) To even ask for these things reflects an entire misunderstanding of how work works, of the whole idea of a professional.

I think there's an interesting tension here. If we're looking at the position of judicial clerk as just a menial job within a capitalist economy - there's stuff that needs doing, the market selects for the most efficient person willing to do them for what they're worth - then I get you. But if, de facto, the opinions of judicial clerks genuinely shape the law of the land, then it's clearly unjust for able-bodied fast workers to be over-represented among them. Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

(Of course, some might argue the problem starts at "judicial legal clerks hired off the street have an outsized influence on the law of the land". Perhaps it would make more sense for anyone with that much power to be elected, or otherwise more clearly accountable to the public; we could then restrict these kinds of disability accommodations to the accountable elected public servants, without needing to provide them for the genuinely politically-irrelevant coffee-fetcher.)

I think there's an interesting tension here. If we're looking at the position of judicial clerk as just a menial job within a capitalist economy - there's stuff that needs doing, the market selects for the most efficient person willing to do them for what they're worth - then I get you. But if, de facto, the opinions of judicial clerks genuinely shape the law of the land, then it's clearly unjust for able-bodied fast workers to be over-represented among them. Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

Kinder and better are at tension with respect to laws concerning disability accommodations.

So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters and stuff like that there. -- Senator Roman L. Hruska (who, unsurprisingly, did not persuade his colleagues on this nomination)

I disagree. I think smarter people do a better job for everyone. I think it is incumbent upon all entrusted with Other People's Money to spend it well, and that means getting as much work for as little as you can pay. Anyway the subset of laws related to disability is small, hearing the voices of the disabled can be achieved through things like Amicus briefs in the few decisive cases. But at any rate, we should probably cut off this thread of argument because I don't want to do that annoying thing where I provide additional details from my real world example that I didn't provide initially in order to refute your points which you made in good faith based on your limited knowledge of the situation, and I feel like that's going to become inevitable fast.

A little learning is a dangerous thing ; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring : There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

Sheer intelligence is very valuable, but it's not actually that important in the bulk of jobs (although there's a clear floor that you want people to be above). Diligence and consistency, paired with a moderatively above average level of intelligence, seems like the sweet spot for most jobs. I'm not sure the legal system really needs brilliant people to implement correctly; and, to the extent it does, that's a failing of the legal system.

Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

Your use of the word "kinder" is rather a transparent applause light. I don't doubt that disabled lawmakers would be more likely to pass laws or make legal judgements which will favour the interests of disabled people (at least in the short-term), but I'm not at all persuaded that this would be beneficial for society at large.

I mean, sure, if a country which passed a law which made it illegal for an employer to fire anyone with a disability, I guess this would be "kinder" to any currently gainfully employed disabled people. But I would have a hard time describing such a law as "better" legislation than what a reasonable person would come up with.

I actually used "kinder" as well as "better" specifically to be transparent about the fact that I consider kindness an inherently valuable quality for a law to possess, for moral reasons, separately from other ways in which a policy can be "good" for society (i.e. instrumentally). Because I wanted to avoid people saying I was begging the question by simply saying "better" and taking it for granted that kinder laws are better. I'm at a loss as to how else I could have communicated my point at this point.

Because I wanted to avoid people saying I was begging the question by simply saying "better" and taking it for granted that kinder laws are better.

That's exactly how your original comment came off to me.

Also you seem to have an unorthodox definition of "kind".

But if, de facto, the opinions of judicial clerk genuinely shape the law of the land, then it's clearly unjust for able-bodied fast workers to be over-represented among them. Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

This is not, in fact, clearly the more just outcome. Your argument is circular; you're assuming that "kinder" disability accommodations are desirable and using that to argue that judicial clerks should obtain those accommodations.

Not really. My preferred policy would be for disabled people to get guaranteed allocations, which they get to keep even if they then choose to be proactive and get extra money from gainful employment (at which they would not get these kinds of accommodations). This is noticeably different from the accommodations which I believe should be provided to democratically-elected members of the government so as to allow disabled people an equal shot at shaping government policy. I have no doubt you disagree with this, but I don't think it's circular - both halves simply flow from the same underlying premise of "kindness is good".

Do you think this young man ever had the practical chance of having a normal, productive life in an alternate universe?

I mean if he could finish law school he could have a nice career as an accountant or teacher or something.

With ADHD and other mental disabilities?

Even assuming they’re real, which they may not be, there’s plenty of jobs that would be OK for his conditions.

Probably, but not as a lawyer. And once you are so far down that path, you've taken on a lot of financial-temporal-moral debt that creates path dependance.

If he had the ability to finish law school at all, he has the ability to do some job in the economy. But rather than looking for a profession that he could perform well in, he was allowed to drift into a profession despite failing (under even circumstances) every test designed to filter for the talent required to perform well. Now he's likely in significant debt, he's three years older, and if he tries to do anything else it's understood that he failed as a lawyer.

Someone who can't function within time limits is never going to do well in a business built on billable hours. A lower pressure role, or one where having one great idea every week is better than doing 50 hours of competent drudge work might be fine.

As a lawyer, there's plenty of smaller niches lawyers can fall into that don't go bonkers over billables in the same way the big firms do. For example, plaintiff's-side firms doing most of their work on contingency, or in-house regulatory compliance practice work.

I had a friend who I know worked at small firm in a pretty small 'big city' doing what sounded to me like paralegal work (filing forms on evictions, repossessions to the court). She said she made $50k a year but liked it because she didn't have to get clients. I think she got her grandma to foot the bill for law school (and wasn't paying her back any interest). Lived at home, and just consumed media and hated Trump, would wonder why she had no friends and would call me with grievances from her childhood.

I knew a guy who worked at a specialist firm which almost exclusively dealt with gas station franchising and environmental cleanup/compliance work. Didn't make BigLaw money, but did a lot better than $50k/yr. There's lots of weird niches of law you can get into and pick up specialist work without stressing about billables. Not saying that having craptastic time management will be a good thing, but it won't be as automatically fatal as it would be in BigLaw, Insurance Defense, etc.

People need to be weeded out as fast possible. Relaxing standards push off the ultimate failure until after someone is pot committed.

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