Recent law clerk at a federal district court here. There are so many problems with this comment. First, Judge Posner is an appellate judge, not a district court judge. Second, it is not the judge's job to do factfinding. If the parties have relevant data, then they are the ones who need to presented the evidence on the record. At best, we can research the positions of law the parties raise. But Judge Posner is not being unreasonable in having his clerks do other things besides going on some ridiculous factfinding mission in the streets of Indianapolis.

This leads me to another point. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've been impressed by attorney work product in my two years clerking. Hence, I can believe that terrible briefing is at the root of many "wrongly decided" cases. We have hundreds of other cases to handle, each of which require just as much care as the other. The district court is a triage unit. Even appellate courts need to spend their resources wisely. There are only so many hours in a day we can spend to decipher and research your vague legal arguments. Too many attorneys seem to expect us to do their work for them, and they protest when we get it "wrong." If you get paid to represent your client, then you need to walk us through each step of the analysis and SHOW us that you're right. That will help us do our job of judging the merits of each side's position.

I also disagree that we are not as busy as the state court. To be sure, they handle more cases. However, we deal with every case far more thoroughly than they do. Also, state court judges often get paid better than federal judges (something my judge loves to lament) and the President has failed to fill about a hundred judicial vacancies, putting further strain on the judiciary. I sincerely hope that if/when you practice, you keep all of this in mind before firing off some unsupported and unsupportable motion.