I have some unfortunate news: the summer is over. For students this means back to school (after 2 very unfulfilling weeks off after my internship). For most non-students nothing has changed because the summer does not bring vacation; it just means having to wear a suit in 90 degree weather instead of 30 degree weather (gray wool in july is NO FUN, let me tell you).
But for legal workers .... it means pretty much the same thing as law students, time to get back to work. Don't get me wrong, lawyers and attorneys are some of the hardest workers around, but during August the courts are closed!!! Unless a defendant is in jail, there ain't going to be any presence in front of a judge until labor day. This means that no civil cases can do anything, and criminal cases get further backlogged.
The reason for this issue is the curse of the government worker. Lawyers, whether public or corporate, work equally hard. However, first year corporate lawyers get paid 4x as much as their counterparts in the public sector and 2x as much as judges in their 10th year. So how do the public workers even out the disparate pay checks... vacation days, 9-5 work day, and an earned smugness that they have more interesting cases (i don't care what anyone says: murder is much more interesting than derivative suits).
It's inefficient and a waste that courts universally shut down for a month when the crime rate is probably at its highest (August means lots of young people out of school with nothing better to do). But its the price we as a society pay for not paying government workers more. I'm not an economist so i can't say whether it would be better to give everyone a raise and make them work more or to let them have their generous vacation days. But, we can't call government lawyers lazy (except the SEC and their higher pay scale) as we pay them abysmally low salaries.Sorry Jack McCoy, even with your promotion to District Attorney you'd still be earning 1/2 the paycheck of a first year associate and living in a small apartment somewhere in New Jersey.
