CLERK

clerk,n.1. A public official whose duties include keeping records or accounts.city clerk.A public official who records a city’s official proceedings and vital statistics. [Cases:Municipal Cor-porations  170. C.J.S. Municipal Corporations §§ 391–405.]town clerk.An officer who keeps the records, issues calls for town meetings, and performs the duties of a secretary to the town’s political organization. [Cases: Towns  30. C.J.S. Towns §§ 120–125.]A court officer responsible for filing papers, issuing process, and keeping records of court proceedings as generally specified by rule or statute. — Also termed clerk of court. [Cases: Clerks of Courts  1.C.J.S. Courts § 236.]district clerk.The clerk of a district court within a state or federal system. See district courtunder COURT. [Cases: Clerks of Courts  1. C.J.S. Courts § 236.] An employee who performs general office work. 4. A law student or recent law-school graduate who helps a lawyer or judge with legal research, writing, and other tasks. — Also termed law clerk; extern; or (depending on the time of year) summer clerk; summer associate. See INTERN. [Cases: Courts  55.C.J.S. Courts §§ 107–109.] 5. A lawyer who assists a judge with research, writing, and case management. — Also termed briefing attorney; research attorney; staff attorney. [Cases: Courts  55. C.J.S. Courts §§ 107–109.]“[M]odern American judging in all courts of national significance — the federal courts and the more prominent state appellate courts — staggers along despite the burden of bloated caseloads and the shortcomings of distinctly human judges only by the delegation of a great deal of the labor of judging to law clerks: subordinate, anonymous, but often quite powerful lawyers who function as the noncommissionedofficers in the army of the judiciary.” John Bilyeu Oakley & Robert S. Thompson, Law Clerks and the Judicial Process 2 (1980).6.Hist. A cleric.“Eventually the rule was established that ‘clerks’ of all kinds, who committed any of the serious crimes termed felonies, could be tried only in an ecclesiastical court, and therefore were only amenable to such punishments as that court could inflict. Any clerk accused of such crime was accordingly passed over to the bishop’s court. He was there tried before a jury of clerks by the oaths of twelve compurgators; a mode of trial which usually ensured him an acquittal.” J.W. Cecil Turner, Kenny’s Outlines of Criminal Law 75 (16th ed. 1952).[Blacks Law 8th]

7.SECRETARY(3).

reading clerk.A legislative officer charged with reading bills to the body. clerk,vb. To work as a clerk <she clerked for a Chicago law firm last summer>.