Who Drafts in Oklahoma is a Common Misconception
Video Transcribed: Judges do not draft their own court orders. I’m Oklahoma Lawyer James Wirth, and that’s a little snippet that we’re talking about today, is who drafts the court’s orders? I mean, if you pay attention to the news, you see Supreme Court decisions, and generally, those are drafted by the clerks for whoever is authoring that opinion, whoever the justice is that’s authoring that opinion.
They’ve got a group of clerks that draft that up and ultimately it’s approved by that justice. So a lot of people have the common misconception that generally speaking, if there is a court order, it was drafted by the court or maybe the court’s clerks.
However, in state court, in Oklahoma District Courts, that’s generally not the case. They don’t have a lot of clerks on staff that can draft up and research these complicated orders. So who does the drafting? That is, it’s usually the parties.
So, if you go on for a hearing and the judge makes a ruling, usually that is given orally on the record, or sometimes the judge will do a quick write-up of what the order is, and then one of the parties is going to be ordered to draft that.
Normally, whichever party is considered to be the most advantaged by the order, generally that’s the party that is ordered to draft it since they have the greater incentive to get it done more quickly because the order favors them.
The judge will order them as part of the order that they draft up that order. They draft it and then they circulate it among all of the parties so that everyone’s not necessarily agreeing with the result, but everybody is agreeing that that draft accurately reflects what the court decided. Once they sign off on that, it gets back before the judge, the judge signs it and you’ve got a court order.
So, who drafts the court’s order? It’s not the judge, generally speaking. It’s not the judge’s clerk. Most often, it is one of the parties that is ordered to draft that. If you’ve got any questions about a family law matter in Oklahoma or other legal issues, you’re going to want to talk to a Tulsa family law attorney, please visit makelaweasy.com
