On the dorms point I wouldn't factor the school stuff into the equation. You'll be able to make friends and have plenty of time to study on campus regardless of where you sleep. If you live alone now or prefer being alone then I would live off campus because the last thing you want is to be uncomfortable/frustrated with a roommate during law school.

I lived alone off campus and am happy I did but I also have never had a roommate so didn't want to roll the dice.

Yeah we vest in the pension after 3 years of federal service. It's 1% of your high 3 years average basic salary for every one year of service. We also have Thrift Savings Plan which is like a 401(k). 3% of salary matching, 2% more they match at 50%.

Yeah, leaving at 5:30 every day (9 hour days) and getting every other Friday off is definitely clutch.

embarrassed to say that it took me a full two weeks to realize that briefing cases is the biggest waste of time in law school. I'm not proud, but I've moved on.

Haha, good post.

Law school, God, the worst thing ever.. I have had just some courses and i felt exhausted after this, but i imagine the school.. no better kill me!

right...

LOOOL funniest avatar I've seen so far.

Turned a 1 hour conversation with an attorney at a party over the summer into employment now. Guy is a pretty big medmal guy in my area and has over 30 years of experience. After our talk, I wrote him a thank you letter and he just told me its the only thank you letter he ever received for advice in his entire career lol.

Networking is a major key!


edit: 1 month 1 day till bar results

Congrats man, I'm sure that's a huge weight off of your shoulders. Is that what you'll be doing?

Actually, I'm hanging a shingle straight out of school. Primarily, I'm going to be doing some free work for him while I wait for results/afterwards and he's going to funnel some work my way/guide me through some low level slip and falls, other civil work.

Also, got to have lunch w/the biggest criminal defense attorney in the area today as well out of chance. Was sitting in on a local magistrate's hearings and we started talking, turns out he plays poker too, and then he invited me to lunch. Networking is fun

Nice, gj. Keep posting about stuff that happens, I'm interested to hear how it goes.

Will do, it's definitely an adventure, to say the least. Seems like, in my no experience viewpoint, that hustling and bringing in business is at least as equally important as legal skills at this point. My partner finished near top 7% in our class, but he's not really a networking guy, so we make a good team on that front.

Also, I took heavy scholarships at a regional T2 instead of a T1, so my debt load is pretty much nothing. Binked an MTT for around 60k or so 1L summer, so that + schollys kept me off the government bread line.

Can't really say that to people irl though, since I don't want to come off as a smug jerk or anything. The debt with law school is absolutely ridiculous and if I hadn't rungood at that precise time, I'd be saddled w/some as well. Only mention it now since ppl on here will understand how dumb MTT's really are and how lucky it truly was lol.

That being said, I don't mind eating ramen noodles and grinding 20 hours a week on the side for the next 3-5 years if that is what it takes to get it up and running. In 3-5 years, if it's really still crashing and burning, I figure I could always find a job somewhere and start over. My unique situation allows me to take some more risks imo.

I'm very interested in your updates too. Currently a 2L planning to go ADA/Public Defender route for ~5 years after graduation, and then maybe going solo.

Going to be graduating with ~$70k in debt from a NYC T1, so we'll see.

Sounds like you won't need nearly that long to get yourself established the way things are going. Keep it up.

Thanks Dave. I'm hustling hard!

Should have also mentioned, I'm K-JD, so I just turned 25 this summer, so even if this blows up in a few years, I'd be under 30 years old starting over. No kids yet either, so no other mouths to worry bout except mine

Current PD here. Absolutely can not recommend enough to pursue PD instead of ADA for a couple reasons.

1. we're the good guys

2. i really do believe that ADA is just about the worst job you can take from a professional development standpoint out of law school. like if you really want to do that because you believe in prosecuting people on behalf of the greater good or whatever, then great, go for it - but i'm guessing you just have a general interest in criminal law considering you are looking at both sides.

this is undoubtedly the stupidest question ever but what is ADA? assistant district attorney? i don't know that acronym outside of the american disabilities act. assuming it is some sort of prosecution for the state can you elaborate on why you think it is such bad professional development? i always have heard that working for a prosecutors office is generally good experience for the first few years out of law school given that you get in court a lot and learn the rules of evidence well and what prosecutors look at, etc. i would like to do criminal law on the defense side eventually but frankly our PDs are woefully underfunded whereas it is a lot easier to get a job in the prosecutor's office somewhere especially if you are willing to live in a rural area for a while.

Very interesting. Thanks for the input.

I entered law school with a definite interest/focus on criminal law and trial work, with a slight disposition towards prosecution. My criminal related experience so far has been:
- Very brief/informal stint at PD office in undergrad (mostly worked on homicide, so very interesting work)
- 1L Summer at a very large PD organization in NYC doing family defense (defending parents against neglect/abuse charges in Family Court), with a couple days spent in the criminal defense division (NYC criminal court was a bit discouraging, since it is quite a machine, especially at the misdemeanor and lower felony levels).

So my idea was to spend my 2L summer at a DA's office, since I'd feel strange deciding on criminal law as a career without at least trying it out, especially due to my prior disposition/interest. I'd then decide which I liked better, and do either a Prosecution or Crim Defense clinic during my 3L year, since my school offers both.

I've tried my best to get impartial advice and opinions from older attorneys, but it seems like Prosecution/Defense is quite polarizing. My general impression has been that going the ADA route results in better exit opportunities, but that might be absolute bs.



Yes.

simply put it is way too easy. as a general matter, they do have a higher caseload than their counterpart PDs... but like no future employer will go "oh you were a PD instead of ADA? you must not know how to handle a high caseload"

moving on, that is offset by the fact that getting convictions becomes relatively formulaic. like, if you are gonna be an ADA that really commits to it then we're having a different convo - but for a variety of reasons i think most of them start with that mindset before realizing how much easier their lives are by going back to ABCs - through no fault of their own, it's just an understandable result of churning 500 cases per year vs 200.

investigation is done primarily by the cops so that isn't something they spend much time thinking about.

motions and trials end up being lots of "tell me about X. tell me about Y. tell me about Z" - i really dont think they spend much time thinking about how to frame a direct. cross, which is basically 100x harder (and i'd argue way more important considering trial dynamics), seems to be an afterthought.

being in court a ton is certainly invaluable. like id pick an ADA to defend a DUI every day of the week vs their biglaw counterpart who spent the last 3 years making 180k without doing a single deposition. but that's a wash when it's against your PD counterparts.

as far as getting a grasp on what prosecutors look at - again one of those things where ADA certainly ahead of random biglaw robot but it took me about a month to figure out from the other side.

honestly, if you want to spend 5 years in either office then go into private practice making a respectable living defending DUIs and low level domestic violence ****, it probably doesn't make much of a difference. but if you want to be REALLY GOOD when you make that transition, again i would adamantly recommend going the PD route.

just so we're clear, if you want to make a **** ton as a private criminal defense atty, figure out the best way for you personally to get into an AUSA office (easier said than done i get it) because they just crush at life, both during and after that stint. but ADA is like where intelligence and creativity go to die.

If you have any interest in going to a PD office I would realllllly recommend not doing that - not all of them are like this, but enough will literally insta-ding your application for spending a summer at a prosecutor's office. Not so much the other way around.

I have friends who were insta-dinged from prosecutor positions for doing things like the Innocence Project, it can definitely cut both ways.

That's about the extent of my experience though and I'm enjoying the convo, so I'll bow out after adding that.

It certainly does cut both ways and my bad if I implied it doesnt - but you can get a lotttttt of state prosecutors to bite off on something like "yeah i did it because i came into law school with a strong belief in the constitutional right to an atty, the 4th and 5th amendment, etc, until i realized how bad the people i was representing really are"

interesting thanks for the info

i suppose it was naive of me to think that there wouldn't be biases both ways. i sort of assumed they both did mostly the same thing except from opposite points of view but i guess that is kind of dumb


i have worked in prosecutor's offices both summers (3L now) and might be pigeonholed here altho like i said my state has absolutely atrocious PD funding anyway. in my perfect world i would just hang a shingle out of law school (will graduate with no debt and figure i can play some poker on the side too as like deuces i have a bit of a bankroll at the beginning when things are slow) and do defense work but this semester with trial practice and clinics and stuff has made it pretty darn clear i have no clue what i am doing and would be much better off learning the ropes under someone else for a few years

I was a public defender for six years; I just left the office a few days ago. Going by your avatar, YMMV, you may even know me personally. I agree with a lot of things you are saying, but can't agree with your premise. I think working for a prosecutor's office is generally better for a career than a public defender.

I agree with most of what you say about experience. A prosecutor gets a case and it is all laid out for them. In court, a prosecutor's case is mostly straightforward. A typical prosecutor will open with "this is a case about choices", do a bunch of direct examinations that mostly consist of "then what happened?", and finish off with a closing argument that says "X made bad choices, and now he must be punished." Being a defense attorney is much, MUCH harder than a prosecutor, and I do not care about how many more cases a typical prosecutor has in his queue.

With that said, perceptions matter. In five years, a prosecutor can easily do a hundred trials. It may take an aggressive public defender ten years to come close. Prosecutors are also put in contact with different defense attorneys on a daily basis, there are more attorneys in the state attorney's office, and there is usually much higher turnover in the state attorney's office; there are more networking opportunities coming out of the SAO. For life after these offices, networking really is the key. Also, if you are thinking that you are going to make a career out of public service in the SAO or PD, you are very likely wrong about that...

I don't think it is true that working in one office for a summer excepts you from another office later. I was an intern in both the State Attorney's Office and Public Defender's Office during law school. I know prosecutor's that were interns in a public defender's office. I don't think people in most offices really care about how liberal or conservative somebody is ideologically. If you want to work at either office, I'd suggest interning where you can get courtroom experience, do well in school, and telling your interviewer that you want trials (instead of wanting to save the world).

DAs catching a bad rap ITT. I know several and they work their asses off.

It's not a matter of only walking your cops through their reports. You also have to work the files thoroughly to know weaknesses since defense counsel will be attacking every single one.

There's lots and lots of effort and preparation that goes into doing a good job as a prosecutor.

Prosecutors do plenty of cross examination too as any major case will have defense witnesses and defense experts.

Maybe the difference is the first couple/few years of an ADA career are spent in county court where the cases aren't as complex/high stakes. Once you get murder, ag assault, racketeering, rape ,complex commercial fraud type cases the work is not nearly as rote.

Perhaps working inside the bubble of NYC is a whole different beast regarding trial b/c of court overcrowding. For instance, I talked to a criminal PD, who didn't try a single case in his first 2 years of practice (90% misdemeanors, which is the normal deal in NY). Pretty sure its similar for the prosecution. There is intense pressure, even from the judges in open court, to settle everything out as quickly as possible. I would imagine that the actual case prep increases drastically as the severity of the charges rises, and the gross number of cases in each attorney's load decreases.

Due to this, people out of law school actually seek positions such as Family Court "prosecutors" and defense, or NYC gov't litigation positions, since they get thrown right into the fire (not as much weight given to seniority when distributing cases) and there's a lot more substantive oral advocacy/litigation involved.

But very interesting to hear all the different POVs. Thank you all very much!