In response to my survey of starting salaries for entry level positions at district attorney’s offices around Texas, one of my readers wrote in asking whether it was worth going through three years of law school to become a prosecutor. I’m posting my answer here so that others can add their thoughts and comments on the subject.
First off, congratulations on getting into law school. You are in for the ride of your life!
To answer your question on whether it’s worth becoming a prosecutor, my answer is that it depends on what you are looking for.
Why become a prosecutor?
1. Experience - As a prosecutor, you will gain valuable experience from day one, that you Big Law colleagues will not get for a number of years. While they are stuck doing doc reviews, you will be trying cases. Regardless of whether you decide to remain a prosecutor or not, having a few years of trial experience under your belt will be a great asset.
2. Money - Sure, I just got done saying you’ll only make a fraction of what your big-firm classmates will be making, but the money will work itself out. There is a loan forgiveness program in place that will forgive your outstanding loan in ten years if you are doing public service work. Fortunately, public service work is defined liberally and does include prosecuting. Some prosecutors become defense attorneys later in their careers. With great contacts and extensive trial experience, they attract wealthy clientele. I know a number of Big Law attorneys who started off as prosecutors.
3. Work-Life Balance - This is a real hot topic among lawyers right now. Big firm pay means big firm billables. 2,100 hours in billables sound like a lot? Just wait till you discover how many hours young associates work (www.abanet.org/careercounsel/billable/toolkit/bhcomplete.pdf) in order to bill one hour. While a prosecutor puts in long hours, the hours are considerably fewer than that of most associates at large law firms. They also get national holidays off, great benefits, and for most, sick time and vacation time that accrues each year, so you can save up a couple of years worth (or a career’s worth) and then take one fantastically-long, paid-vacation!
4. Intrinsic Value – There is a great sense of satisfaction in being a representative of the people, and walking into court and saying that you are “present and ready on behalf of the State, your honor.” Prosecutors are an integral part of the community and the legal system. There are few jobs that can compare to the satisfaction that being a prosecutor can bring.
Your friends who claim that becoming a prosecutor isn’t worth it may have their hearts in the right place, but they are overlooking the fact that prosecutors aren’t in it for the money. It’s a calling. It’s also important to remember that while some of your peers will graduate making upwards of $120,000, many more won’t.
I would suggest spending at least one half of a summer working for a district attorney’s office to see if you like it. Your school will also be able to tell you if they have externships with state or federal prosecutors, or if they have a criminal prosecution clinic. I would also suggest taking part in mock trial or moot court competitions at your school and trying out for the state or national teams.
Good luck!
Update: For more information on loan forgiveness, check out my post on the CCRAA.
The ABA Journal has published a must-read excerpt from Justice Scalia’s new book.
The Brief:
- Use paragraphs intelligently; signpost your arguments.
- Use words that guide the reader
- Make it interesting
The Argument
- Appreciate the importance of oral argument, and know your objectives.
- Have your opener down
- Be cautious about jokes
Never tell prepared jokes. They almost invariably bomb. In Roe v. Wade, an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas, who was arguing against two women lawyers, led with what he probably considered courtly Southern humor:
“Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, it’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word.”
No one laughed. Onlookers said that during an embarrassing silence, Chief Justice Burger scowled at the advocate.
- Never postpone an answer
- Learn how to handle a difficult judge
- Beware invited concessions
The unduly accommodating lawyer—a frequently observed creature, especially in appellate courts—has given away many a case.
Read the entire excerpt here.
Yesterday, in In re Sara Steed, et al., the Texas Court of Appeals at Austin ruled that, in the case of the children of the thirty-eight mothers represented in the case, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services failed to show that there was an “immediate danger to the physical health or safety of the children.”
Prior to removing children from their homes, section 262.201 of the Texas Family Code requires a showing that (1) that there was a danger to the physical health or safety of their children, (2) that there was an urgent need for protection of the children that required the immediate removal of the children from their parents, or (3) that the Department made reasonable efforts to eliminate or prevent the children’s removal from their parents. As the court noted, the extreme measure of allowing removal of children before litigating these issues is only allowed when “the circumstances indicate a danger to the physical health and welfare of the children and the need for protection of the children is so urgent that immediate removal of the children from the home is necessary.”
In this case, while there was a showing that at least twenty females had become pregnant between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, the Department conceded that teenage pregnancy, by itself, was not a reason to remove children from their homes.
While the Department asserted there was reason to believe children were sexually abused at the ranch, the Department primarily relied on the “pervasive belief system” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (“FLDS”) that it was acceptable to marry and procreate with females as soon as they reached puberty, and that such a “pervasive belief system pose[d] a danger to children.” However section 262.201(b)(1) requires the existence of a danger to the physical health or safety of the child before removal. The Department was unable to provide evidence, other than the pervasive belief system, that there was danger to pre-pubescent children. There was no evidence of sexual abuse outside of the females identified as having become pregnant before the age of seventeen. There was also no evidence of physical abuse.
The court held that there mere existence of the FLDS belief system did not put the children at the ranch in physical danger. The risk that “children raised in this particular environment m[ight] someday have their physical health and safety threatened” was not enough the meet the legislative threshold that the danger be so immediate and urgent that it warrants removal prior to full litigation.
The Department of Family and Protective Services has not made any statements on whether or not it will appeal this decision.
Update: 5/23/08: The ABA Journal reports that the decision will be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.
Sending a meeting request through Outlook is an easy way to coordinate schedules and pick meeting times. Have you ever wished there was a way to easily schedule meetings with individuals that don’t use Outlook? Now there is: whenisgood.net allows you to highlight the dates and times you are available to meet, and then have your highlighted calender sent to you by email which you can then forward to any number of recipients. Each recipient can then remove the time slots they are not available, leaving only times where everyone is available. The calender can also be set to reflect local time zones, which makes scheduling things like conference calls a breeze.
The one minor gripe I have with the service is that there is not convenient way to jump a couple of months ahead in the calendar. Luckily, it does display 15 days at a time so if you are scheduling meetings in the near future, this won’t be an issue for you.
A little bit of shameless self-promotion: Res Ipsa got picked up on The Wall Street Journal today!
Traditional law school wisdom dictates students who want the best prices should buy their books from half.com and then sell them back on amazon.com. There is an even better way to handle books purchases and sales: bigwords.com.
Bigwords.com is a price aggregator that takes into account the condition of books you want to purchase, how quickly you need them, and then searches for the best way to purchase all of your books taking advantage of shipping discounts, coupon codes, and other promotions. It searches sites like half.com, abebooks.com, amazon.com, and hundreds of others.
Using bigwords.com is extremely easy, especially if you have the ISBN numbers for the books you need. After finding the book you want, add it to you bookbag and then repeat the process for the rest of your books.
Now for the good part: once you have added all the books you need to your bookbag, hit “start price comparison.” The site will then search every possible combination of bookstores and provide you with the lowest bottom line, after taking into consideration shipping costs to your location and all available discounts. If you are selling books, it will show you which sites command the best prices.
From there, just follow the step by step instructions to check out from each of the vendors using the discount codes, if any, provided. For a semester’s worth of books, bigwords comes in a couple of hundred bucks lower than the school book store and anywhere from $20 to $100 lower than the prices at a single vendor site like half.com.
1 University of Houston Law Center 1.79%
2 SMU Dedman School of Law 1.81%
3 The University of Texas School of Law 2.13%
4 Texas Tech University School of Law 2.99%
5 South Texas College of Law 4.45%
6 St. Mary’s University School of Law 4.99%
7 Texas Southern University—Thurgood Marshall School of Law 6.99%
8 Baylor University School of Law 7.23%
9 Texas Wesleyan University School of Law 10.15%
Compare these to the best and worst law school attrition rates:
The highest attrition rates can be found at:
1. Whittier (51.5% 1L attrition, #161 in U.S. News)
2. Touro (37.4%, #171)
3. Golden Gate (36.9%, #174)
4. Western State (32.6%, not ranked)
5. Jones School of Law (32.3%, not ranked)
The lowest attrition rates can be found at:
1. Yale (0.0% 1L attrition; #1 in U.S. News)
2. Stanford (0.0%, #2 in U.S. News)
3. Ohio State (0.0%, #32 in U.S. News)
4. Arizona (0.0%, #38 in U.S. News)
5. Case Western (0.0%, #63 in U.S. News)
Sources: Above the Law, Tex Parte, SMS, and lsac.org
Finals are over! Here’s to the summer and the end of the 2L year!
First-Year Memories:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8ABhatAfsA]
Funny Law Review Articles:
The Contribution of the Infield Fly Rule to Western Civilization
Baseball’s Infield Fly Rule is one of the most hotly contested topics in American law today…
Law School Attire: A Call for a Uniform Uniform Code
Style of dress matters, and clothing in American law schools should reflect good, traditional values. A tie with regimental stripes has a lot more class than a polo shirt or any other form of “pimp chic.” Legal-academic attire should complement the majesty of the law. In short, we need a uniform uniform code (UUC) to regulate law school attire.
Law.alltop.com is a one stop shop for legal news. It features a wide array of legal blogs; everything from the serious to the famous and even the funny.
There are a couple of things I really like about law.alltop.com. First, it allows you to preview the stories by hovering over the headlines. Second, it allows you to remove feeds that you are not interested in. Both of those features make for more efficient browsing and the site provides a great way to stay on top of legal news.
Alltop.com is the creation of author, entrepreneur, and investment banker Guy Kawasaki who wrote The Art of the Start, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, and Selling the Dream. He is also the founder of Garage Technology Ventures, the company behind some really great websites, like Fool.com (the Motley Fool financial planning site) and Pandora.com (the Music Genome Project).
My thanks to Mr. Kawasaki and to alltop.com for including Res Ipsa on your legal news website!
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|
Rank |
Firm |
Partner Profits |
| 1. | Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz | $4.95 million |
| 2. | Cravath Swaine & Moore | $3.30 million |
| 3. | Sullivan & Cromwell | $3.06 million |
| 4. | Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges | $3.01 million |
| 5. | Simpson Thacher & Bartlett | $2.88 million |
| 6. | Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft | $2.73 million |
| 7. = | Cahill Gordon & Reindel | $2.60 million |
| 7. = | Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison | $2.60 million |
| 9. | Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy | $2.53 million |
| 10. | Kirkland & Ellis | $2.48 million |
|
Rank |
Firm |
Revenue |
| 1. | Skadden | $2.17 billion |
| 2. | Latham & Watkins | $2.01 billion |
| 3. | Baker & McKenzie | $1.83 billion |
| 4. | Jones Day | $1.44 billion |
| 5. | Sidley Austin | $1.39 billion |
| 6. | White & Case | $1.37 billion |
| 7. | Kirkland & Ellis | $1.31 billion |
| 8. | Greenberg Traurig | $1.20 billion |
| 9. | Mayer Brown | $1.18 billion |
| 10. | Weil Gotshal & Manges | $1.17 billion |
Source: The American Lawyer
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