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Professional Advice Needed: Moving from big to little
This is a question for anyone who knows anything about public defender hiring preferences (to the extent that any generalizations can be made from office to office):
Is it likely that a public defender in a large city (e.g., Chicago) would be hesitant to hire someone whose only experience is as a public defender in a small town in a different state (e.g. somewhere in Montana)? Or is there likely to be bias the other way? Or does the size of the city where you get your first defender experience really make no difference?
The situation is this: I don't have a job. For various reasons, I want to get a job in either Montana or Chicago and I have relatively promising leads in both places but know for sure I won't have a job offer either place before late June or early July at the earliest. I have a hunch that if I get my first job in Montana, work there a few years, then decide I want to go to Chicago (or some other big city), I might face some problems. On the other hand, this hunch says that if I start in Chicago and then decide to move to a smaller city or town, I will have an easier time finding a job. Can anyone offer any information or thoughts that would either corroborate or refute this hunch?
Thank you!
Posted March 31, 2006 01:44 PM |
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My suspicion is that it's always easier to move from big city to small city (provided you have legitimate reasons for being in the small city and they don't think you just want to move in for an easy job). I don't have any evidence for this, but I would also say that working as a PD in a small city is profoundly different from working as a PD in a city like Chicago, so MT experience might not be an effective proxy for your skills to Chicago hiring attorneys.
Posted by: kristine at March 31, 2006 02:28 PM
I don't have any evidence either, but my hunch is that doesn't matter.
Posted by: JR at March 31, 2006 04:20 PM
The husband of a former colleague/friend works as an Assistant Public Defender in Balto. Would you be interested in talking to him to see what his take on it is?
Posted by: She says at March 31, 2006 04:42 PM
The first couple of years as a PD involve the same cases, no matter where you're working. In Chicago, you start in Traffic.
Posted by: Jennifer at April 1, 2006 10:02 AM
My hunch is the same as your hunch. Any way you go about it, the transition from Chicago to Montant or vice versa will be awkward.
Posted by: Josh at April 1, 2006 04:08 PM
i really don't think it matters. i think the reality is that people don't move between jurisdictions all that much.
when i was in alaska, though, we had two guys move to anchorage from new york, and everyone was fine with that.
Posted by: monica at April 2, 2006 08:10 PM
I chose to work in a big city for that very reason. I figured that if I wanted to move to a tiny someday they might say, "Oooh, she worked in a big city. If she can handle that, surely she could handle our little backwoods caseload." And, by contrast, I thought that if I ever wanted to make the move from a little town to the big city, they might say, "What does she know? The worst cases she ever handled were cow tipping!"
But now I see things differently. If I were hiring, anywhere, I'd be more interested in what you got out of the experience and what your colleagues thought of your work. The basics of dealing with clients are the same everywhere. And, finally, I don't think the crimes change much from place to place - people drive drunk everywhere, people use drugs everywhere (although they might be different drugs), people get violent everywhere.
It doesn't matter. Do what you think you're going to enjoy more.
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