DC LSIC Clinic: Orientation Notes, Day 1

I started orientation for the DC Law Students In Court clinic (criminal division) yesterday. Here are some of the things I learned:

1. D.C. Superior court sees about 12,000 misdemeanor cases each year.
2. The DSLIC clinic handles about 100 of those cases.
3. U.S. Attorneys rotate in and out of the misdemeanor docket so often times the prosecutor in your case will know less about misdemeanor law than you do. It's also not uncommon to get a case dismissed for failure to prosecute.
4. “You have to have a very negative outlook when you're doing this job—and be happy about it! Assume the worst, but hope for the best.”
5. “C-10” is the arraignment court. Someone should write a book called “C-10.”
6. “Supervised release” is the new public relations move of federal courts that D.C. has adopted to make people think we don't offer parole anymore. Supervised release is parole.
7. When you first meet your client in C-10, focus on getting him/her out of jail. It is never better for your client to stay in jail. “If you want to torpedo your attorney/client relationship on the first day you meet your client in jail, try telling him 'I think it's best for you to stay in here for now.'”
8. “Get used to the fact that judges are going to yell at you. It's expected. It's required. You get extra credit for that.” Sometimes judges yell at you because they're bored and the want to entertain themselves.
9. Everything we're telling you about the law has this court culture component—what judges do, how the prosecutor works. “It's a human experience; it depends upon the people.”
10. Be nice to everyone in the bureaucracy!

Posted 08:16 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | 3L lists

Dream Job Search

Check out this job opening to become an Assistant Federal Defender for the Federal Defenders of Montana. It sounds like a dream job to me! However, if they're advertising now, they want someone before this time next year, right? And an even bigger problem: Federal defenders don't hire people fresh out of law school, do they?

Help! Does anyone have thoughts on these questions?

More generally, I have to put together a public defender job search and I really don't know where to begin. Any thoughts on methods and strategies would be greatly appreciated.

Damn. There's probably nothing that scares a third-year law student more than not having a job! But hey, I don't graduate for nine more months—why would I be nervous about having no job at this point? Well, for those not familiar w/it, let me explain the “usual” path to your first law job: First, you work in a firm during your second summer (between your second and third years of law school), you do well there, and at the end of the summer you get an offer of employment beginning the following year after you've graduated and taken the bar exam.* If I had followed this path, I'd probably have a job offer right now. I started clinic orientation yesterday and spoke w/several of my peers who are in such a position—happy, carefree, with job offers securely in hand. They're looking forward to a final year of law school w/out a care in the world. Only if they failed some classes (nearly impossible to do) would they need to worry about getting a job after they graduate. As for me? As John Stewart is fond of saying, I got nuthin.

*By the way, this is directly related to whether the third year of law school is really worthwhile or necessary. The system basically works like this: Law school gives you some basics and puts you into massive debt. The system assumes (mostly correctly) you will go to work for a firm to pay off that debt, and firms assume (correctly) that you will know next to nothing about the actual practice of the law when you finish law school so they build in a several-year apprenticeship where they make new associates do all kinds of menial and mindnumbing crap as they learn how to actually become lawyers. But since these firm job offers come before the third year even begins, that final year looks an awful lot like just a mechanism to give law schools a lot more money and put law students a lot deeper into debt. That debt helps to perpetuate the system b/c it ensures that new graduates are indebted enough to put up w/the awful workloads and power games of the firms. Cool.

Posted 06:27 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | 3L