Getting Your First Job at a Legal Firm

The following post shares tips on landing your first legal job.

“Employment of lawyers is expected to grow 10% from 2010 to 2020, about as fast as the average of all occupations.” As anyone who has tried it knows, becoming a lawyer is a long arduous process.  After excelling in high school, getting into a quality undergraduate program, working to get to the

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Getting Your First Job at a Legal Firm

Interview with an Assistant District Attorney

I am one of that rare breed: I work in the field that first fired my imagination. Some little boys want to be astronauts; I wanted to put criminals in jail. Two years ago, I graduated from law school and took a job as a law clerk for a trial court judge. One year after that, I took a position with the District Attorney’s office. Every day I go to work, stand up in front of a judge, and try my best to put criminals in prison.

Most of the work I do is fairly routine. Television fosters the idea that prosecutors spend every waking moment grandstanding for the jury. The reality is much more mundane – jury trials are difficult and time consuming. If every criminal in the United States faced a jury before being sentenced, the justice system would grind to a halt. We sign plea bargains in well over ninety percent of our cases; we do not have enough resources or personnel to do anything else. Continue Reading