Some might say that getting any job this year is a coup.  After all, jobs aren’t easy to find this year.  Even for kids with newly minted law degrees.  But this year, as always, there are the cool jobs and the loser jobs.  They are the same jobs that have always existed, but the cool/loser denomination changes with the tide. 

Last September, there was a depressing report that law students didn’t want to go into criminal defense anymore.  The report came from Skelly, who keeps his finger on the pulse of the public defender world.  It’s a weak pulse, Skelly informs, and he would know.

Today marks the first day on the job of another new public defender, according to Skelly’s post at Arbitrary & Capricious.  This former law student, now budding PD, captures his enthusiasm for his foray into the trenches at a blog entitled, I Immediately Regret This Decision.

As of 8:30 AM on Monday I will be officially employed. I’m working for a local public defender but I don’t know whether to be excited or bummed. It will be nice to have a little more structure in my life and a feeling that I am accomplishing something, but it was REALLY nice to do the things I wanted on my own terms. I had a great little schedule worked out and I was doing the things that I wanted to do. Now recess is over. After my stint with the New Orleans public defender, I have a vague idea of what to expect, lots of motions to exclude and habeas corpus petitions. That’s fine with me, I don’t hate that kind of writing and research. But, again, part of me is a little uneasy with defending people (not ALL, obviously) who have committed crimes. I suppose it really comes down to the fact that EVERYONE gets a fair trial, whether they have money or not.

I get an image of this person staring in the bathroom mirror, trying very hard to convince themself to put on a tie for the first day of work, and fighting the feeling that he should just go back to bed.  Why?

What’s funny about all this is that I hope to be a prosecutor once I graduate.

It’s that simple.  This isn’t the dream job.  This is the default job.  The loser job. 

It’s hard to imagine that he went into the job interview and said out loud that he really doesn’t want to be a PD, but couldn’t get the good job at the DA’s office, so he’s here instead.  But that may well have happened, if the applicants to the PD jobs are largely prosecutor rejects.  Maybe the PD doesn’t have a lot of choice, and is happy to pick from the best of the losers to staff the office.

The transition from school to work is fraught with disappointments for most people.  Sure, there are always those who get everything they ever wanted and dreamed about, but these are the ones who end up miserable in 7 figure jobs or, worse yet, as lawprofs, forever trying to persuade others that their novel theory is valid.  The rest try to get into dream college, dream law school and ultimately the dream job.  Sometimes they come close.  More often, they settle.

Being a public defender was once a cool job.  You did good for others (a cool thing).  You had cool people in your office with you, and you got to hang out with them after work (also cool).  You didn’t have to put on “airs” and pretend that your father forced you to take that Biglaw job, when you really wanted to be a PD.  And best of all, when you met an attractive person of the opposite sex in a bar and told them what you do, they would respond, “that must be SOOOOO exciting.”  Nobody every says that to a transactional lawyer.  

Nobody would even admit, back in my day, that they were a prosecutor.  A prosecutor was one of those evil people who worked for “the Man” keeping the people down.  Of course, the prosecutor was no more evil than the PD was the saint, but that was the perception.  It was a product of the times.

Skelly, who seeks out these young people with their negative attitude, has a hard time dealing with this too.  He writes:

… to keep my middle-aged p.d. head from shaking, I’m thinking of all the cool young lawyers who, rather than fall into indigent defense work, strive for it heartily and dive into it enthusiastically. I know they exist – I’ve worked with many, and hired a few myself. Others I know from reading their blogs.

But Skelly surely sees that it’s different.  It’s no longer cool to be a public defender.  There are excellent reasons to be one, and the system could not function without them.  They still perform a vital function, which society should and must appreciate.  But when young people are compelled to rationalize why they should go to work on their first day as a PD, it’s painful.  What went so wrong that being a public defender is perceived to be the loser job?