Working at a USAO Under Sessions/Trump Forum

[Anonymous User]

I have always wanted to work in a U.S. Attorney's Office; however, I am concerned this experience will be less valuable in a new administration.

Does anyone have a sense of how the experience may change and how the prosecutorial priorities of places like SDNY/EDNY will change (or will it not matter since many AUSAS may stick around). In addition, will employers find this experience less valuable?

[Anonymous User]

As a brand new AUSA, this is largely speculation and based on conversations I had w/ the judge I clerked for and senior officials.

Law is full of prestige whores, Trump's DOJ or not, USAO is still sending the correct signals about your ability as an attorney. W/ the exception of hyper liberal firms a line AUSA who just generally does their job, won't have anything to worry about.

What I've been told is that the enforcement priorities may change once Session supersedes the Holder memo. So there will probably be an uptick of seeking mandatory minimums for drug crimes and probably a big shift in prosecutions of illegal re-entries.

I was also told the US Attorney has a bit more discretion than we think. And while he can't ignore DOJ, it may not be as dire. This of course is dependent on the USA himself on not also being like sessions.

[Anonymous User]

yeah, as a slightly-less-new AUSA, I think the policies of the individual USA have more impact day to day. As noted, it depends of course whether the USAs are all going to be in the Sessions mold (as someone who's pretty far from main justice, though, I think local politics will still factor in to some extent). I know one of the "worst" times to be an AUSA in my office was under a Democratic USA because of that particular person's political goals. And I agree that the biggest changes are likely to be with the Holder memo and some of the immigration stuff.

Re: signaling to employers - I don't think the political aspect has ever really been part of signaling to employers, it's about the kind of experience you get. In a lot of places that's actually more routine than many people seem to think (I can't comment on SDNY/EDNY because again, I'm in a completely different part of the country). You get great experience because you run your own cases and you learn how to run trials (to some extent; if you want intensive trial experience you want to be in the state system), but for the first 5 years at least you're going to be doing much more routine stuff than TLS seems to believe. A line AUSA is pretty removed from main justice and is not really a political position.

(I can't comment on whether there will be any differences in things like high-level complex white-collar cases, mostly because I don't work on them and my district doesn't have many. I tend to think a lot of these kinds of cases are much less political than people think. It's sort of like clerking - a lot of people, I think, worry about what it will mean to clerk for a judge with a very different political viewpoint. And in practice, until you're in the very rarefied air of top appeals judges, it turns out that most judges are just doing the work that's before them and the law doesn't provide a lot of room for political expression.)

Admittedly, I don't want to think that there's going to be some kind of drastic downturn in value because I'm already in the system, but so far my experience has been shaped a lot more by what's going on in the district in front of me than what main justice does.

[Anonymous User]

Awesome, thanks guys. Appreciate it.

[Anonymous User]

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame anyone who decides they don't want to be part of that administration, and for the moment we're all speculating. I still don't think the signaling for employers will be an issue, but I don't know what it's going to be like to work under Trump/Sessions.