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Current DA here. I know that for a lot of AUSA positions, they typically hire from biglaw and clerkships. But is that true for Main Justice in DC? Do they hire DAs with numerous jury trials under their belt? Or is their hiring process similar to USAOs?

It’s likely to favor people with a lot of research/writing under their belt, because while Main Justice people (in criminal) definitely do trials, they also do a lot of what you could call more policy kind of work - setting policies/standards, providing guidance to USAOs, that kind of thing. So my sense is that it will tend to favor the biglaw/clerk background types over DAs (the only ADAs I know who’ve ended up there went to a USAO first, though TBF that’s a small number and purely anecdotal).

Anonymous User wrote:It’s likely to favor people with a lot of research/writing under their belt, because while Main Justice people (in criminal) definitely do trials, they also do a lot of what you could call more policy kind of work - setting policies/standards, providing guidance to USAOs, that kind of thing. So my sense is that it will tend to favor the biglaw/clerk background types over DAs (the only ADAs I know who’ve ended up there went to a USAO first, though TBF that’s a small number and purely anecdotal).

Understood. Thank you for your response.