First few months of being an AFPD or AUSA: What’s it like? Forum

[nyc2020]

Curious to hear what it’s like the first few months as an AFPD or AUSA… what does the workday / hours look like, the caseload, the training, supervisor relationships, etc? How well do you get to know your colleagues? Anything noteworthy on office culture? I’m sure it varies by office but curious what the early days feel like. I realize it’s an open-ended question but especially curious how different it feels from big law.

[Anonymous User]

I'll bite. The main difference I've noticed is the lack of resources. When I was at a big law firm, I had everything catered for me. Tons of legal assistants, food, drink, paralegals, document review, help filing with the court, etc. While I'm at a major USAO, I have a secretary that is shared with three others. (I'm not complaining, just noticing).

We do have to track our time for budget purposes (like, spending X number of hours on a particular task force, etc). But no worries about getting hours cut.

The other thing is the learning curve: when I was at a firm, they brought in a bunch of us at once; we'd all summered together, etc etc. So there was a newbie group chat. I was the only new AUSA to start for months and so I had to make my own friends, there wasn't a dedicated orientation the way the firm laid it out for me.

[Anonymous User]

AFPD here. I had training from another attorney in the office for a month or so. I started getting supervised release cases after that. I then went to the federal defender training camp not too long after that. Got my first indicted cases after that.
I was in BL prior and I'll echo the other poster. Now free cokes or food. We don't get free coffee even, hah. I share a paralegal with 3 other attorneys as well. Love this job though.

[Anonymous User]

I went into a USAO through the honors program, so I can't comment on coming from biglaw, or the loss of resources. Overall, I found the learning curve to be VERY steep. But people were very supportive and helpful. Most came to the USAO as experienced attorneys, so some failed to grasp the depths of my ignorance, but the office was pretty committed to training newbies. It did feel the first few months like I spent a ton of time wandering the halls finding people to answer my questions, and a lot of times I didn't even know what questions to ask.

The good thing is that you can and will learn quite a lot very quickly. For me it felt like I had no idea what I was doing for about a year, then it was as if I'd finally learned enough to put everything together and it started to make sense.

Similarly, it felt like it took that year for my caseload really to ramp up and to get me fully integrated into the office, and the first six months especially were pretty quiet and not taxing at all. Very 8:30 to 5, leave on the dot of 5, no even thoughts of work after hours or on the weekend. You may get integrated more quickly depending on your experience level, though.

Training-wise, if your office is over a certain size they will probably do a lot of in-house trainings, and you are also very much encouraged to go main justice's national training center (it's in Columbia, SC. Hope you like Southern food and civil war memorials). I have found the courses uniformly *excellent,* although they can be more helpful once you've hit that moment where things are starting to click, than before.

Relationships with supervisors will vary by office (and supervisor, of course), but overall I've found them very good and interested in helping you develop into a good prosecutor. I started with a really hands-off supervisor who was personally pleasant but not helpful to me at all, but after a few months they figured out I was truly lost and switched me to the most hands-on supervisor in the office, and that was much better. She was very intentional about getting me cases to help me learn, finding out what kinds of cases I was interested in, and helping me set goals and grow as a prosecutor. Including those 2, I've had 6 different supervisors now and all have been very good and helpful, if in different ways.

One of the main issues I've seen arise with supervisors is them just being super busy, which can make it hard to get timely approvals or answers to your questions.

Both offices where I've worked have assigned me mentors; in one office this person was amazing and I'm so grateful; in the other office, my mentors were really busy and I was seen as experienced so I think expectations were lower and not much came of it. I mostly went directly to my supervisor instead.

Last thing is that sociability and culture varies by office a lot. A lot of it will just depend if there's a critical mass of people at a similar stage to you in your life/career. But the upside is that if you don't find your office very social, you will actually have time to have a social life in your off hours!

[Anonymous User]

Another AUSA here. In addition to everything already mentioned, the lack of oversight is a huge change from biglaw. You still have supervisor review of important filings, but you own your caseload. It helps you realize how much of a safety net associates have when you're the one who has to manage agents, sign your name to filings, and get chewed out by the judge who's having a bad day.

I absolutely love it, but that's been a big adjustment for me.

[Anonymous User]

Another AUSA here. In addition to everything already mentioned, the lack of oversight is a huge change from biglaw. You still have supervisor review of important filings, but you own your caseload. It helps you realize how much of a safety net associates have when you're the one who has to manage agents, sign your name to filings, and get chewed out by the judge who's having a bad day.

I absolutely love it, but that's been a big adjustment for me.

I totally agree with this. You don’t get assignments; you get a case, and you have to figure out what to do with it. Personally, I find it much easier to, say, work late when it’s because I know I have a bunch of things that I have to do on my cases and that’s the timing that works for me, than when someone higher up has handed me some kind of discrete assignment and I don’t have much input into the timing or the case overall (obviously that gets better in biglaw the more senior you get, but it’s the case from day 1 as an AUSA).

A corollary to this is that if your case goes to trial, that’s your trial. You’ll be assigned co-counsel and the newer you are, the more heavy lifting they’ll do, but it’s still your trial. My first trial, I did everything from start to finish. My mentor was co-counsel and sat at counsel table with me, but never spoke on the record (she said she wondered what the jury thought of her sitting there like a potted plant!). It’s one of the best ways to learn and thankfully my first office especially was forgiving of newbie mistakes (judges usually are pretty patient too, as long as it looks like you’re working hard and trying. I mean, depending on the judge, of course - some don’t give a shit about anything but whether you’re making their life more difficult, they don’t care why). You are unlikely to start out on cases/trials of huge national significance, so normal errors aren’t likely to have terrible consequences.

Honestly, one of the most reassuring things a former supervisor told me was that every mistake can be fixed except death, and none of my cases were going to result in someone dying, so it would all be fine. (Of course I am a more anxious type. Someone who is more reckless might have got different advice!)

[Anonymous User]

AFPD here again. The autonomy in my office is freaking amazing. The cases are my cases. Like the other posters said, it gives you a lot of incentive to be a part of them and really immerse yourself. You will make mistakes- especially at trial- but judges tend to be more forgiving of junior folks. As others have said, you won't be on the highest stake matters off the bat. I started out almost exclusively doing supervised release cases. I now do a lot of guns and drugs. My office just started giving me white collar cases.
Folks in my office tend to have between 15-30 cases. I've got 22, but I'm secondary counsel for two of them. Of the 20 that are exclusively mine, 10 are guns and/or drugs. My office also has us do our own appeals, if we want. AUSAs across from us have a similar option, but I think they need their appellate chief to sign off on it after review (I don't blame them- their chief is wicked smart, hah).
But, there can be as much hand holding as your office will allow- some are better than others. As I said, one attorney walked me through everything for the first month. After that, I was built up to supervised release cases and so on. I still bother the heck out of that one attorney (who I consider a mentor and friend), as well as a few others who let me invade their office to hurl questions about suppression motions or diversions for fraud folks etc.
In my opinion, these are some of the absolute best jobs that one can get in the legal community. Decent pay, decent hours, enthralling topics, and a real part of the law.

[Anonymous User]

What skills are most important for the first year? Any advice on what to read as a guide / reference?

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always says the local rules, and I found them hard to absorb in a vacuum, but yeah, the local rules.

Also brush up on your crim pro, if it’s been a while.

Probably one of the absolute best skills to develop is some kind of system for organizing your cases and keeping track of next steps. I don’t have great advice for this though because I’m still working on this one.

[Anonymous User]

AFPD here.

This is derivative of the comment that you have autonomy over your cases. However, one aspect of autonomy is that you are responsible for almost all the filings, letters, correspondence, ect., in your case. So for the first several months, every task you complete on a case, you will be experiencing it for the first time. This causes a ton of headache because not only do you have to constantly check the local rules and chambers standing orders, but you are almost always in a constant state of questioning how best to approach a situation.

When you file something incorrectly, who do you contact? If you need to file an emergency motion, how do you do it? What is the best CM/ECF selection for your niche/uncommon issue? Do I need to fully brief this issue or can I do numbered paragraphs with a few citations?

I had a legit argument with a fellow attorney recently about whether it is better to left justify or full justify motions.

All of these little questions pile up. In my experience, at least in FPD offices, new attorneys (and experienced ones for that matter) get overwhelmed by the sheer weight of small decisions you have to make every day. It feels like death by a thousand cuts sometimes. Attorneys get discouraged because they know how to do the substance of the job, but feel that too much of their time is spent on cosmetic matters.

That said, this feeling doesn't last, as long as you're open to learning and being flexible. You find a groove and practice style that works best for you. But there is turnover among new attorneys who aren't ready to handle the administrative demands of federal practice.

[Anonymous User]

All of these little questions pile up. In my experience, at least in FPD offices, new attorneys (and experienced ones for that matter) get overwhelmed by the sheer weight of small decisions you have to make every day. It feels like death by a thousand cuts sometimes. Attorneys get discouraged because they know how to do the substance of the job, but feel that too much of their time is spent on cosmetic matters.

That said, this feeling doesn't last, as long as you're open to learning and being flexible. You find a groove and practice style that works best for you. But there is turnover among new attorneys who aren't ready to handle the administrative demands of federal practice.

As an AUSA, absolutely agree with this. The thing is that these sorts of "cosmetic" decisions aren't really ones that you can make on your own because they're not really about legal knowledge/analysis/logic - they're just things that are the way you are and you have to just learn them. Like you can't research cases about how to fix something you filed incorrectly, you just have to find the right person who can tell you what you did wrong and how to fix it (and invariably it's going to be the crankiest legal assistant or person in the clerk's office).

It gets a ton easier once you've amassed enough knowledge that you don't have to figure out every single step for something, you either know it or you can find go-bys on your own or know who to ask for stuff, both in your office and with the court. You hit a point where you realize you've been doing a lot of stuff on auto-pilot that you used to always have to find out how to do, which is a nice point to reach. But it can be a little overwhelming getting there.

Though I had to laugh at:

I had a legit argument with a fellow attorney recently about whether it is better to left justify or full justify motions.

I want to say that this is full-on ridiculous except that I can imagine this coming up at some point.

[Anonymous User]

Full justify is the correct response.

And yes, the weird logistical rules should probably be in an onboarding book somewhere, but no one ever puts it together. We all learn through the process of frustrated clerks acting like their judge's idiosyncratic approach to filings is the most normal thing in the world.