JAG vs. Big Law Forum

[TheSpanishMain]

The Navy has better locations. JAG in Hawaii is a pretty good job.

As someone who has been stationed in Hawaii, I think that there is something in the water that makes soldiers go fucking crazy. JAGs there hated it.

Isn't NAVY JAG like impossibly hard to land?

Selection rate was like 10% this last board.

[JAGGER]

-get a wide variety of legal experiences in a wide variety of places (probably not of your choosing, and most likely never in a major metro area)

False. I worked only in San Diego, near Chicago, and in DC while in the Navy JAG Corps. The Navy has much, much better options than the other services, on average.

[JAGGER]

Most of the time, serious offenses (such as rape, assault, etc) get deferred to local police and all of that (aka aren't being handled within the military) and the offender is kicked out of the service.

This is very false. In fact, most cases tried in the military today are sexual assaults and, to a lesser extent, child sexual assault/child pornography.

[JAGGER]

My understanding is that the cool assignments start coming your way around the time you would make major and/or extend your contract (and only then if you're lucky). Have to be willing to do your time kicking privates out first.

At best, this is half true. If you are interested in litigation, most of the cool jobs (prosecutor, defense counsel, appellate attorney) are best taken when you're an O-3. Once you make O-4, you have to do department head-type jobs, where litigation is more sporadic. Unless you consider being a military judge/military appellate judge a holy grail, in which case you'll have to wait until O-5/O-6.

On the other hand, if you are interested in operational law, then you'll have to wait until you're an O-5 -- Admirals are not listening a 27-year old give legal advice on how to bomb something.