Anonymous poster who posted about 40 hours being the norm here.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:31 amYeah, that might well be the case. Immigration courts have crazy backlogs but I don’t know how that translates into hours, and I’d bet most OGC attorneys (attorney advisors rather than trial attorneys) have reasonable hours. But I wanted to push back on the generalization about all government attorneys because it’s simply not true. To be clear, we’re not talking big law hours, at least not on a consistent basis. But especially, the “capped at 40 and if you go over you get it back in comp time/leave” is not at all universal.
That makes perfect sense, thanks for clarifying. I have no interest in being a trial attorney (although I'll take what I can get for my first federal position!), so I have little experience with what work looks like for them. I do know a couple of AUSAs in the city my law school is in and they seem extremely busy, but they also had the time to co-teach a course at my law school, so it can't be so crazy busy that they don't have work-life balance. They both have supervisor roles and are probably GS-15 (with a high locality pay) so they certainly can't be teaching because they need the money. And the attorney-advisors I worked with at DOJ/FAA did often work 50-hour weeks or so but then they got to take off FOREVER for Christmas and summer. So I'm fairly certain it averages out to 40/week in the end, even if you might work overtime for big trials or if you have a large caseload. But then again my experience was only in two agencies' headquarters offices. Different agencies/components/regional field offices may have different experiences.
Also, in response to: Also, by “respectable school,” do you mean T50? T100? Given that grades are so important, wouldn’t someone at the lower ends of one of those categories need to be pretty much tip top of the class? If applicants from T14 are required to be 3.5/top 33% of their class, seems like top 10% would be required for those from worse schools. ...
My school is bottom tier (one of the "No. 147-193" that U.S. News doesn't even bother to give a ranking to). I am ranked 15th in my class (top 8%), did Law Review, interned at DOJ twice (one of which was a SLIP position over 2L summer), externed for a federal district judge, did a clinic, and did Jessup international moot court. I also interned at FAA, but that was after honors program interviews so it didn't play into my candidacy. I was competitive enough to get interviews with NSA, DHS, DEA (through DOJ), HUD, and a legal fellowship related to my DOJ experience last year, but I didn't make any second-round interviews and didn't get an offer from DEA (they only do one round). I did not get a single interview for any of the 100+ federal clerkships I applied to. I am fairly positive that all of my stats were necessary to get honors program interviews (although possibly having law review OR moot court rather than both would have been enough, and the clinic may not have been necessary). A classmate of mine got into the IRS honors program, but he is a veteran and a minority, and had almost identical stats as myself. And an alumna from my school got into the DOJ honors program (EOIR clerkship, followed by DEA clerkship) and she was top 5 in her class and also had the same stats as me. The top 1/3rd of the class definitely does not apply to lower ranked schools. I'm not sure what the cutoff is, but for my school it's top 10% as the minimum cutoff unless you are a veteran, possibly.
Also, if you truly are interested in ICE OPLA you might want to consider applying for EOIR. That's essentially a clerkship with immigration judges, who you would be litigating before for OPLA.