I'd thought for a while that government lawyering was the way to go, since I want to be a litigator for a while before getting into reform activities. The idea of prosecutorial discretion appealed to me most; while I may not agree with criminal sentencing in this country, at least I could add and drop charges as the evidence and the individual criminal warranted. The more I learn, however, the more I suspect that "big law" work and DA/USA work might not be that different. I have never worked in a prosecutorial capacity, but it seems like government bureaucracy and political pressures (to get convictions, to over-charge, to be "tough on fill-in-the-blank") might combine to create a similar culture of fear as we see in big firms, as others have mentioned. If not fear, then it would at least create the sense that, unlike Robinson, you have little to no control over your workload or your clientele.

-- MolissaFarber - 05 Mar 2009