DOJ, AUSA at large metro city - criminal vs. DOJ Main, Trial Lawyer - Fraud task force

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for any advice on selecting a position between the two offers. I'm coming from Biglaw firm as a civil litigation, senior associate. I'd love some feedback on quality of life, salary info, type of work, trial exposure (do the DOJ Main lawyers go to trial, or do they defer to the AUSA), potential exit opportunities? I have two young children and the initial 18 month training stint for the AUSA position scares me a bit, so do the DOJ Main lawyers go through that same gauntlet? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Do you want to do as many possible trials as you can?

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised you were offered the AUSA position, OP. Typically they are looking for very specific experience (in this case criminal prosecution). You may feel out of your element there coming from biglaw.

[Anonymous]

Main Justice goes to trial just not as often. They are civil litigators usually. AUSAs do the criminal work (again usually IME).

Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - depends on your manager.

[Anonymous]

I'm not familiar with the work of the fraud task forces, and it seems like the best answer to your question will be very component-specific, but broadly speaking:

- Yes, both civil and criminal main justice lawyers go to trial. This is a broad over generalization, but main is more likely to hold on to particularly interesting civil trials than particularly interesting criminal trials, which has to do with how cases are initiated and staffed. But if your job on the task force is a trial lawyer, you will participate in trials.

- Training is component-specific, but generally main justice attorneys are doing a few non-consecutive weeks of training in South Carolina versus doing one of the intensive rotations that a lot of big AUSA offices employ.

- Quality of life at main is largely personality-dependent. Plenty of people work very hard, but that's partially because they are the type of people who excelled at law school and never slow down. If you are determined to scale back, you can usually find a way to do so. AUSA offices are more office culture dependent, and which "large metro city" you go to matters. SDNY is the most obvious example of a place where the reputation is of attorneys work very hard in the hope of winning a high profile trial and going back private (though plenty of people make a career of it.

- Type of work is heavily component-dependent. Virtually every component of DOJ gives their attorneys substantially more responsibility and more interesting matters than they were getting in law firms. But whether that's trials or pre-trial motions or policy stuff depends on the listed job.

- You should be able to calculate your main justice salary online. The main thing to know is that its easy to top out the salary scale, which means: (a) you'll quickly advance through the salary ranks if you don't come in at the top; but (b) once you do, you'll never get a raise again. On average, AUSAs pay somewhat less than main, but the difference gets muted with seniority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised you were offered the AUSA position, OP. Typically they are looking for very specific experience (in this case criminal prosecution). You may feel out of your element there coming from biglaw.

Really depends on the individual U.S. Attorney what background they are looking for. Sometimes its a law firm partner who wants star associates. Sometimes its a former DA who wants someone who's already handled 100 small drug trials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Main Justice goes to trial just not as often. They are civil litigators usually. AUSAs do the criminal work (again usually IME).

Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - depends on your manager.

Antitrust Division is an exception to this. We have both civil AND criminal litigators

Not sure if other components at DOJ have criminal litigators. We may be unique. Our criminal attorneys don't see much courtroom action. Maybe once a year at best. They do a lot of investigative work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Main Justice goes to trial just not as often. They are civil litigators usually. AUSAs do the criminal work (again usually IME).

Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - depends on your manager.

Antitrust Division is an exception to this. We have both civil AND criminal litigators

Not sure if other components at DOJ have criminal litigators. We may be unique. Our criminal attorneys don't see much courtroom action. Maybe once a year at best. They do a lot of investigative work.

I think most every division except for civil has criminal litigators (most of whom go to trial more often than antitrust folks, I suspect. . .).

[Anonymous]

Spouse here. Guessing it will be somewhat office / component dependent, but for us the travel aspect was WAY worse at Main. Getting off the road was a driving factor for the switch.

[Anonymous]

You must be talking about the DC USAO. It's the only one that has the 18-month initial rotation. Between that and Fraud, I'm not sure you're going to notice that much of a difference quality of life wise. Both carry long hours, and Fraud usually involves a lot of travel. You have found two government jobs that aren't really much better than BigLaw in terms of hours. The difference is that the work is one million times more interesting and engrossing than the typical BigLaw associate or junior partner's experience. I had the same choice as you a few year's back and chose the USAO over Fraud, but I have lots of friends who have done both and friends who are still at Fraud.

Hands down, you will get way, way more trial experience in any USAO than at Fraud, but it's not necessarily trial experience that will translate to exit opportunities. Tell me what you are you interested in doing after DOJ, and I can better advise on which job will position you better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Spouse here. Guessing it will be somewhat office / component dependent, but for us the travel aspect was WAY worse at Main. Getting off the road was a driving factor for the switch.

To add to this: my experience with trial is that the single best time to plan a family activity is the very first trial date. They always seem to get continued at least once. Which is a much bigger PItA to juggle with small kids when the trial is a plane flight away vs. around the corner from your office. From my perspective I felt like life at Main jerked our family schedule around a lot more than life at an AUSA.

[Anonymous]

And from the trial attorney's perspective, it is much easier to try a case out of town than in town. I've done both and it's far easier to focus on the tremendous work of trial if you're in a hotel and your spouse and kids aren't asking what time you'll be home every night. I have a very supportive spouse, but I'd rather do a trial out of town and come home on weekends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And from the trial attorney's perspective, it is much easier to try a case out of town than in town. I've done both and it's far easier to focus on the tremendous work of trial if you're in a hotel and your spouse and kids aren't asking what time you'll be home every night. I have a very supportive spouse, but I'd rather do a trial out of town and come home on weekends.

Spouse back. For trial I'd be fine if he moved to a hotel for the duration. I get that trials are rough. (Though I'm amused about the 'come home on weekends' part. That wasn't my experience.) It's the work up period that's so rough. And the complete inability to plan around it. The 1-2 night trips away on short notice. The Mon phone call that the planned for trip to City X for Mon-Wed has been cancelled but now there's a Thur-Fri trip to City Y. Or vice versa. The 6 week trial in another city that gets continued after x weeks of prep in that other city. So now all your original plans to help cover your spouse's absence are thrown out the window, and you are back to square 1 for round 2. Our experience has been that the work/life balance for has been easier to obtain at an AUSA. Obviously that will be section/AUSA dependent. And this is white collar sections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And from the trial attorney's perspective, it is much easier to try a case out of town than in town. I've done both and it's far easier to focus on the tremendous work of trial if you're in a hotel and your spouse and kids aren't asking what time you'll be home every night. I have a very supportive spouse, but I'd rather do a trial out of town and come home on weekends.

Spouse back. For trial I'd be fine if he moved to a hotel for the duration. I get that trials are rough. (Though I'm amused about the 'come home on weekends' part. That wasn't my experience.) It's the work up period that's so rough. And the complete inability to plan around it. The 1-2 night trips away on short notice. The Mon phone call that the planned for trip to City X for Mon-Wed has been cancelled but now there's a Thur-Fri trip to City Y. Or vice versa. The 6 week trial in another city that gets continued after x weeks of prep in that other city. So now all your original plans to help cover your spouse's absence are thrown out the window, and you are back to square 1 for round 2. Our experience has been that the work/life balance for has been easier to obtain at an AUSA. Obviously that will be section/AUSA dependent. And this is white collar sections.

PP again. I totally agree that the travel is worse at Main than in the USAO. I was just pointing out that doing trials "right around the corner" can be really hard too. Neither Fraud nor an AUSA job is a cushy government job (at least not at first, I think being an AUSA gets a lot easier after you're up the learning curve, but that can take several years).

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for all the feedback. The task force position is not at main but within the same office as the usao, so would travel still be an issue? Btw, is it me, or are the more junior AUSAs more hard asse* than the supervisors? Was really turned off by the prima donna attitudes of the junior lawyers during the interviews.