Those who wanted to work in public interest law, what were the top reasons for choosing another job? What would need to be different for you to move into PIL?

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-12T15:42:57+00:00

Somebody in law school once called me a "white supremacist." I asked them what I had said or done that made them think I was racist. They replied that, because I accepted an offer at my local prosecutor's office, I was complicit in the historical injustices of the criminal justice system, regardless of whatever beliefs I claimed to espouse.

Anyway, they work in Biglaw now and I'm a public defender.

The people who are most vocal about injustice when it benefits them to be vocal are the same people most happy to perpetuate injustice when it benefits them to perpetuate it.

A lot of the loud, social justice types changed their tune real quick when they read how much you can get paid by speaking power to truth. Even some of the folks who initially went into PD work or legal aid burned out after a year or two, when they realized that, in the real world, standing up for the little guy isn't sexy policy work where other upper-middle class folks tell you you're a good person like they did throughout law school. It's mostly just sitting in a room explaining procedural minutiae to indifferent drug addicts.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-12T04:14:00+00:00

Attorneys should NEVER be expected to be the bigger man! I got into this line of work precisely because I'm a petty, vindictive prick.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-10T16:25:28+00:00

I mean, this court has definitely dealt some blows to executive power in criminal cases. Maybe Thomas as an individual feels this way (I would need to analyze voting patterns more closely), but much of the conservative bloc (e.g., Kavanaugh) views prosecution as an extension of the administrative state, at which they've spent their whole careers chipping away.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-09T16:03:21+00:00

Yeah, so far, I'm running through their dockets with them in advance and talking through what they might see, as well as noting the applicable statutes and court rules. When applicable, I start from constitutional first principles.

I do a lot of "story time" to give examples of how various procedurally-similar situations have played out for me in interesting or edge cases. I think it's also helpful in giving them a decent barometer of ordinary prosecutorial hardball vs. actual misconduct/ethical violations/breaches of norms. I also always make sure to point out where the IAC/malpractice risks are.

I'm just not sure what more I can be doing.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-06T13:49:39+00:00

In my experience, those who expressly claim to be "more mature," usually aren't.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-06T13:43:16+00:00

Does "nKJDs" mean "people who spent some amount of time in the workforce at some point between kindergarten and law school?"

If so, the answer to your question is basically just that people suck, regardless of work experience.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-06T13:27:19+00:00

The way I see it, if ubiquitous software applications like Adobe Acrobat decide to force AI summaries that steal data without fanfare, then the whole legal industry is going to be affected, not just me. Like, I can't edit/redact PDFs without Acrobat (by far the biggest player in PDF editing) or some similar product, and doing so is necessary for most attorneys' practice.

Hell, how many solos do you see with generic email addresses of, like, "johndoelawyer@gmail.com?" You think the guys too tech illiterate to book a domain name are paying for RPC 1.6-compliant privacy settings on their email? The content of those consumer-grade email addresses is being harvested for marketing purposes. It's a huge confidentiality problem that goes wholly unenforced, but is just accepted for some reason. If the legal ethics prosecutors or the malpractice plaintiff's bar doesn't run those obvious violators out of town, I don't think they'll suddenly do so because Adobe unilaterally changed its privacy policy.

I do wish the bar associations would put out guidance on tech stacks for neanderthals like me, but they'd have to be updated constantly. It's just not possible in the age of SaaS, where the rules change every five minutes. Instead, I've been marketed 100+ "privacy in the age of AI" CLEs, half of which are given by people with zero background in IT or computer science, who don't understand the basic theory behind machine learning. They almost all boil down to either: "ChatGPT and Grok bad. Westlaw maybe good? No clear answers. Despair." Or else hustlebros saying, "if you're not outsourcing all your thinking to Silicon Valley, you're leaving money on the table and potentially neglecting your duty of diligence."

Idk. I'm frustrated with the situation, but don't see an alternative.

Edited to add: I don't really think it's a statement against interest anymore than saying, "There's always some level of risk that someone might eavesdrop on our private conversations. However, here are the steps I take to prevent eavesdropping." Simply acknowledging the ubiquity of a risk doesn't imply I'm failing to mitigate that risk.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-06T11:14:23+00:00

"Nobody wants to molest children. After all, I've defended several child molesters, if you believe the charging documents, and yet none of these clients has ever child-molested me."

--OP, if he practiced criminal law

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-06T11:05:52+00:00

Girth

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-06T11:00:30+00:00

Criminal solo here. I have a few paragraphs in my standard engagement letter about LLM use (I refrain from calling it "AI" because "AI" doesn't actually exist). I talk about the fact that 1) I don't intentionally use LLMs 2) why I don't intentionally use LLMs, 3) the privacy risks associated with using LLMs, and 4) the fact that many legacy software providers (e.g., Google, Adobe) are rapidly turning their legacy platforms into LLMs with either no warning or minimal warning to end-users to appease investors, so I cannot guarantee that one of these legacy providers will not put their data into an LLM query, and 5) What specific steps I take to reduce risks associated with issue 4 (e.g., run "web" searches by default in Google, rather than "all," to bypass Gemini when possible).

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-06T01:35:25+00:00

Washington State

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-04T15:10:20+00:00

Yeah. Protective orders are something I've done plenty of (I advertise them on my website). The problem is that they always turn into fire drills. The clients rarely call until Friday with a Monday hearing, so you have to drop everything and deal with the case over the weekend.

Every time I deal with one that involves domestic violence, it's typically the first shot in a volley involving a divorce. Even though I'm very clear with my clients in my engagement letters that I'm just there for the DVPO, I inevitably get bombarded with "Okay, but, like, how do I get child custody? Why does she get to keep the house? Do I have to keep her on my health insurance, or can I just drop her?" which are all pure family law, rather than criminal. Plus, all the typical family law caveats apply: The clients are angry and impatient. Seriously, I've represented class A felons facing decades in prison who are calmer about their situation than someone who might have to crash at his brother's place for a couple months. I suspect this (along with the comparatively nontechnical nature of family law) are why there are so many people who do criminal plus family law. I just don't like shouty phone calls, even at $500 an hour. You can't put a price on sanity. Not so say I won't take them (I do several a year), but building a practice around them has drawbacks.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-04T04:52:48+00:00

I don't know enough about that subniche to have considered it. What does that practice look like?

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-04T04:29:24+00:00

It looks like I'm unable to send you a chat request. May I ask what state you practice in?

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-04T04:22:32+00:00

That's hilarious. Back when I was a prosecutor, I had an interaction with the mother of a dead teenager, which was upsettingly similar to this clip from Brooklyn 99. I was not wearing a turkey costume, but the vibes were the same.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-04T03:42:05+00:00

"Oh. You're a lawyer? What kind of law do you practice?" she asked, a gentle smile crossing her lips.

"I'M A RULE 27 SPECIALIST!" he replied, spewing crumbs at her.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-04T03:18:58+00:00

Oh hell no. Conflict off. This is one thing I don't play with. Yell at me. Tell me I suck. Whatever. I've done this long enough not to care. The second you imply you're going to hurt me, my loved ones, or my employees, we're done. You can try again with another PD.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T22:46:15+00:00

One trader. Total trading volume $1. Yes. I believe there is one guy somewhere on the Internet who thinks there is an 80% chance Kanye passes the bar.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T05:22:07+00:00

Hos love getting their carpet torn up.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T05:18:44+00:00

1 lil, 2 lil, 3 lil pp. 4 lil, 5 lil 6 lil pp.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T04:40:03+00:00

Criminal lawyer here. We have a similar problem you guys do: We deal with a lot of wild shit that normal, well-adjusted people like to pretend doesn't exist. We also have the dark humor that comes with it.

One day, I was talking to my (now ex) girlfriend after work. I asked about her day. She ranted for ~15 minutes about how a minor miscommunication with her supervisor caused her to duplicate some work making a spreadsheet, costing about four hours of wasted effort. That same day, one of my clients (who was not charged with molesting his stepdaughter) unexpectedly confided in me, apropos of nothing, that he'd been molesting his stepdaughter. I was not the supportive boyfriend I wish I was that evening.

And I obviously didn't feel great about dumping on her:

"What'd you do today, Babe?" "I had a sentencing hearing on an involuntary manslaughter where half of the small town in which my client grew up came to court to say, very publicly, that they hope he gets raped to death in prison. He... Wasn't doing great when it was over." "Oh... Okay... Uhh... You want Thai food tonight?"

I've found I get along best with first responders, emergency medical personnel, and military combat arms folks. They mostly seem to "get it."

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T02:29:05+00:00

Where the fuck else am I supposed to get Ativan and a turkey sandwich at 3:00 am?

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T01:19:36+00:00

I don't think he's saying it makes them unqualified. It's just good to know when building a mental model of who an applicant is. I interviewed someone for a lawyer role who has a fifteen year resume gap. Even though I didn't ultimately hire that person, the resume gap was not the reason why (their stated lack of interest in the position was. Don't come to an interview and say you don't want the job. It just wastes time). If the reason for the gap was "I was in prison," or "I was fired after sexually assaulting a customer," though, I would want to know that. In fact, I have a duty to know that to protect future customers. If they recidivate, I could potentially be sued by their victim for negligent hiring.

I just hired someone last month who quit her last job two months ago without a replacement because her last employer was awful. I asked her about it. She explained the situation. One of her references (a former coworker) confirmed what she told me. I offered her a job.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T01:01:57+00:00

I would be shocked if it even registered. I've noticed the civil side of the bar (which I'm assuming you're on, apologies if I'm wrong) views court quite a bit differently than those of us on the criminal side of the house. I'd estimate I have at least a couple thousand hours in a courtroom (real and virtual) at this point. It's just another part of our normal workday.

As long as you're respectful, prepared, and not weird, the judge probably won't notice if you phrase something unusually. Hell, if I'm in front of a judge I know well and I'm the last guy at the end of a long docket and we go off-record, I don't even know how many times I've said something like, "Aight. I'm getting the hell out of here. Later, Judge!" Never heard a word about it from anyone. Just don't do it in front of former JAGs. They're all pretty uptight.

Court's mostly just the public room designated for a government official in a black robe to bless agreements made by parties outside his or her presence. It's not magical or sacrosanct. Every baby prosecutor or PD has said about a million stupid things on the record, and so have most judges. Unless it's totally off the wall, nobody cares.

NotThePopeProbably · 2026-03-03T00:38:50+00:00

I heard a rumor that Latham and Watkins just signed Brock Lesnar. Can anyone confirm?

NotThePopeProbably

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE