A Morning In Court

I spent the morning in state court, beginning the project I discussed with my mentor, the chief justice.  I couldn't decide how to dress, first of all.  I didn't want to look like a lawyer.  I didn't really want to look like a client, either.  What is neutral clothing for a day in court, I wondered.  (Half of my closet is full of business apparel, clothes suitable for air-conditioned conference rooms with a view of the ocean.  I don't know what I'm going to do with those clothes.)   

Anyway, I picked out an outfit that was neither businessy nor casual, and packed up my computer and went to court.  Nobody had computers; the black leather bag marked me as an outsider.  Although they scanned it through the metal detector, nobody asked me about my bag or my cell phone.  They ask you whether you have a cell phone before you go to bankruptcy court, and if you have one, they ask you whether you are an attorney.  Attorneys get to bring cell phones in (turned off, of course), but nobody else does.  I never understood that small privilege, and had been wondering whether to admit being an attorney or disclaim my bar privileges if they asked me today.  But they didn't seem to care. 

I watched part of a divorce proceeding that I'm not sure I was supposed to be witnessing, and then went down to the criminal court to watch.  I'll be writing my impressions up later.  Since I've hardly spent any time in district court I watched the process as an outsider.  One thing I noticed was that the phalanx of attorneys representing the DA were almost all women (8 out of 9) and almost all appeared to be under 30 (7 out of 9).   All of the criminal lawyers were men, and varied in age.  Is this a typical arrangement? 

Comments

[Patrick]

I prosecuted UNTIL I was 27. My office was half-and-half men & women. "Prosecuties" are becoming the norm all over. For some reason, District Attorneys prefer to have young, good-looking female assistants rather than young, ugly female assistants. The reason so many prosecutors are young is because the pay is crap and it's a good resume-building job.

[cmc]

I was a prosecutor here in New England from age 26 until age 31 (1997 -2002). In my first office, my boss was a man and the other 5 prosecutors were women. In my second prosecutorial job, the entire office was female.

My anecdotal observation is that prosecutors and public defenders are mostly women, especially at the junior ranks. Private defense attorneys on the other hand are often male. They tend to be older because criminal lawyers often don't go into private practice until after they have gotten experience as prosecutors or public defenders.

The prosecutors you saw were young because only the most junior prosecutors work in the district court. More seasoned prosecutors have graduated to Superior Court jury trials, or perhaps appellate work. On the other hand, even very experienced private defense attorneys are likely to take any paying client regardless of whether it's a high stakes case or a minor District Court matter. In my state, you see some of the most famous, most experienced veteran defense attorneys handling piddly cases in district court.

On the whole, it seems as though there are many more women in criminal litigation than civil litigation. It was quite a shock to my system when I switched over to civil and found myself often the only woman at a deposition or a chambers conference. While there are a high number of senior women in my state's AG's office, there does not seem to be a corresponding percentage of senior female litigators in private practice. I don't know why that should be -- I have heard theories that government work is kinder to women trying to balance career and family, and that women are socialized to prefer public interest positions over pure money making positions with private firms. (I like to justify my decision to seek out big bucks in private practice as a feminist act!)

One last observation: I remember prosecuting a man who regularly beat up his girlfriend. At one particular bench conference, I realized that the judge, public defender, probation officer, and I were all women. I took some degree of grim pleasure in the fact that a group of powerful women were deciding the fate of this woman-hating bully.

If you have good quality business outfits, I would strongly recommend donating them to Dress for Success.

http://www.dressforsuccess.org/where_we_are/affiliate.asp?sisid=111&pageid=1