Should You Become A Public Defender? Maybe.

Pros and cons of looking after the legal rights of the poor

In Missouri, the head public defender has clashed with the governor over the latter’s unwillingness to adequately fund public defense. Last week, the head defender invoked a law that lets him assign a criminal defense case to any member of the bar and actually appointed the governor to defend a man charged with assault.

Overburdened Public Defender’s Office Orders Missouri Governor to Defend Poor Client

The ensuing coverage highlighted just how overworked and underpaid Missouri’s public defenders are, and it raised a broader question: is it really that lousy to be a public defender?

The answer, not surprisingly, is, “It depends.” Public defenders are paid by state or local governments, and their salaries range widely, with new hires earning less $40,000 at first and eventually more than $60,000, depending on the state. While even the low-end salaries would get you more than half way to the nation’s median household income, you only get to earn those salaries by incurring an average of $140,000 in debt. By way of comparison, average household debt in the US, including credit cards, car payments, mortgages, and student loans, is $130,000. The average law school debt load is three and a half times the size of the average American student debt load.

Economics aside, public defenders have a stressful job. Here’s what the illustrious Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law professor and former public defender, said on the topic over twenty years ago:

The day-to-day work of public defenders is highly stressful because of unwieldy caseloads, uncooperative clients, and an unsupportive criminal justice system. Furthermore, while there is enthusiastic support for providing greater resources to the state to carry out its responsibilities in the criminal justice system, there is very little corresponding support for increasing the resources available to public defenders. These structural burdens on the office of the public defender are exacerbated by intense criticism from both the public in general and the particular clients of public defenders. The lack of institutional support for public defenders — coupled with criticism, often unfair, aimed at them from both sides-takes an enormous psychological toll on those in the profession.

I can attest to the fact that most of that is still true to varying degrees today. People don’t understand how we do what we do, and do it zealously, with a clean conscience. When I tell people I specialize in child protection cases, they say, “Oh, so you represent kids?”

“Sometimes,” I say breezily, “But mostly I represent the parents accused of abusing them.” A lot of folks don’t even try to hide their discomfort.

So, money aside, it takes a certain disposition to do this work. Some of my colleagues who most thrive in the profession are naturally competitive — they want to win. Others are deeply committed to defending constitutional rights or the rights of the poor, and so they see it as the Lord’s work. Whatever the motivation, it helps to have an iron-clad belief in the justness of your cause, because no one else will. Ask me about the client who fired me just a week before the motion I argued for her was decided in her favor, effectively winning her case.

Whatever the motivation, it helps to have an iron-clad belief in the justness of your cause, because no one else will.

But does the money matter? Can a modest variation in an essentially middle-class salary make up for being reliably disrespected to your face while the hot breath of creditors is on your neck? In my experience, at least, yes, it can.

I have been a public defender for most of my 12 years as a lawyer. I began in Massachusetts, a state with one of the worst pay scales in the nation — the absolute lowest when you adjust for cost of living. When I started the job in Boston, I did not have the kind of astronomic debt load that most law school graduates have, but I had what felt to me like an awful lot of debt, on the order of $60,000. I also had a small child and another on the way and was married to someone in graduate school. I was making $42,500/year — higher than the base salary because I had worked for the state as a law clerk for two years — and I was not breaking even. One year in, I looked around and realized that practically all of my colleagues were either single and childless or married to someone much wealthier.

I would say that CPCS, the Massachusetts public defender agency, was a nice place to work. I had great colleagues, good training, and supportive superiors. I enjoyed my work and most of my colleagues enjoyed theirs. But fiscal uncertainty can have a corrosive effect on otherwise happy people. There was a lot of self-destructive drinking among the public defenders I knew, and there was what struck me as a disproportionate number of divorces (and unhappy marriages, and infidelities). I was definitely stressed and unhappy, and in that I was not alone.

Then, because I am nothing if not a serious experiential social scientist who demands carefully controlled experiments, I moved to the state with the highest-paid public defenders, Connecticut. In a further attempt to rule out confounding factors, I got divorced and dramatically scaled back my living expenses. Now, having worked as a public defender for about seven years in Connecticut, and for five of them making around $75,000/year, I can report that I still love my job and I’m neither stressed nor unhappy.

So if you want to become a public defender, what can you do to make the path as rewarding as possible?

1. Be independently wealthy.
2. Marry into wealth.
3. Know that public service law school loan forgiveness is every bit as important as direct financial aid.
4. Believe fervently in the importance of your work and know that not many people will agree with you.
5. Live in the community where your clients live. Although there will always be clients who don’t respect you, there will be many more who do. In my experience, being a public defender in a poor neighborhood is like being a beloved D-list celebrity, like Scott Baio before the RNC. Also, if you’re signing up for an economically trying profession, you should limit your living expenses accordingly.
6. Move to Connecticut. Except maybe not right now.

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