Originally published in Student Lawyer, March 2003 (Vol. 31, No. 7)

Inside Government Hiring

A municipal hiring attorney lays out the things you should know before seeking a job with a public agency

BY DAVID C. JAMES

Working for the government, as I have for 18 years, is an increasingly attractive career option for those with law degrees. In today's job market, public-sector legal positions are valued for their stability, even if they tend to pay less than firm jobs. But that's hardly the main reason for their popularity.

Consider the words of University of Houston law professor John Jay Douglass, editor of the American Bar Association's magazine for public-sector lawyers:

"What seems to me the major transformation in the 50 years since I attended law school is the far greater interest of the student in using his or her legal training and education in public service," Douglass wrote in The Public Lawyer last summer. "Many first-year students I counsel are emphatic in their desire to practice law in the public sector. Quite often they are inspired by an interest in doing good for others."

Government work offers tangible benefits as well. Compared to many first-year firm associates, entry-level government lawyers often encounter heavy-duty client contact, case management responsibility, and litigation experience early in their careers. Job candidates also find that government agencies tend to look at applicant pools wider than big firms usually consider. This often is true for older law students, particularly those with success in previous careers.

Spring is a popular season for government agencies to conduct interviews, so this is an ideal time to pay attention if you want a legal job with the government. Whatever your reasons for seeking government employment, there are things you should know about public-sector hiring, especially where it diverges from the way firms operate.

The role of civil service

Not all government lawyers are civil servants, but many are. When you know you're applying for a civil service position, you can predict some things about the application process.

For one, it will be bureaucratic. Why? Because sometimes being impersonal is a virtue. The civil service system was a reform introduced in the 1880s to get away from pervasive patronage systems, whereby officeholders regularly appointed friends to government jobs. Civil service reform meant applicants would be judged on merit, not on whom they knew.

To recognize merit, civil service systems developed examination processes designed to be objective. For some job classifications (typists, for example), a straightforward, objective exam (such as a typing test) is readily available. For lawyers, on the other hand, examining an applicant's skills is not as easily quantifiable. Examinations have to be indirect, getting at training and experience.

Exams for lawyers consist of questions about undergraduate and law school performance-grades, honors, extracurricular activities, and the like. To take experience into account, civil service employers may quantify experience-number of years of practice, for example. The intent is to develop an objective index of merit.

Applicants scoring above the cutoff at the screening phase move on to the next phase of the examination-the interview.

In interviews for civil service positions, objectivity is the watchword. In contrast with government employers, private employers favor résumé-based interviewing: asking different questions of applicants depending on what the applicants showcased on their résumés. Government employers tend to favor directed interviewing: asking all applicants the same questions, with variation introduced only insofar as the responses of individual applicants prompt different follow-up questions. Supporters of this approach believe that when it comes to comparing and ranking how applicants did in their interviews, it's most fair and objective when one compares responses to the same questions.

Hiring timetable

Most government agencies don't participate in the fall interview season along with their private-sector counterparts. Why? Government budget cycles are the main reason.

During the fall interview season, private firms interview 2Ls for summer internships and 3Ls for associate positions. But in the fall, government employers aren't in a position to hire for full-time positions that won't begin until the next year. The fiscal year of most agencies runs from July 1 through June 30, which means funding for most future positions isn't yet appropriated when private firms do the bulk of their interviewing. Many government employers are constrained by policies or regulations that prevent them from making job offers that commit next fiscal year's money in advance.

Don't assume, however, that all government agencies do not interview in the fall. Large offices with big budgets can participate in the fall interview season because they have enough resources to conduct paid summer intern programs and the funds to hire at least several lawyers each year. If you rely on the conventional wisdom that government employers interview strictly in the spring, you'll miss the application deadlines of the many public agencies that hire a significant number of law students and lawyers.

All government isn't the same

Variations in government hiring calendars are just one indication of an overarching point: Government employers are not monolithic. Assume, for example, you want to work for the U.S. Department of Justice. Before you apply, keep in mind that the DOJ has more than 35 organizations, each with a distinctive hiring profile.

If it's a mistake to act as though the federal government is monolithic, it is a bigger mistake to act as though the whole of government employers-federal, state, and local-is one and the same. When you say you want to work for the government, realize that government employers aren't any one thing. Government hiring is totally decentralized.

Many government employers, for instance, have adopted the civil service system, but many have not. The lawyers in some government agencies are part of an "excepted service" not subject to civil service rules. Even agencies within the same state may vary as to whether they adopt the civil service model.

In California, for example, individual counties are allowed to choose whether their agencies, such as the district attorney and public defender offices, are civil service. In some counties, district attorney applicants must complete a lengthy civil service application. In other counties, applicants simply are required to submit a cover letter and résumé.

Some jurisdictions have a hybrid system in which the hiring of lawyers has some characteristics of civil service and some of excepted service. Another layer of complexity is added by the fact that lawyers who work for certain elected officials are in another category of government employees-political appointees.

My own job illustrates this point. The elected city attorney for whom I work has a staff of more than 140 lawyers. The San Diego city charter provides that all deputy city attorneys are political appointees. In some respects, our hiring process and, in particular, our application deadlines have more in common with private firms than with civil service systems.

What agencies look for

Although government agencies differ as to how and when they hire, in many respects they have more in common with one another than they do with employers in the private sector. For instance, government legal employers often pride themselves on the fact that their hiring criteria are less exclusive, in a conventional sense, than those of large firms. "We aren't concerned about pedigree-we're looking for sled dogs," quips Bill Trainor, a supervising deputy public defender in San Diego County. Regional law schools are well represented among government lawyers. And government agencies tend to assign relatively less weight to grades and the candidate's law school in favor of extracurricular activities that involve practical skills, such as writing, moot court, and mock trial.

Government employers also have a penchant for hiring second-career people, relying on the maxim that the best predictor of future success is past success. If you've enjoyed a successful previous career, even one far afield from the practice of law, you may be particularly attractive to a government employer. That's because most public agencies don't have the luxury of hiring entry-level lawyers simply to do legal research or provide other support services. Staffing is predicated on new lawyers having lots of responsibility right away. Therefore, candidates with proven work experience stand out.

To illustrate, consider prosecuting agencies and public defender offices. It's common for new prosecutors and defenders to try cases within a few weeks of being hired, or even sooner. There are advantages to sending out second-career people to represent the office as trial lawyers. Jurors don't know the lawyers are entry level, but they may ascribe greater credibility to those they perceive as veterans. In the final analysis, of course, to be credible new lawyers must have the necessary practical skills. And in government agencies, lawyers need to have those skills the day they're hired.

To determine whether their applicants already have what it takes, government employers often include in their hiring process a performance component. This is a practical exercise that is scored and becomes a factor in making hiring decisions.

In my office, as in many government offices doing criminal law, we ask applicants who make it past the initial screening interview to a callback interview to perform an oral exercise. In our case, it's a mock rebuttal argument delivered to the interview panel. After less than 10 minutes of preparation, our candidates deliver their argument at the beginning of the callback interview. Applicants best suited for trial work relish the opportunity to demonstrate their skills.

Practical exercises are worth the time because they allow employers to compare applicants head to head on critical skills. Evaluating a candidate's performance on the oral exercise, like evaluating his or her writing sample, is an impartial process. When it comes to scoring the practical exercise, applicants from the most prestigious schools, or with the highest GPAs, have no advantage. The advantage goes to those with the strongest practical skills, skills most suited to the job. When it comes time to argue in front of a jury, neither one's pedigree nor résumé matters. What matters is performance.

A sense of commitment

Jeanne Svikhart is an assistant director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management. Having worked for a law school, for private law firms as a consultant, and now for the DOJ, she offers an important insight into the nature of government law practice: Government law offices are mission driven, not profit driven. This explains a lot about what's important to government employers. In Svikhart's words, hiring lawyers look for "touchstones" that demonstrate a candidate's interest in the agency's mission.

For example, if you want to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission, it's not enough to say you've always wanted to work for the government. You need to know that the SEC has numerous offices at the national, regional, and district levels that hire summer interns and entry-level lawyers. You need to know what the SEC does. The recruiter will look for touchstones on your résumé. He or she will evaluate how you have invested your time-whether your course selections, hobbies, volunteer activities, and jobs demonstrate your interest in the SEC's mission. Have you taken a class in securities regulation? Have you clerked in the securities area? The more touchstones, the stronger your application.

Because the mission is best served by people who have a heartfelt passion to do what the agency does, government employers don't want to hire applicants for whom government service is second choice, something they're settling for. The number of law students and lawyers whose first choice is government service exceeds the number of available government jobs. The emphasis on hiring people who first and foremost want to work for the government is a corollary of the proposition that government law offices are mission driven.

Applicants who tell the recruiter, "I think your office is a great place to start," reveal themselves as people who see the agency merely as a steppingstone. Government hiring lawyers have invested their careers in their agencies. They know that not everyone they hire will end up staying, but they're looking for lawyers who see their agencies as career opportunities.

One final thing to keep in mind as you apply for government jobs is that the hiring lawyers take their work very seriously. They read writing samples and call references. They want to be as inclusive as possible. And they have little administrative support. When you factor all this in, along with the budget constraints I've discussed, it adds up to a process that is often slow. If you're among those who aspire to be a government lawyer, meet the application deadlines. Be patient. And make sure you convey your passion for the agency's mission.

Contributing editor David C. James (dave.james@abanet.org) is the hiring lawyer for the San Diego City Attorney's Office.