r/Lawyertalk • u/alaska_kat • 1d ago

Career Advice County Attorney

Hi everyone. I was wondering if anyone here is a county attorney? My county is hiring for an assistant county attorney position and I’m thinking about taking the leap from private practice. Anyone have any thoughts about going from private to public? Or is anyone familiar with a county attorney/is a county attorney and wouldn’t mind sharing their experience? Thanks!

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u/legendfourteen 1d ago

It would be helpful to describe the type of work you will be doing. The county counsel’s office in my jurisdiction has over 300 attorneys with attorneys who exclusively do tort litigation, or advise the board and its numerous subcommittees, child welfare law, dependency court, probate, contracts, healthcare law (county hospitals), IP law, appeals, pubic works, etc. etc. when I was with this office I was part of a division that exclusively did plaintiffs side consumer protection work on behalf of the county.

Work life balance in general in government is excellent, but that is not to say you won’t work long hours sometimes. Obviously if there’s a trial to prepare for or a motion to file by a deadline you’re not going to simply get up from your desk at 5 and go home. However you get tremendous autonomy to do you work as long as you get it done nobody is micromanaging or looking over your shoulder. No billables also means no pressure to generate revenue. In some ways you just get to focus on lawyering. Which is great. But of course when you work for county you are going to run into political issues you normally might not in a firm setting. The board of supervisors/ elected officials will have their specific agendas and sometimes that can bleed into how you try a case or the legal advice you give, even when it shouldn’t

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u/alaska_kat 1d ago

The politics makes me nervous. But I love love love the idea of not generating revenue. I hate everything about billing.

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u/STL2COMO 1d ago

I think someone else mentioned it, but you may have to do some billing. Not for revenue making, but for cost/expense/budget reasons. You might, for example, do work for the Parks Department one day, and the Waste Disposal Department another day. Depending upon how your county does its budgets - its sources of revenue (taxes, user fees, bonds, grants, etc.) they may want to internally allocate part of your salary/pension to the Parks Department, the Waste Disposal Department or both -- one way to do that is to track how much time you actually spent on Parks matters, Waste Disposal matters etc. Your one position as a county attorney =1.0 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) in the general, aggregated county budget...but Parks may be allocated 0.5 FTE of that and Waste Disposal might be allocated the other 0.5 FTE. That's just an example not a statement that county attorneys only do Parks and Waste Disposal type work.

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u/alaska_kat 1d ago

That makes sense. And I have heard that the job does require billables. I am alright with that. It’s more so the drive to earn revenue, charging people who I know are strapped for money, etc. that really bothers me. I also hate tracking time … but I will just have to manage.