US: District attorneys’ offices struggle to recruit and retain lawyers

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing concern about racial inequities in the criminal justice system, compounded by long-standing issues with relatively low pay and burnout have made a career as a state prosecutor a tougher sell in the past several years.

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District attorneys’ offices across the U.S. are struggling to recruit and retain lawyers, with some experiencing vacancies of up to 16% and a dearth of applicants for open jobs, according to interviews with more than a dozen top prosecutors and five state and national prosecutors’ associations.

The district attorneys said the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing concern about racial inequities in the criminal justice system — compounded by long-standing issues with relatively low pay and burnout — have made a career as a state prosecutor a tougher sell in the past several years.

“We're seeing a prosecutor shortage throughout the country; it's not limited to large jurisdictions versus small jurisdictions,” said Nelson Bunn, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, a trade group with 5,000 members.

MOUNTING VACANCIES

The number of applicants to entry-level prosecutor positions in San Diego County — which has the second-largest district attorney’s office in California at 330 lawyers — halved from 68 in 2019 to 34 in 2021, according to chief deputy district attorney Dwain Woodley.

In Utah, open positions in the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office are hovering between 21 and 25 in an office that should have 133 lawyers, and attorneys in its special victims’ unit are handling double the number of cases recommended by the American Bar Association, District Attorney Sim Gill said.

“Crime has not dissipated in any significant way to offset the backlog,” Gill said.

Staffing shortages are affecting prosecutors’ decisions about whether to bring certain criminal cases to trial, according to Anthony Jordan, president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York.

"We don’t get to choose the crimes that come in," said Jordan, who is the district attorney in Washington County, New York. "But if you don’t have enough people to prosecute them then you have to let certain ones go.”

Data from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office in Phoenix, Arizona illustrate that challenge. The number of cases the office prosecuted dropped from nearly two-thirds of felonies referred by law enforcement in 2018 to under half in 2020. And the number of vacancies in the office of 338 attorneys continues to rise — increasing nearly 53% between July 2020 and April 2022.

In New York, the pandemic-driven challenges have been exacerbated by an added paperwork burden resulting from recent changes to the laws governing discovery — the pre-trial process of evidence-sharing, said Darcel Clark, Bronx District Attorney, in a statement. That has led to an exodus of prosecutors in several counties, whose departures were first reported by The New York Times.

The 94 federal prosecutors’ offices haven’t seen the same declines in applicants and increases in turnover during the pandemic, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson said. Assistant U.S. attorney positions are often viewed as stepping-stones to highly paid private-sector jobs.

'PART OF THE PROBLEM'

Prosecutors typically earn less than private-sector lawyers, but the public service aspect of the job, the relatively good work/life balance, and the ability to gain trial experience early on — an opportunity new lawyers at large firms rarely get — have for decades helped district attorneys’ offices attract lawyers.

As a result of the pandemic, many early-career prosecutors spent far less time in the courtroom due to widespread court closures. And, when courts began to reopen, the prioritization of more serious cases reduced trial opportunities for less-experienced prosecutors. Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather, whose district includes Charlotte, North Carolina, said he has lost several recent hires over a lack of trial time.

Meanwhile, a red-hot legal hiring market has widened the pay gap between prosecutors and private-sector attorneys. According to a report from the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, the average salary for entry-level state prosecutors in 2020 was $68,056. Starting salaries for associates at large law firms have soared to $215,000 as of January.

And, some district attorneys say heightened awareness of the racial disparities in the criminal justice system in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd have altered how many people perceive prosecutors.

District Attorney Brian Mason, whose office serves two counties north of Denver, was hoping that access to the outdoors and what he describes as a commitment to criminal justice reform would help fill the 10 new job openings he posted in August to reduce the strain on the office’s 80 lawyers. But, he never received more than one or two applications for any of the positions, he said.

“We have to overcome the perception that the DA's office is part of the problem and convince people that we are actually part of the solution,” said Mason, who is the brother of Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason.

As of late March, Mason still hadn’t filled all the vacancies.