Law School Lies

I’m surprised my rejection didn’t beat me home on the drive back from this interview.

So I got an interview at a county DA’s office for an ADA position. I drive out to the office which is located just a little bit farther beyond the edge of civilization than I thought it would be. You know the situation… driving along seeing large office buildings give way to strip malls, give way to further expanses of undeveloped land; and at a certain point you wonder if you drove too far and missed your exit, only to look over at the GPS and realize you’re still 5 miles away.

I show up at a small, but well maintained town which seems to be hovering on the better end of economically depressed. You know its a smaller town when all the parking in the middle of the city is free. But also a nice change. I wander into the wrong building at first, the courts building was… ugh. gross. And since it was right before court started, the hallways were filled with what looked like a casting call for the Jerry Springer Show. I had a creeping feeling walking through the courts building that the office was going to be dreadful. I finally find a receptionist who directs me to an adjacent building. I walk into the (correct) building this time and I am greeted almost immediately by one of the ADAs who walks right up to me and says “You must be Azrael!” Seems a bit odd that someone walking into their building in a suit can only be the applicant… and also a bit odd (though nice) that someone was waiting for me in the lobby.

So I ride the elevator up with the guy talking to me the whole time telling me how the interview is setup. He started throwing out names and titles at a breakneck pace. “You’ll be talking to X who is the ADA for Y, and also talking with Z who is assistant director of W…. ” He spun through about 6 or so people and titles without pausing for breath and I was still trying to remember the first name he had given to me as we whirled through the security door and into the main office.

It was really a nice office. Spacious and modern, and clean! A far cry from the building next door. Things were starting to look up. I’m led down a hallway and my guide is still talking like an auctioneer next to me while I try to sift through the information he’s gushing forth. He pushes open a door to a conference room with the aforementioned 6 other attorneys already arrayed around the table waiting for me. I’m motioned to a seat at the end of a big Gothic black table and told to take the end seat.

The chairs around the table were just as large and Gothic as the table itself. Huge, black throne like wooden chairs with gnarled armrests rising out from the sides and big bronze diamond-shaped studs holding the leather upholstery to the chair. And it’s not just regular leather either… oh no. It is cow-hide; the type of leather with the cow hair still on it. As I pulled out the chair to sit, a tiny voice in the back of my mind looked at the chair and went “Eww… Couldn’t we just stand?” I briefly wondered if it would stick to my suit like cat hair after I stood up. Completing the picture was a set of longhorns on the wall above the table that nearly went the length of the table itself. The conference room definitely made an impression. And that impression was ‘bad interior decorating skills’.

I sit down on my designated bit-of-cow chair and I am introduced to everyone in the room in the same rapid-fire manner in which they had been mentioned before. Fast enough that I probably only absorbed one more name (for a total of 2 now) before the interview began.

The DA looked at me and said that I had one of the most impressive resumes he had ever seen. (uh oh… nothing like that is ever uttered without a ‘but’ following it). The interview really began and ended with the first question he then asked me.

“Why do you want to do criminal law?”

The question seemed straightforward enough. He may have added a bit more inflection on the “you” part of the question though… which is where the interview really came apart.

I started talking about my background in criminal law and how I really enjoyed doing it and why. I was then asked again, by the ADA right next to the DA, ‘why did I want to do it.’ (there was that emphasis again…) There is the half second where I wonder if he wasn’t listening to the answer I just gave, but that can’t be it. So I take a different tack and start explaining using more specifics from my background, and particular cases I have done. I explain that I enjoy the novelty of cases with unique and potentially undecided law. How courtroom litigation in my mind was fun and enjoyable and provided real stimulation, how I realized that a large number of cases are rote in a DA’s rotation but the ones which aren’t are what I found to be enthralling. Everything I was saying was true, I was enthusiastic and energetic and I had a few moments where everyone in the room laughed at some anecdotes from one of my previous cases. I thought I had answered the question well, showing my knowledge and ability.

The ADA who had walked me up was sitting closest to me. He was severely balding which made his deeply furrowed brow seem to crease and ripple a greater swath of his forehead than should be possible. He asked the same question a third time… (god damnit, they were fishing for something) and finally stated bluntly what the others had been dancing around. (It was a moment much like the “why are you here” from my internship.) He looked at me and said, “what we are trying to find, is what is motivating you to want to come here and do criminal law.”

Still not recognizing what fish they were looking for, I relied simply “I really enjoy doing it.” The DA shook his head and he then said as he pointed in a general manner to the ADAs at the table, “No, we want to know why you want to. I can tell you are very intelligent, but I can also tell you the reason why each person is here at this table. Be it social justice, protecting the innocent, getting justice for the victim…” With each pronouncement he jabbed a finger in the direction of one or another ADA who nodded imperceptibly at their pronounced ideology.

It was a startling realization once it sunk into my thick skull. I was sitting in a room of true believers. They wanted a philosophical argument as the reason why I was there. A soapbox from which I was suppose to proclaim that I wanted to right the wrongs of the oppressed and be ‘the hammer of justice’ for the downtrodden. I hadn’t run across this before… this was new. Very early on in my internship I was told that it was not good to get too invested in a particular worldview when dealing with the law. This has been reiterated by many, many very accomplished attorneys to me over the years. True believers make incredibly impassioned, but ultimately bad attorneys. You lose sight of what is right, or logical and instead always find a way to favor your ideological standpoint. Victims never lie. Defendants are always guilty. Corporations are bad. Etc. etc. etc.

True believers are passionate litigators because they can’t see how anyone could see any point other than their own. They lend believe-ability to their arguments because they themselves believe it so fervently and completely. They make horrible attorneys because they don’t see the other side. They lose their objectivity. There is no moment where they step back and say, “I don’t think this is a good idea / could I be wrong?” They often end up stepping over the line and doing something illegal themselves in furtherance of their cause.

So I was sitting in a room of ideological extremists, and I was apparently being judged because I was not one as well. But then something amazing and novel happened. The DA decides to take a different slant on the interview. He looks over at me and says

DA: “What is it you really want to do?”

Me: “Well, I really like litigation and…”

DA: “Let me ask it this way, what was your favorite class in law school?”

Me: “Uhm… well, I took quite a few classes in IP and..”

DA: “Ok, I know a lot of people. A lot of people in different firms here and in (big city). I could pass your resume on to some of these people I know. But I need to know who I should be sending it to. Is it someone in IP? Is that who you’d like me to pass your resume along to?”

There was a brief moment where I almost asked if this type of trick had worked for him before. The DA had just baited a verbal trap and asked me to step into it. He constructed the trap with such ease that I really was rather impressed. If I said yes, it meant the interview was over. It would mean I was actually looking to do something else and just happened to apply to his office for convenience sake. The hypothetical of him having friends in one field or another and actually passing on a resume was probably close to nil, but it was such a tempting offer; As it was intended to be. You say yes — and thank you, platitudes and whatnot and you leave with his assurance he’ll pass your resume on to someone, but you’ve just taken yourself out of the running for the position for which you were interviewing. They don’t need to reject you… you chose to bow out. You rejected yourself.

He had done it artfully. I was also a little insulted he thought I wouldn’t see it. I persisted in my claim that I enjoyed criminal work and parried around his verbal jousting. I successfully sidestepped some other verbal chicanery and apparently unsatisfied, he decided he’d reached his limit of patience with me and ended the interview with “do you have any questions for us?”

The questions (or maybe just singular question I suppose…) had so far only been asked to me from the 2 ADAs on the right side of the table and the DA opposing me at the other end, attempting to gain some ground (and failing) I quipped “Well, I haven’t heard much from the left side of the table, so…” I turned my attention to the left side and addressed a few questions to the other half of the ADAs silently sitting in the room like set pieces. I questioned them for a few minutes about various specifics of the office, but it was over. And it was obvious. I let it die and was walked out by the same ADA who walked me in. I rode the elevator down with a Game Warden and looked over at him and said, “well that sucked.” Briefly striking up a conversation about failing the interview hard. I actually sorta doubt I’ll even get a rejection it was so obvious.

Minor update #1: I told a friend the abbreviated version of this story. After telling them about the gothic conference room set and the true believers, they told me it sounded like they were crusaders. I think the analogy works amazingly well.

Minor update #2: Several months later, the same office started advertising for another open position. I figured, why the hell not and I sent a resume, I mean hey… now I know what answers they’d want in the interview. They sent back a letter which said (I wish I was joking) — Please don’t bother applying here in the future.

I am considering framing it.

I think this one went decently, but the interview questions were a bit touchy feely as opposed to professional.

I sent in a resume for a county prosecutor position and by 8:30 the next morning I had a message that they wanted an interview. I got it setup with them for a mere two days later.

I show up at the courthouse and I’m somewhat surprised by the general lack of people. Most courthouses I’ve worked in were usually very active and full of people. Not so here. It was very laid back and you got the impression that nothing moved too quickly there.

I head up to the office and end up waiting for a time in the very small waiting room. On a random note, it was the nicest smelling waiting room I think I’ve been in yet. If it wouldn’t have been weird, I really wanted to ask to receptionist if it was an air freshener or potpourri, or what… because it was really nice. The office and courthouse, as with many state buildings, were wonderfully done up in early 80’s chic. The only photo on the wall showed an amazingly dated image that I am going to guess was taken around 1983 based on the big poofy hair and clothes.  (I would feel really bad if it were taken any more recently).

I’m eventually ushered back to the rather small office of the DA, who was an absolutely enjoyable woman. I suppose I thought she was enjoyable because she struck me as someone who spoke rather unfiltered. I am quite certain that if she thought someone was a fucking idiot, she’d probably look right at them and say, “Well aren’t you a fucking idiot.” Flanking me on either side were two prosecutors who spoke narry a word through the interview, with the exception of a question or two prompted by the lead DA.

But… (there’s always a but it seems), the interview seemed to have very little to do with my professional qualifications. I am pretty sure that once again, the interviewer had some sort of internal belief that they could ask probing meaningful questions that were vastly superior to all other interviewing techniques. So what I got was an interview that had such questions as “What was the most important thing your mother ever taught you?” and “What was your greatest hardship in your life?”

A great many questions were focused on my family (as in my parents and siblings). When I did start speaking a bit about my professional specs, I was interrupted and the conversation would be re-routed to a different topic. This left me rather unhappy with how the interview was conducted mostly because any attempt to explain in any sort of depth about my skills and qualifications, or explanations about my past never actually reached the answer I was trying to give. I would start the explanation but would be interrupted 2 sentences in before I hit most of the substance of the issue. But this tack seemed limited to the legal explanations… the touchy feely questions weren’t headed off quite so often. It felt like they wanted a very superficial view of everything and depth was to be avoided at all costs.

A primarily social interview is okay, if you’ve mostly decided on a candidate and already interviewed regarding their professional bona fides. Unfortunately, I got the distinct feeling that my resume had been barely glanced at. They asked me ‘Why work for the DAs office?’ and the beginning of my answer talking about working in one for 2 years in criminal as an intern and then another 6 months on the civil side, led to everyone in the room burying their face in my resume scanning furiously to find the pertinent section. In fact, anything I mentioned about my professional past seemed to be a surprise. The cover letter obviously wasn’t perused (they didn’t even print off a copy of any other materials except my resume, based on a surreptitious glance at the paperwork in front of the interviewer)

There was one moment in the interview when I hit a wall. They wanted to know “Why here, and why not somewhere else… like over at this specific place.” I had a judgment call to make. The DA here seemed to be very matter-of-fact; so I went for it. I gave her the short version of why it was a horrible place to work and I told them that I did actually interview there, ‘but neither of us were too impressed with the other” and further explained why I personally found it rather unfortunate. I think I hit the mark, but I realized I was skirting a fine political line. Telling the interviewer they are superior to a colleague is always good, explaining why is risky.

The interview wound down and I left with no real idea as to what their opinion towards me actually was. It looks like it would be a nice place to work, and a relatively relaxed atmosphere too. I have decent odds as they were only interviewing a handful of candidates and are making a quick decision.

In business, the term boiler room refers to an outbound call center selling questionable investments by telephone. It typically refers to a room where salesmen work using unfair, dishonest sales tactics, sometimes selling penny stocks, private placements or committing outright stock fraud. The term carries a negative connotation, and is often used to imply high-pressure sales tactics and, sometimes, poor working conditions. – Wikipedia — alternatively… watch the movie.

I’m classifying this one as a pseudo-interview. Because it wasn’t really an interview, but they wanted it to appear that it was. Anyway, to the story.

I happen to run across several postings by a head-hunting company looking for what amounts to roughnecks for oil companies. In the past 3 weeks, they supposedly had held several job fair style hiring sessions and they were listing quite a few positions. I looked at their website and ran a quick Google search, including a quick streetview of their office. Seemed generally legit. So I contact the recruiter and basically say “hey, I’m not what you were looking for, but do you think your clients might be interested in an attorney.” I was assuming that if someone was doing a fair bit of placement with oil companies, throwing out a resume to their clientele might get me into some of the smaller companies I might not have otherwise heard of before, or even interest from bigger companies who skipped over my resume from the dreaded web application.

I get a quick email back saying “thanks for taking a leap of faith and reaching out to us.” They seemed genuinely interested and had someone call me back the next day. Pretty quickly however, it became apparent the caller had no idea what an attorney actually does. And they made a point of asking if I wanted instead to work on an oil rig (because… you know, why not?) The call didn’t instill me with confidence in the company, and then they asked me to come in to fill out an application. There was a bit of a pregnant pause and I non-verbally expressed I’d rather not with a long.. ehhhuuuuehhhhhh… before saying “Can’t I just do that online?”

Apparently not. So they setup a time for me to come in. I assumed for some sort of interview / paperwork hybrid thingy. I’m told they’ll send out an email with the info. Several days later the interview date arrives, but no email. So I merely assume it is an oversight and I drive on down to the address I had found earlier. The building was located in the ‘wrong’ section of town, but it was close enough to downtown that I just assume they were just being cheap on the rent. I had no idea…

I arrive at what can only be described as an abandoned building. There are random people sorta wandering around, not exactly street people, more like the general increase in random (and weird) passers-by you normally see when you enter the wrong neighborhood. I’m sitting in my idling car staring at the building, thinking, this can’t be it. So I call them up. Apparently, it is. I’m told to go through an unmarked door and go to the third floor. (I swear I’ve seen horror movies start like this) So I park and am shocked to find a working elevator that takes me to the 3rd floor. I walk out to an open air atrium with a bunch of offices facing a courtyard that has several rather large dead, potted trees in it, but that’s ok because the dead trees are covered in kudzu so they sorta look alive. The offices are all empty and dark. Not a soul seemingly around. The outside of the building was run down — the inside was veritably crumbling, and reminded me nothing so much as a by-the-hour hotel that someone tried to convert to office spaces.

I stood in place a few seconds taking it all in before deciding I’d rather not add a story here about how I was mugged by a crackhead going to a fake interview. So I turn to leave and get a few feet before an interesting dressed woman standing near the elevator and talking on a call phone says “Hey sugar, is there something you’re looking for?” My mind first wondered if I had just been offered what I thought I was… then I sorta said “Uhm, I was looking for ‘Company X’… they were supposed to be up here.” She pointed and said “oh yeah, honey, they over there in the corner.” and went back to her phone.

So I had a moment to consider whether to leave, or just to satisfy the morbid curiosity that was now equal with my self preservation instinct. I mean… I was already there, right? What’s the harm in going to look? So I wander over. It turns out, the offices aren’t all vacant…  There are probably three that have some folding chairs, and a folding table in the middle of the office… and a solo attorney’s name emblazoned on the door. (ouch). More telling was that there really wasn’t anything in those offices other than the folding table and chairs, no lights on, and no one inside. I end up at the corner office and the reason I didn’t see it is because it doesn’t really have a large atrium window, just a nondescript door with the company name taped to an 8.5X11 on the inside of a tiny window on the door.

I open the door, and the first thing through my mind was “I’ve made a mistake.” The office is tiny. It had at one point had carpeting that had long since been ripped out leaving a bare cement floor; but the glue was still rather prominent from where it had been removed at some indeterminate past. Someone had painted the walls and every other flat surface ‘Kelly Green’ in a rather fast and haphazard manner. The room was crammed with folding tables and cheap chairs manned by probably 20 or 30 call center serfs dialing out to ‘contacts’. I had walked into the office in a nice suit with a valise. Work stopped. Every eye was on me. This was apparently a highly unusual event.

In what I can only describe again as ‘weird’ I had not 1, but 3 people approach me and ask if they could help me one after another. Now, the room was very small, and everyone was already looking. So, the other 2 people had to have seen the first (and second) person talking with me, and then approached and asked if they could help too. I guess it was just a very helpful place. No one can find any record of the interview request, but they chalk it up to someone else’s incompetence and decide to move forward. I’m ushered into what at first glance I had assumed was a large closet, but in fact is their ‘conference room’. My mind is still processing, and at this point I feel like I shouldn’t walk out because that would be rude (not sure why my mind went that direction, my brain usually works faster than it was that morning).

I’m standing for a few moments too long in the conference room and the recruiter says “you look confused (or concerned.. or something).” My mind finally catches and I look over to the recruiter and finally say out loud what my brain had been screaming since I pulled up in my car. “I think I have made a mistake.” She brushes it off and says “oh don’t worry, we probably just misplaced the interview paperwork. It happens all the time.” The true meaning of my statement sails completely over her head.

The ‘recruiter’ asks me the exact same questions as the phone call several days earlier, including double checking to make sure I didn’t want to work on an oil rig. Then they hand me an application packet to fill out. I fill out some of it, but only some, because it was asking way, way more information than I felt comfortable giving to a recruiter not offering a job, let alone this recruiting company.  I say thanks and they assure me they’ll be calling shortly. I beat a hasty retreat, and count this one as a learning experience to listen a bit more to the voices in my head, and not always satisfy my morbid curiosity at what’s on the other side of the door.

I also harbor a slight fear that I’m going to have to deal with identity theft in the not so distant future from even what little information I gave them. I sincerely hope not. But it is a nagging thought nonetheless.

Trust me.. It wasn’t pretty. The photo does not capture the despair, disrepair, and dirt.