The view from the jury box

How it looks to Crista in California:

They are public defenders and their dress, their hair, their speech all says "not paid enough..."

Suiting up for the first day of work

Congratulations to Emily, who has a new public defender job:

i start on monday. i have no idea what i'm going to wear.

Any wardrobe suggestions for new p.d.'s? You know, clothes to go with pink hair, dreadlocks or tattoos.

Square peg? Come work with us!

Look Like a Lawyer suggests:

If you have pink hair, dreadlocks or tattoos and want to be a lawyer, then working for a Public Defender’s office might be the job for you...

Look sharp!

Goblin's in a quandary: he's moving from insurance defense to criminal defense, and wants to get his new look just right:

After a short time in the insurance defense bar, it's become evident that neither the culture nor the work itself are for me, and I am taking a significant pay cut to move to the public defender's office... the bottom line is that I'll be afforded more freedom to dress the way I want to - this particular public defender's office, like many others, is significantly more tolerant of individual idiosyncrasies than are the local defense firms...

Like Goblin, I too might like to adopt the mod, "skinnier" style, and maybe I would if I didn't maintain such a consistent walrus-like shape. Every work day, I wear a tie (from my couturiers, Deseret Industries and Ross Dress for Less) with a white shirt, a blue shirt, or a gray shirt. I maybe suit up once or twice a week and go with a sportcoat the rest of the time. In my office, if you're not going to court, t-shirts and flip-flops are okay, but shorts are verboten. I can't pull off either look, so the tie stays on.

Any public defender fashion pointers out there?

(apparently the tiny word bubble below is for comments - will somebody please test this for me?)

It's the frayed clothes, isn't it?

Overheard by a public defender blogger:

"My God. I am so offended. These people downstairs asked me if I was a public defender. I'm like, no, I dress better."

Observed by a prosecutor blogger:

State's Attorneys dress nicer than public defenders. Along the same line, State's Attorneys take better care of their hair. I don't know why.

When I knew her, she drove a BMW

The Happy Feminist on former public defenders:

(T)rue to the stereotype, many of them wear Birkenstocks, listen to folk music, and have bumper stickers that say "Question Authority..."

(this one goes out to my old co-worker Denise G., former p.d., now lawyering for people with disabilities at Co-Ad.)

Help is on the way!

Left2Right has taken up our cause, and put out the call for help with our burgeoning p.d. caseloads:

The Public Defenders' Sweatshop

Yeah, that'll bring out the waves of new p.d. recruits! To think that I spent six years in management trying to promote my office to recent law school grads / job applicants as "The Trial Lawyers' Playground..."

(scroll through the comments too: an interesting blend of informed commentators, uninformed (but still entitled to their opinion) commentators, and borderline trolls)

And that crack about

"the dreadfully-overworked bleary-eyed revolving-door appearance of such a counsel"?

Hey, I resemble that remark! (perhaps it's time to replace my couturier, Ross Dressforless, with this guy's tailor.)

Keeping priorities straight in Tucson

Now to Arizona, for a story of prosecutorial (or County Attorney-al) intrigue:

Four former Pima County prosecutors are fighting to restore their reputations after they were disciplined for not sharing information about what they knew about the murder of Dr. David Stidham... Their appeal to the county Merit Commission is the first public venue for criminal and civil cases arising from the murder and has sharpened the focus on what the former prosecutors knew from their friend and former prosecutor, Lourdes Lopez, the ex-lover of Dr. Bradley Schwartz, the man accused of hiring a hit man to kill Stidham.

One assistant county attorney was fired, and three others were suspended and later resigned. The one who was fired made out pretty well, though; he moved on to a job in the public defender's office making nearly $10,000 more than what he was getting as a prosecutor.

He'll need the extra money if he plans to keep up with the new chief public defender's dress code, who recently

let his lawyers know that his favorite shirt maker was in town and they could get custom-fitted shirts at a good price. "I like to dress well," (he) said, "but I don't expect people to be a clotheshorse like I am, dress in $1,000 - well, I guess there aren't $1,000 suits anymore."

Unrumpled

The Salt Lake Tribune columnist who referred to public defenders as "rumpled" takes it back:

"In the past week, I've come to believe a good public defender is to the world of jurisprudence what a Jack Russell terrier is to the dog world: Driven, single-minded, yappy. You want to make a federal case of something? Toss off a careless remark about a legal defender. I did, and I'm still paying for it."

After all, it was that famous p.d. Zorro who said,

"My friends, there is no shame in being poor! Only in dressing poorly!"

P.D.'s: thin-skinned maybe, but not always schlubs.

Suits

You know, not all public defenders wear rumpled suits.

Occasionally some of us wear jail orange.

Update: Blonde Justice on the dangers of letting your orange suit drop.