Department of Justice, Politics

No One Wants These Jobs

The Trump regime has taken politicizing the role of attorneys to new heights.

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(Photo by Andrew Harrer - Pool/Getty Images)

(Photo by Andrew Harrer – Pool/Getty Images)

What happens when legal jobs once considered prestigious suddenly… aren’t? Lawyers — or at least a particular breed of lawyer — are known as prestige chasing achievers, anxious for a leg up in the game of life. As such, high profile positions in the Department of Justice are generally highly sought after, though, obviously, the pool of candidates changes with the political party in charge.

Except, with Donald Trump leading the country, positions that would permanently attach your name to the current administration are a lot less desirable, even for conservatives. Politico takes a look at how the mounting scandals have limited the candidate pool:

“They were dealing with a pool that had already shrunk and, now, of course, some people will be avoiding it like the plague,” said one well-connected GOP lawyer who held a top-level post in President George W. Bush’s administration and asked not to be named. “The lesser-known folks are wondering if they’re going to take a huge reputational hit if the president of the United States starts tweeting about them. … There’s definitely some poisoning of the well going on in terms of who would take a job at this point.”

From the outset, the Trump administration was facing a limited pool of candidates for senior positions. Many GOP lawyers and former officials signed “Never Trump” pledges during the campaign and never seriously considered accepting a Trump appointment. Others did, but found themselves essentially blacklisted because of blog posts or other statements made about Trump during the campaign.

Of course, filling political positions will always be more complicated than filling a role at a Biglaw firm. But as Rod Rosenstein has learned, the Trump regime has taken politicizing the role of attorneys to new heights. Though loyalists to the administration claim there is nothing unusual about the process, observers have noted the impact this has had on the size of the applicant pool.

“You always see the same names coming back,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a lawyer who served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. “I look around at people considering going into the Trump administration and the same names come up for every open job. … It’s the same six names for every open job — the people who are both qualified and willing to serve.”

And there are a lot of lawyer jobs to be filled. There are 93 U.S. attorney positions around the country, and the director of the F.B.I. to be appointed. (The F.B.I. doesn’t have to be a lawyer, of course, though most of the names in circulation for that job are legal ones.)

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Then, even when there are attorneys who want to serve, the confirmation process seems particularly daunting with the ghost of James Comey haunting the proceedings:

“Anyone they pick … is going to have to go through the gantlet in the Senate,” [deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater probe and former federal prosecutor in North Carolina and Texas, Sol] Wisenberg said. “I just think it’s going to be hard given how Comey left. It’s going to be a delicate process to try to get somebody through fairly quickly and without a lot of controversy. You need somebody who is really sharp.”

But the Justice Department isn’t the only part of the federal government feeling the pinch. Big Law Business reports that the Department of Labor is having difficulties recruiting legal talent, with an undisclosed Biglaw partner turning down the role of solicitor of labor.

“In a more traditional Republican or Democrat administration, there is virtually always a long line of people out the door eager to take just about any presidentially appointed position that the administration has to offer,” Paul DeCamp, administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division under President George W. Bush, told Bloomberg BNA.

“I think that it may be concerning to people that they don’t know where this administration is going to go, in particular with issues affecting the Department of Labor,” said DeCamp, now a principal at Jackson Lewis, the powerhouse management-side law firm.

And, again, the unusually bitter and toxic political environment is taking a toll:

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“People who accept these critically important positions often make many sacrifices professionally and personally. And given the political environment, they may also turn black and blue due to all the punches they take in the process,” Michael Lotito, a shareholder at Littler Mendelson, told Bloomberg BNA. “No one knows how many qualified individuals never even advance their names.”

The inability or unwillingness to find qualified attorneys to fill essential government functions is like shooting yourself in the foot. As if the Trump administration needed another reason to project incompetence.

Russia scandal ices government lawyer hiring [Politico]
Big Law Attorneys Think Twice About Trump Labor Gig [Big Law Business]

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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