Agency Capture: Is It Worth It?

So far this column has focused on issues a government lawyer might need to consider in order to perform the substance of the work. Today I’m going to discuss career mechanics in order to make a point about the work: for a career in government service to make sense, at least for some people, you need to find value in the work itself.

I’m hardly the first to observe that our profession is wrestling with a number of issues caused by the nasty combination of a huge supply of law school graduates and a tight labor market. Thankfully, there are signs that unforgiving state of affairs is starting to loosen up a bit. A casual glance at the headlines leaves one with the impression that economic activity and employer demand seem to be finally picking up a bit. But I think it is fair to say there are a number of people understandably interested in any job that, according to the conventional wisdom, promises stability, reasonable hours, a comfortable income, and interesting work.

But how does that conventional wisdom hold up? From time to time, people ask me about this. The questions take a variety of forms, but they usually fall into two broad categories. One, what do you put in? Two, what do you get out of it?

(I’m also sometimes asked about how to get hired. I’ve never been a hiring official, but I might try to address this ponderous question in a future column.)

Two caveats before I dive into this. First, I assume we already know the basics. After all, basic descriptions of the federal GS pay scale, benefits and retirement package, leave system, etc., are all readily available on the internet through the Office of Personnel Management and have been written about plenty.

Second, the sheer breadth of jobs attorneys do for the government makes generalization difficult. There are a myriad of offices in government where the work either qualifies as practice of law, or a law degree is a significant asset. Some offices have a wide variety of competing priorities, while some perform a narrower array of tasks. Some are staffed more generously than others. The experience is going to vary from office to office.

First, let’s look at what we put in.

Part of the conventional wisdom that has not been true in my experience is the idea that attorney jobs in government agencies are gently paced. No one envisions that you’re sitting idle during the day, of course, but I think it’s fair to say that some people see a government job as a place to chill out for awhile, to avoid the frenetic pace of Biglaw. Maybe that used to be true more broadly than it is now; I wouldn’t know. But make no mistake: the work can be intense, consequential, and seemingly infinite.

This brings us to the ubiquitous topic of hours. Here, the conventional wisdom holds up at least a bit. I think it is fair to say that a government attorney can in general expect more reasonable hours than a Biglaw attorney. To oversimplify, Biglaw is structured to drive everyone’s hours as high as the market will bear: more hours equals more partner profits. In the government, however, it runs the gamut. Lots of offices make an effort to stick to normal working hours. Some are moderately successful. But I also know plenty of government attorneys who work Biglaw-level hours on a regular basis. Even then, though, the government attorney probably has more predictability. It is pretty rare for a high-priority project requiring 30+ hours of work from dozens of people that needs to be finished by Monday morning to get started on a Friday afternoon.

What about the other side of the equation? What are you getting in exchange for all this?

One thing the conventional wisdom seems to get right is that a government job is very stable. Even with the budget battles of recent years causing some well-founded anxiety among government employees on this front, the fact remains that mass layoffs generally do not happen in government law offices.

What about pay? The conventional wisdom is that government attorneys live in penury, at least by attorney standards. And maybe this is a real issue for some offices, particularly state public defenders and prosecutors. In the federal government, though, most attorney positions are at least GS-9 or equivalent to start. And there’s often potential for significant salary growth built into the job. If a position is advertised as GS-11 through GS-14, you might be hired at GS-11 but you should generally value that position at a GS-14. And of course, the retirement benefits aren’t bad.

Bottom line, the income can be comfortable, particularly if you make sound financial decisions. But it will never be lucrative. Even taking the benefits package into account, your total compensation is definitely significantly lower than it would be in Biglaw — at most career phases, the salary differential is just overwhelming.

Lets compare our assessment so far to Biglaw: an intense pace, hours that are generally (but not always) marginally better, significantly less compensation, and minimal fear of losing your job. Is it worth it?

Again, it varies depending on the office, particularly with how intense an office’s work is and how long the hours are. But I think we can conclude, at least some of the time, private practice might look like an attractive alternative, particularly for someone in a job that is more intense, with longer hours, than the average government attorney. In fact, people like that might have the broadest array of options to exit to the private sector. So why stick with Uncle Sam?

The work.

For some, it is a sense of mission, a feeling that the work you do each day contributes to an important public function. For others, it is the opportunity to use their legal knowledge to help craft and refine public policy. For others, it is about ownership of the cases, the fact that you don’t just do research and document review, even early on, but are given real responsibility for whole matters. These people are emphasizing different aspects of the experience, but they’re expressing the same basic idea: there is value in the work itself, and that is what makes the job worthwhile.

Brian D. Griffin began his legal career as an associate in the New York office of a Biglaw firm, focusing mostly on litigation. He is currently a staff attorney in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of General Counsel. His duties include litigation, rulemaking, and programmatic legal advice. Brian attended New York University School of Law and Georgetown University for undergraduate, majoring in Government. You can reach him at [email protected].

DISCLAIMER: The statements and views expressed in this column are entirely Griffin’s own. They do not represent the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States.