"Career prosecutors have been asked to drop corruption cases as part of political bargains, sign off on dubiously motivated prosecutions of Donald Trump's enemies, or otherwise help run a machine that increasingly treats court orders and the Constitution as optional suggestions. Turns out a lot of seasoned attorneys would rather... not."
"According to reporting from Bloomberg Law, DOJ has now decided the real barrier to hiring more prosecutors is... the requirement that prosecutors have any legal experience at all. Once upon a time, the Justice Department required prosecutors have some experience as a real life lawyer before they hired them (the nationwide minimum was one year, but some offices implemented a three-year requirement). Now, that's gone."
The Justice Department is experiencing significant attorney departures under Attorney General Pam Bondi, as career prosecutors resist being asked to drop corruption cases, pursue politically motivated prosecutions, or compromise constitutional principles. This staffing crisis has prompted DOJ to implement various recruitment strategies, including deploying military lawyers and organizing emergency task forces. Despite these efforts, the department has now taken the unprecedented step of suspending the one-year minimum legal experience requirement for prosecutors. This policy change, documented in a March 13 memo to US Attorneys' offices, permits hiring prosecutors without any prior legal practice experience, fundamentally altering traditional hiring standards.
#doj-staffing-crisis #prosecutor-hiring-requirements #attorney-departures #legal-experience-standards #government-accountability
Read at Above the Law
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