<p>Do students go to Law School in intentions to work in the public sector after their studies?</p>
<p>first of all, being a public defender and working in the public sector are not synonymous.
a public defender represents people in criminal cases. the public sector is much broader than that. still within the criminal realm, district attorneys and us attorneys are also in the public sector. there are also a large variety of other jobs working for various governement agencies (at all levels of government) that would be considered public sector and have nothing to do with criminal law.</p>
<p>yes, people go to law school with the intent to work in the public sector. many of those, however, end up in the private sector for at least a period of time. </p>
<p>things you should think about regarding a career goal in the public sector:
- law school is expensive and public sector jobs generally pay much less than private sector. think about whether you will be able to take a public sector job if burdened with lawa school debt. also look into loan forgiveness programs that some law schools have for those taking lower paying public sector jobs.
- public sector jobs can be competitve to get. don’t assume that because they pay less, it’ll be easy to get such a job.
- some public sector jobs like to see private sector experience. and often times the higher positions in public sector go to people who started in the private sector. the career path is not always smooth and simple.</p>
<p>Some law students do go to law school with the purpose of going into the public sector. While it’s true that these positions don’t pay as much as private practice, they might not have the pressures (billable hours, etc) that one may encounter in the private sector. Also, from what I’ve seen these positions may not be as suseptible to down sizing and layoffs.</p>