He Picked the Kids Over His Career

It was shortly before Christmas in 2005 when the call came. The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia called to offer me a position as an assistant U.S. attorney. I was 33 and married with a 10-month-old son, and this was a long time in coming.

After graduating from Georgetown University Law Center in 2001, I returned to my home state of North Carolina to join a midsized firm in Raleigh. As a new associate, I worked in a section of the firm that represented school boards all across the state. My interest was in litigation, and that is what I did, handling everything from contested student suspensions to defending school systems when sued. I loved the job, but soon realized that I would see little courtroom time in a civil litigation practice.

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After two years, I got engaged to a woman I had met in law school. She was in Washington, D.C., and announced that she had no desire to move to North Carolina. I knew it was a lost cause when, upon visiting the state with me for the first time, she said that she thought the trees in the state grew too close together. Not much I could do about that!

So I gave up that tug-of-war and got a job clerking for a judge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Before taking the bench, the judge was a superstar in the U.S. attorney’s office, where he prosecuted many high-profile murder cases. Like me, he had started in private practice, only to realize that he would rarely see the inside of a courtroom. He told me if I wanted trial experience, there was no better place to get it than the U.S. attorney’s office, particularly in the District of Columbia.

With his support, I applied right out of the clerkship. A spot in any U.S. attorney’s office is highly competitive. These offices have their pick of bright, competitive lawyers who want to work on challenging cases that involve a lot of trial work. While many are motivated by the desire to serve the public, it doesn’t hurt that many who serve as AUSAs go on to high-profile appointed positions or lucrative jobs in private firms.

Just getting an interview is an achievement. Getting the office to consider your application often requires a call from a VIP. The interview process itself is rigorous, with multiple rounds of interviews followed by the harrowing experience of delivering an opening statement in front of senior staff in the office. The final interview is with the U.S. attorney.

With the support of my judge, I got an interview and made it to the final interview — only to be turned down. It is not uncommon that applicants must apply more than once to get in. I was advised to get some criminal law experience (up to that point I had none) and reapply. So I did. I got a job with a boutique law firm that specialized in white-collar criminal defense. It was a dream job in many ways: great work with some of the top criminal-defense lawyers in the city.

I spent two years with the firm. While there, my wife gave birth to our first child, a boy. I had always wanted to be a father — but like most, I had no real idea what this meant. No one prepared me for how much I would completely fall in love with that little boy. I was also unprepared for how much work being a father would take. Harrison was not the best sleeper, and my wife and I spent many nights with little sleep. She worked as an attorney at a large law firm, so we shared child care duties as evenly as we could. Fortunately, my work life was flexible and, for the most part, low stress.

Related: Biggest Difference Between Moms and Dads

Life was good. I had a good job and was able to get home to see and spend time with my son. I knew many attorneys who by choice or necessity were weekend parents. Due to heavy billing requirements and travel, their kids were asleep when they left in the morning and on the way to bed when they got home.

After Harrison was born, it was clear to me I would never make that choice. There was no way I would not be around him during waking hours every day. I quickly surmised it would be difficult to cram parenting into a few hours on the weekend. (I know many parents don’t have a choice. I was, and am, lucky.)

But that choice was about to be much more difficult. I joined the U.S. attorney’s office in the fall of 2006. The District of Columbia U.S. attorney’s office is unique in that it handles both state-level criminal matters — primarily “street crime” like assault, drug crimes, etc. — as well as prosecutions involving violations of federal law.

This is a real benefit for attorneys seeking trial experience because state-level prosecutions tend to take less time and go to trial more often. While an attorney in private practice might have a case go to trial once every five to 10 years, and a federal prosecutor might have a trial twice a year, a prosecutor in the District of Columbia Superior Court might have a jury trial every month — not to mention dozens of contested witness hearings before a judge. A prosecutor in District of Columbia Superior Court practically lives in the courthouse.

All new prosecutors start in the misdemeanor section, and it’s a harrowing time for all new prosecutors. It was not uncommon for attorneys to lose weight, given the long hours and stress. I did. Slight to begin with, I dropped from approximately 160 pounds on a six-foot frame to somewhere under 150. My suits hung off me, my pants held up by a belt cinched as tight as I could get it.

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Many of my colleagues were younger than me. Some were unmarried. Most did not have children. As I soon figured out, this made a big, big difference. Like me in my childless years, these attorneys worked until they could work no more, then went home to relax and get a few hours of sleep before starting the process all over again.

I could not do that if I wanted to see my son during the week (not to mention my wife). And as anyone who has had children will tell you, it is a wonderful thing to see your toddler after work — it is also a lot of work. You can’t come home, kick off your shoes, have a beer, and unwind. Your child is on you from the moment you walk in the door. Some of this time is delightful. Your child is cute and full of energy, happy to see you. But you still must be “on.” Sometimes it’s not so delightful. Your child is tired and strung out, crying, throwing food, and so on. With him is the now strung-out person who has cared for him all day — just waiting for the opportunity to hand off the little darling.

At this point, Harrison was walking but unaware of danger. Turn your back for a second, and he’d try to stick a finger in a light socket or come perilously close to tumbling headfirst down the steps. Just being with a child that age is nonstop, sometimes grinding, work. And this is when the child is in a good mood. Often toddlers at the end of a long day are not. Looking back on it and comparing him to his siblings, Harrison was high maintenance — on the move all the time. And when he was in a bad mood, he was in a bad mood. (go to page 2 to continue reading) [lz_pagination]