u/WorkingIllustrator84

Yesterday was a pretty big deal for me career-wise. I’m an appellate attorney for the public defenders office in my state, meaning I handle appeals of criminal (or other related) cases. Our state Supreme Court takes very few cases each year - probably like 60-80 cases a year (of which only about 1/4 to 1/3 are criminal (so like 15-20 cases a year of the type that I handle)).

Yesterday, the state Supreme Court accepted 2(!!!) of my cases for review. This is massive - a lot of attorneys in my office have waited years for one case to be granted and I got 2 in one day.

Later, when I was talking to my mom on the phone about it, she abruptly went “so on a different note, your sister had to take your niece to the ER for her leg but it turned out it was just a bruise.” Like what??? I’m in the middle of talking to you about (quite possibly) the biggest day of my career but a bruise on my nieces leg is more important?? I’m happy my niece is ok but come on.

My mom then proceeded to ask me more questions about my opinions on the Stanley cup playoffs than she did about (arguably) my biggest accomplishment to date. Talk about telling me you don’t give a fuck about my actual life without telling me.

I’ve been a PD for most of my legal career (8 years). I started in trial and am now in appellate. I love my job, the work we do, and our clients. However, the one thing I find extremely difficult is the inappropriate clients. Because I am a young(ish) woman, men feel like they can say anything and there won’t be consequences. I used to get way more comments in trial because I had more day-to-day client contact than I do in appeals. However, when I would get those comments in trial, I always had the option to tell client that I would withdraw so they can be appointed substitute (male) counsel. That usually got them to back off. In appellate, however, clients aren’t entitled to subsequent counsel if I withdraw and (I’ve been told by management) that unless there is a real, identified safety issue, I can’t withdraw based on inappropriate comments.

Now, the clients I have who make the comments are generally in prison so there’s not much real threat. There is one man, however, that I represented almost a full year ago who will not stop sending letters and trying to contact me (all very inappropriate stuff). There’s not much I can do about it (other than go to the cops, which I don’t think it’s crossed a criminal line yet).

How do other (young) female PDs handle the comments?