It is a well known fact that this office has no resources. The state legislature refuses to provide the appropriate funding to (1) ensure that indigent clients receive constitutionally effective representation and (2) that the agency can retain skilled and passionate staff. The vast majority of attorneys here are here because it is a relatively easy job to keep if you are able to do the bare minimum. I can't imagine what you would actually have to do to be fired from this agency. There are a handful of competent and zealous attorneys but they are few and far between and the higher ups don't seem particularly concerned with keeping that talent. Salaries are abysmal. Benefits are fine for a state position, the highlight of these being the possibility of vesting in a pension.
The reason for the title of this review is that I feel that I have become a worse attorney for having worked here. Management does very little to encourage skill development and there are little to no incentives for doing more than the bare minimum on cases. This is in part due t the fact that this is a state agency tied to the money the stingy legislature is willing to dole out. However, there is no fight in this regard. While attorneys are encouraged to bend over backwards to creatively and zealously advocate for the hundreds of clients we have, management does not take their own advice when it comes to creatively advocating for us on issues of caseload management and funding.
It is in a word, demoralizing. I am not providing competent and effective representation. And no one cares. Not the court, not the state, not my boss. We are simply pushing the revolving door and getting clients through the system as quickly as possible so we "represent" the nest one in line. Any legal challenge or growth of my skill set ended about a year after I started. This agency is legal death.
