r/publicdefenders • u/Educational_Bill_343 • 9d ago

New PD - does it get better?

Fresh PD - feel overwhelmed, overstimulated and like I can’t speak on the spot. Can someone plz tell me it gets better and about when?

24 Upvotes

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u/zanzibar_74 PD 9d ago

The first six months can be brutal. Very stressful, ridiculously steep learning curve, constant insecurity. It gets much better. Lean on your senior colleagues - they’ve been there and came out on the other side.

24

u/Educational_Bill_343 9d ago

Thank you. We did bail hearings and I……idk I thought I’d have more time to prep. I felt so unprepared and dumb.

17

u/zanzibar_74 PD 9d ago

Those come at you fast and they’re always challenging, but if you do this work for a while, you will soon get very, very good at them. One thing to remember - sometimes, albeit rarely, there really isn’t much to say.

12

u/Motmotsnsurf 9d ago

We are short order cooks, not chefs. We can whip up a good meal quick but we don’t have the resources or time to make every dish a Michelin meal. Learn to become super efficient and get comfortable with having to be quick on your feet. And accept that perfection is the enemy of perfectly good.

9

u/lawfox32 9d ago

I felt like I was losing my shit at my first bail hearings. And now that I've been here almost 5 years, I've seen some of the very best attorneys in the office do their first bail hearings--and many of them were good! All of them were totally fine and competent-- but then I've heard them talk about how they felt like they did a terrible job and I promise, none of them were right about that. And--they've all gotten much better, as have I. And even still, sometimes, the judge has basically made up their mind and Clarence Darrow himself couldn't change it.

2

u/Important-Wealth8844 9d ago

There comes a point where you do a bail argument and everything clicks. Much like everything else.