Anon you quoted: Yes, I think everything you said is correct. I didn't mean to say WMJ messed up some great system under Hynes. I just mean things have not been improved under WMJ's leadership of the legal hiring process (applicants and ADAs all seem to agree with this frustration). Your story is sadly not new. Many of my peers at my school went through similar experiences of yours. My point was WMJ is in charge and the buck stops with him; KCDA has lost many strong applicants because of his failures.Anonymous User wrote:Been tracking NYC DA office hiring for a while.Anonymous User wrote: The director of legal hiring came in under Thompson''s admin because he worked on the campaign. Hopefully the new DA will clean up this mess of a team by the time the next cycle starts.
I think the biggest issue was that the WMJ inherited a pretty defunct process driven by the Hynes political machine that got away with offering new hires the lowest starting salary in the city. Traditionally, QCDA was generally the slowest prior to WMJ.
The next issue I think is his lack of legal hiring experience before KCDA. He just looked at DANY and thought, "We can do that!" In addition to adding another interview round (like DANY), he focused wayyy to much on "poaching" their hires, both in 2L summer hiring and in 3L prebar hiring. One, as if many applied to offices other than DANY, California, Illinois, DOJ, Clerkship, or two, even if they did, they would even start at KCDA with the lower salary. Plenty of people at my LS only OCI'ed with DANY.
The idea that the 2L summers got a head start is also a bit flaky. Yeah, they got to skip OCI, but they still would have to wait for a panel to open up. Meanwhile, KCDA is filling up open panels with outside DANY target "poaches" and every other office is picking up their slack.
I worked for KCDA throughout law school, gunned for them, told them, and expected at least a full interview cycle. Instead, while KCDA sat on their hands, one of the other offices saw my experience and poached me early in the cycle with a better offer, knowing full well I was eyeing KCDA. The senior KCDA people I worked with were dumbstruck by it all.
But for purposes of this thread... take heart! KCDA is slow and probably still looking for places to fill because their legal hiring shop is poorly run.
Please post if you are going through KCDA hiring still. It would be interesting to know how late into the year they have to go.