Great to be working, but criminal law is tough
I am fortunate that for the next 3 weeks I will be able to work as a rule 9 law clerk at public defense firm. I have always been a person who needs to keep busy to feel satisfied with life. Unfortunately, since graduating work has not followed. So I am very appreciative that I will be working and defending the constitutional rights of criminal defendants.
However, with that said, practicing criminal law is challenging. You frequently come into contact with people who are likely at their lowest point in life. They're scared, angry, apathetic, and unfortunately trapped by the claws of the criminal justice program. And to top it all off, the likelihood of a happy ending is minuscule. But it's not the clients that get to me. I have an immense amount of empathy towards their situation. It's the sheer indifference the system shows to the lives of people, guilty or not. The system reduces people to inanimate objects, and strips them of their freedoms. Seeing people treated in such a way is exhausting.
But the system is the system. The elites will never allow it to be reformed. The system ensures that the lower class remain divided and in squalor. All I can do is do my best to zealously represent my clients as best I can. An incremental difference here and there. Hopefully my criminal law work will only be a temporary affair. I rather work with numbers and other bits of data. Numbers after all never feel any pain.