Staffing shortages at the Department of Justice, which have plagued the organization for the last year, have led officials to drop minimum experience requirements for job openings to attract talent fresh out of law school.
The DOJ told U.S. attorney offices earlier this month that a one-year experience requirement for new hires would be suspended “due to an exigent hiring need for attorneys across the Department”, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg Law.
In job postings for assistant U.S. attorneys in Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma, applicants are only required to possess a law degree, have passed the state bar exam and be a U.S. citizen.
Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, roughly 5,000 employees – not all of whom are lawyers – have left the DOJ – either voluntarily or by being fired. It’s unclear what percentage of those who have left are lawyers. The DOJ employs more than 100,000 people, and roughly 10,000 are lawyers.
The Independent has asked the Department of Justice for comment.
Before the change, U.S. attorney offices required applicants to have at least one-year of post-law school experience. Some offices that deal with higher-profile cases, such as the Southern District of New York, require two to three years of experience.
But the exodus of staffers has left U.S. attorney offices desperate. In August, Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, appeared on Fox News to ask viewers with law degrees to apply to work in her office.
“I’m down 90 prosecutors, 60 investigators and paralegals,” Pirro, a former Fox News host, said before looking directly into the camera and asking anyone who wanted a job in her office to contact her.
The same month Andrew Boutros, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, sent an email to former prosecutors asking them to consider applying for a role in the office and to forward the email to other interested lawyers.
“I was astonished,” Mark Rotert, a former federal prosecutor based in Chicago, who received the recruiting email, told the Washington Post. “I have never seen anything like that.”
Trump administration officials have purged the Justice Department of staff deemed disloyal to the president – such as those who worked on prosecutions related to January 6 rioters or the criminal cases against him.
Three prosecutors who worked in the Southern District of New York quit last April after refusing to drop corruption charges against former New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Another prosecutor, who was working on immigration cases in Minnesota, was removed from the job in February after expressing deep frustrations with the Justice Department’s caseload to the judge.
Dozens of other prosecutors have been forced out over their refusals to comply with pressure from Justice Department officials to drop cases or bring prosecutions against the president’s perceived enemies.
The DOJ’s suspension of experience requirements is in effect until February 28, 2027, the memo seen by Bloomberg Law noted.
