> Have to wonder if any of these fresh graduates are wondering about what long-term damage they may be doing to their professional reputation.

The legal market is brutal and KJDs need to pay off their undergrad, law school, and maybe even grad school debt.

The average and median salary of a Harvard Law graduate is $167K and $225K respectively [0], but your JD cost of attendance would be around $400K [1] and your bachelors degree would have been around $200K. For those who did grad school (and a large portion did) you can throw in an additional $150-200K.

If you are looking at a $600K-800K in overall debt, you would rationally take any job that you can - especially one with amazing exit opps like the USAO (more on that below).

And this is HYS, where employment statistics are some of the best.

And it's not as if conservative minded legal students are rare [2] - 49.91% of Americans voters voted for Trump in 2024 versus 48.43% for Harris [3].

> How hirable will you be if the first few years of your law career you were were laughed out of every Court because you were trying to defend a historically unpopular administration

Becoming an AUSA is a very prestigious government job.

You become a federal employee of the DoJ, with somewhat easier hours than working BigLaw and an easier pathway to federal judgeships and political office.

Additonally, depending on your location lobbying firms, BigLaw, and even media would pay top dollar for AUSAs due to their relationships - sometimes making them partner right away.

Kash Patel, Loretta Lynch, Rudy Giuliani, Eric Holder, Alejandro Mayorkas, Dan Goldman, James Comey, and others in both parties were former AUSAs.

People would spend entire careers trying to become an AUSA and at least at Harvard we had a mini-guide [4] on how to target a role at the USAO that both undergrads targeting law school and JDs used to refer to.

[0] - https://hls.harvard.edu/career-planning/recent-employment-da...

[1] - https://hls.harvard.edu/sfs/financial-aid/financial-aid-poli...

[2] - https://fedsoc.org/

[3] - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/...

[4] - https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/fast-trac...

DOJ to Allow Hiring of US Prosecutors Straight Out of Law School