D. Loren Washburn ’02 – Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of Utah (UT)

Career Path: Clerkship --> DOJ --> USAO

I began my law school career with little idea of what precisely the practice of law entailed. Prior to law school I’m not sure I was entirely aware of the fact that there were lawyers who weren’t involved in litigation. As such law school and my summer internships were the vehicles for me to explore career options.

I first became interested in working as an Assistant United States Attorney during a course I had taken on Federal Criminal Law. I had taken this course not out of a sense that this was the practice area that I was destined to practice in but rather because two close friends thought it would be an interesting course. I became interested in federal criminal law both because I found the things I was learning to be intellectually interesting but also because during the course the professor repeatedly mentioned the high level of job satisfaction experienced by U.S. Department of Justice attorneys. A short time later a friend mentioned to me that she would be working as a summer law clerk at the Department of Justice, Tax Division, which sounded interesting as well. Eventually I joined the Department of Justice through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. I began my career at the Tax Division, Criminal Enforcement Section. I found this work challenging, intellectually interesting, and personally rewarding. I specifically recall a late night in July on the 25th floor of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit, Michigan looking over the abandoned office buildings and the run down city having worked long hours to prepare for an upcoming trial and thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I get paid to do this.”

However, travelling soon began to be a burden on my family. While at DOJ all of my litigation assignments required me to travel away from home. I began to look for a way to do the same interesting work I had been doing without the associated personal costs of all the travel. Becoming an AUSA was the obvious way to continue the work while reducing the burden of travel.

When I was with the Tax Division I was assigned a number of cases in the District of Utah. Prior to being assigned those cases I did not have an interest in returning to Utah, which is where I was raised and where I clerked. However, in the course of handling cases in the district I became more interested in working in this office. I saw that the cases that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Utah was prosecuting were as interesting and complex as the cases I had worked in Boston, Detroit, and New York. It also had a much lower cost of living. Also, through my involvement in cases, I became known to people in the U.S. Attorney’s office. Through discussions with an AUSA I was working with and later with the U.S. Attorney, I was offered a job in the white collar section of the office. What led me to the office was in many ways a product of happenstance, but the largest single factor in choosing the office was that my parents and siblings, and my wife’s parents and siblings, live here.

As I have continued my career in the U.S. Attorney’s Office I have seen a number of hirings take place. My largest recommendation would be to become known to the decision makers in the office. When there is an opening in a U.S. Attorney’s Office, even in a small office like Salt Lake City, hundreds of applications flow in from around the country, many of them with impressive credentials and excellent experience. In my experience credentials and experience matter somewhat less than some connection to the office. Your credentials won’t matter until someone takes the time to look at them. Unless something brings your resume to the top of the pile or otherwise to the attention of a decision maker, no one will ever really see your credentials, let alone compare them to the other candidates.

My experience has been that specific law school classes are much less important than the experience you gain and the connections you make. A clinical in which you are able to do relevant work (such as work with a local prosecuting office or perhaps work on immigration issues) would show some possibility that you could shorten your learning curve. Perhaps the largest factor in me taking the career path I took was a connection I made with a professor who taught a course I took on a lark. Although the substance was interesting, it has not been a factor in any job I have gotten. However, that connection with that professor did open doors. I didn’t realize how helpful he could be to me, or how willing he was to be so helpful, until I discussed with him my plans, interests, and career needs. Having these conversations with professors, whether or not you think they are likely to be fruitful, is a great help to recognizing doors you might not have realized were open to you.

As an AUSA I find that I have interesting work that is challenging and rewarding to me personally. I am a criminal AUSA in the white collar section of my office. I specialize in tax, securities, and fraud offenses. Perhaps the most significant case I am currently involved in is a prosecution of a money laundering company that is alleged to have laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for Internet gambling companies throughout the world. The case involves companies and banks throughout Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. Preparing for this case has led me to learn about the interplay between state and federal law and between U.S. law at all levels and international law as codified in various international trade agreements. I’ve even been forced to understand—and hate—the Byzantine structure of the World Trade Organization. As this case illustrates, it is difficult to predict where a case will lead and it is impossible to pigeon-hole cases into narrow categories.

Other significant cases I have worked on have been complex tax shelter cases with offshore transactions being used to create fraudulent tax losses for clients of my defendants. These cases have often involved (locally) high profile clients and rather large tax losses. In one case, our trial team created a new precedent for forfeiture against the promoters of abusive tax shelters.

For me, every trial is a rewarding experience. The most interesting part of my job is not the particular factual backdrop of the cases; it is the challenge of putting on a complex case before a jury. The highlight of my job is arguing a complex case to a jury. Unfortunately, in tax cases there are no tearful victims to acknowledge the justice you have brought into their lives; in fraud cases the victims often believe the lies the perpetrators tell them: that if the authorities hadn’t come along the defendants would have been able to pull off their scheme and make everyone rich and that the government is really the one who victimized them. As such, I rarely experience the kind of personal joy of acknowledgement by a private citizen that I have made their life better that my friends who prosecute violent crime enjoy. However, knowing that you have stopped someone from victimizing others or from cheating the system brings its won joy.

One final piece of advice: It is important to be flexible. If you are willing to go wherever fate takes you, you are more likely to find a job that will work than if you must have one specific job. Knock on as many doors as you can find, not just one. Along those lines, there are U.S. Attorneys offices in the regions of the country that are more than 100 miles from an ocean. These offices can do complex work just like the USAOs in NY, Boston, and LA. When you have federal law enforcement agencies behind you and a federal court issuing subpoenas, the only limitations on your ability to do important and complex work are your willingness to tackle difficult projects. Don’t think that all the good work is in the biggest cities.