On May 6, 2016, the last day to do so, I submitted my application for senior attorney status. As explained below, I viewed applying as a probable waste of time. Had the deadline eve, May 5th, been a typical Thursday night, I would have been visiting clients and reading their files pretty late into the night. In that case I would not have stayed up even later to prepare an application. The title “Senior Attorney” was not important to me. The increased salary was attractive but Dave and I were not in financial need. However, my case duties that night were unusually light. Fate gave me time to fill out an application. So I did. Fate is a tricky bitch.

My belief that applying for the promotion would be a long shot was based on a few interactions I had with then DPD director, Lorinda Youngcourt. I had recently spoken at a meeting of DPD’s advisory board against Youngcourt’s sudden and brutal dismissal of the long time managing attorney of one of the other divisions. Furthermore, as director of the Washington Death Penalty Assistance Center (DPAC) I had several conflicts with Youngcourt over her reluctance to follow the Washington supreme court’s rules regarding the appointment of qualified counsel in potential death penalty cases. Youngcourt did not take criticism well. Although I met and exceeded every criteria for senior status and, only a year earlier I led the defense in the most serious and high profile case in TDAD’s history, I thought there was slim chance Youngcourt would approve my promotion if it got to her desk. On the other hand, a slim chance was still a chance.

After submitting my application, I was persuaded by colleagues that Youngcourt probably would not block applicants selected by the committee. She was personally involved in drafting the selection protocol so intervening after the committee made selections might raise the hackles of other stakeholders, including our union. If Youngcourt stayed out of it, I expected I would be promoted. However, although Youngcourt wisely kept her distance from the naming of seniors, I was not promoted.

In retrospect, things would have been much easier had Youngcourt personally axed my promotion. No one would have been surprised had she vetoed my promotion. I had a history of irritating her. She had a history of dealing harshly with thorns in her side. Under the protocol she had the final say on senior promotions. Had she blocked my promotion, I would have been disappointed but not really surprised. That’s just the way autocracies work.

I was soon to get an emotional slap in the face that left me reeling like a concussed cartoon character.

For over forty years King County met it’s obligation to provide indigent criminal defendants with counsel by contracting with four independent non-profit agencies. In 2012 – 13, for reasons not relevant here, King County conscripted all of the agencies and their employees into a new King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) converting all 400 former private non-profit employees into county employees. The county replaced the four independent agencies with four similarly named divisions of DPD. Before it was absorbed by the county, I had been employed by “The Defender Association.” As of 2013 I was employed by “The Defender Association Division (TDAD)” of DPD. The other agencies became “Associated Counsel for the Accused Division,” (ACAD), “Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons Division,” (SCRAPD), and “Northwest Defenders Association Division,” (NDAD).

Once we became county employees our salaries were supposed to be brought into parity with much higher paid corresponding positions in the prosecutors’ office. In 2016 DPD decided to create thirty-five special “senior attorney” positions. Senior attorneys would receive significant pay raises. There were approximately 160 non-management attorneys employed by DPD so the senior promotions would benefit only twenty percent of DPD’s hod carrying lawyers.

An elaborate selection process was established requiring applications, review teams, interviews with co-workers and supervisors, interviews with applicants, and allowance of “confidential” comments from any DPD employee with or without an ax to grind. The process was initially intended, at least by our union, to avoid cronyism which most attorneys (and staff) believed had long infected promotions at all the non-profit agencies. Managing attorneys of the four divisions weren’t having it. They lobbied the administration to protect a treasured perk of their positions, patronage. The managers succeeded in maintaining the ability to promote their favorites in two ways, 1) by inserting a clause in the selection protocol allowing applicants’ original scores scores, awarded after the review teams’ exhaustive investigations, to be changed at the behest of managing attorneys, and 2) by allowing managers to veto any applicant without explanation.

Sixty-nine attorneys applied for the thirty-five senior positions. I was one of the thirty-four rejected applicants. Had the process been fair, even if the promotions were awarded by lot, the unselected would have been disappointed but accepting. After all, we were all criminal defense attorneys who had experience in doing our best but losing cases and moving on. However, this selection process was not fair, and people were hurt, very hurt.