My name is Jimmy Donlon, and I’m a senior at the University of Arkansas majoring in marketing and management, with minors in communication, physics, and nonprofit studies.

This summer I was an intern at the Washington County Office of the Public Defender. One of the rights guaranteed to all Americans is the right to an attorney when accused of a crime. The public defender is a near-free government lawyer assigned to represent anyone who can’t afford a private attorney.

I got pretty familiar with the rights of the accused in the state of Arkansas because one of my main responsibilities was to read them to clients before they were formally arraigned in court. Before being assigned a public defender, a client has to submit extensive paperwork to verify that the whole process is above the table and within the law. In Washington County, that paperwork is handled largely by clerks and interns, employees who are not attorneys. We would review the clients’ financial situations to prove that they qualified for a free lawyer, then we would read the rights, charges, and court dates to clients, having them sign to affirm that they had been notified.

The other half of my job was more variable, and it involved doing small projects for the attorneys that didn’t require extensive legal knowledge. Sometimes I would create transcripts of witness statements, sometimes I would look through police records for inconsistencies, and sometimes I would contact clients to remind them of various appointments. That changed every day based on what the attorneys needed.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend even a few months in the office because it exposed me to what criminal law looks like. Contemporary media glorifies the drama of court, but misrepresents the fact that very few cases make it that far in the legal process. The prosecutor’s office (the antagonist of the defender’s office) plays with home field advantage. Every case is brought first to the police and then to the prosecutor, who will only pursue allegations that seem like easy wins. If the prosecutor thought that the state probably wouldn’t win a case, then he wouldn’t even bring charges against the would-be defendant. The defender only represents people who have been charged by the prosecutor, and in most of those cases, the defendant is undeniably guilty by some piece of evidence (often self-admission). Rather than go to trial and risk the will of the judge, the defender’s job is to try to negotiate a reduced time plea deal with the prosecutor and to convince the defendant to accept it. Very few cases make it all the way to trial, and the defender’s office wins very few of those cases.

It was enlightening to see the whole spectrum of public defense, because that’s the career that I see myself headed towards. I think that spending the summer surrounded by attorneys and law students was a great window into how professionals conduct themselves and what the life of a defender is like. I plan on beginning law school in the fall semester of 2022.