“Law and Order” and crime shows like it may shine a glamorous light on the work of the prosecutor’s office, but Shlomo Singer said he knows better. Long hours toiling for paltry pay are his reality.
Still, the 27-year-old Essex County assistant prosecutor can live with that because he loves what he does, and believes he’s providing a public service at “one of the best jobs anyone can have,” he said.
N.J. Gov. Chris Christie talks with Monsignor Robert Sheeran during the at the Seton Hall School of Law class of 2010 commencement ceremony, held at the Prudential Center on May 28 in Newark.So when Singer learned his alma mater, Seton Hall Law School, doesn’t include prosecutors in its public interest loan repayment program for graduates, he had to object. The program only includes grads who join the public defender’s office and nonprofit agencies.
“At the end of the day, we’re providing just as great a public service as public defenders,” said Singer, who earns $47,000 a year and is married with two young children. In Essex County, “we happen to be the lowest paid prosecutors in the state. We’re the busiest and lowest paid.”
In March, Singer, with colleague and fellow Seton Hall Law alum Sarah Jolly, created a website and Facebook page to gather support for the cause. And in late April, the New Jersey State Bar Association voted to send a letter to Seton Hall encouraging the school to provide loan forgiveness for graduates who work in prosecutor’s offices or the Attorney General’s Office.
Seton Hall officials agreed that assistant prosecutors provide a public service and said it was never the school’s intention to exclude anyone. But the loan repayment program filled a specific need, said Claudia St. Romain, an associate dean at the law school.
“One of our goals was to remove some of the financial disincentives to our students who might have been not interested in going into some areas because of pay,” St. Romain said. “It was not our experience that the prosecutor’s office was one that students might have hesitated before entering.”
Begun in 2002, the loan repayment program served as an incentive for graduates entering government jobs that provide constitutionally mandated services for the under served, St. Romain said. The program, for lawyers who earn $60,000 a year or less, also includes nonprofits offering similar work.
Seton Hall’s six-year low-interest loans range between $2,000 and $10,000 a year per person, but average about $5,700. If a graduate remains at the job for at least six years, the loan is forgiven. If he or she leaves that job early, the balance must be paid. Since the program began, no one has left early, St. Romain said.
Jolly, who is 31 and a single mother, said the loan money would be a significant boost. Without it, she may have to reevaluate her career choice. “It’s almost impossible to stay here,” she said. “It strikes me as totally unfair that public defenders get it and we don’t.”
Roughly 100 law schools nationwide have similar public service loan forgiveness programs, though about 20 percent don’t include prosecutors, according to the website equaljusticeworks.org.
And while Rutgers law school includes prosecutors in its loan repayment program, part of the money comes from student fees. Seton Hall’s program is funded exclusively through private donations, St. Romain said.
Thomas Cannavo, the vice president of the Assistant Prosecutors Association of New Jersey, said he supports the effort by the two attorneys. “We encourage people with experience to stay” in the prosecutor’s office, he said. “It’s a public safety issue.”
Essex County Acting Prosecutor Robert Laurino has also lent his support, which comes at a time when his office is losing experienced prosecutors to retirement, and cannot hire new ones. The median salary for Essex County assistant prosecutors hovers at $73,000, which ranks near the bottom half among prosecutor’s offices in New Jersey, and there is an office-wide wage freeze.
“If people are being deterred from becoming assistant prosecutors because they feel they aren’t being fairly compensated, that’s an enormous concern,” St. Romain said. Still, she said, “we hear our alums and we value them. We’re trying to figure out a resolution within the numbers and the dollars.”
Until that happens, Singer said he won’t give up. “There was a judge I was in front of once, when I was in law school. She told me, if you want to be an advocate, you can’t take no for an answer.”
Article originally appeared in The Star Ledger
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