Justice Consuelo Marie Callahan, Circuit Judge, United States Courts of Appeal [40:29-45:30]

is now but I was really afraid that I was not going to be able to find a job because there were not very many women practicing at that time and certainly not in the private sector I didn't have any lawyers in my family as I said I didn't so I didn't have any contact to to fall into and so I actually didn't I really hadn't even interviewed for any jobs people didn't do it not they do now were by the end of their second year they know where they're going to be for the rest of their lives most people interviewed for jobs either their last year or after they graduated from law school and so I really didn't know what I was going to be doing I had done an internship with the Public Defender's office after my second year and I had worked there my third year in law school as well 20 hours a week and so I thought I'd like to be a public defender or maybe a district attorney and that had interest for me and but I didn't I really didn't know what I would be doing and a friend of mine from law school by chance called and told me that the city attorney in Stockton was wanted to hire a woman and the city attorney was a friend of his and the city attorney's wife I believe had gone to Stanford and so they liked that about me and I was a woman and could I get right down there and I had just taken the bar I had just finished it the week before and I went and he hired me and when can you start I said well right now and I basically went to work right away so that I would say it wasn't a terribly thoughtful process it was a question of opportunity presenting itself at a time when I had student loans I didn't have a job and I thought well we need to get the show on the road and I actually was felt that there was reasons I would want to be in Stockton and so that seemed good but I pretty much knew I wasn't gonna stay at that job it I thought this will put me in Stockton I can get my bar results I can look around and see what else is there and give me an opportunity to see what else is there and it wasn't that long after I passed the bar that I actually was offered a job by the district attorney's office in the public defender's office and the DA offered me a job the day before the public defender and I jumped right on it and even though I think I wanted to be a public defender a little bit more and the rest was sort of history so the DA got you by a day that's well they did and there was there was a little other component in that that I realized that public defenders had to lose a lot more in their cases I had already focused on that and I had recognized that that was not one of my strengths and that I was much happier winning and that I decided that since the DA that was a burden of hand as it were but also that I knew that I would not have to lose cases nearly as often and it's you have to define your success differently as a public defender and I already knew that and and I realized that sometimes I just had a hard time losing things even when I knew that that was the right result and that I had done a good job for a client but I just personally didn't get right over it and I so that was part of the deciding factor I hate to say well when you went to the District Attorney's Office in San Joaquin County did you see that as a career you could see yourself as a career prosecutor I don't think I I don't think I've ever seen myself anywhere for the rest of my life and and I'm not sure that I don't have that picture of myself right now it's hard for me to always say I'm not my last job because I always want to think that there's something out there that's gonna be really interesting that's ahead so I don't think I did see it I don't think I saw that far ahead I saw it as something I knew I wanted to try cases I felt that it presented a good combination of being able to do public service helping people being getting up in front of people working on my advocacy skills but I don't think I saw it as the end but I'm I'm not sure well let me see you went you spent ten years there ten and a half years and tell me about the kind of cases you handled I know you finished up as a supervising deputy district attorney but tell me about those years and those cases and what you learned about yourself well my first jury trial was two weeks after I started and in those days people did not we were not nearly practically as ready as the young lawyers are now when they go into we didn't we didn't have