Finding a Satisfying Litigation Practice in State Administrative Tribunals

• Author: Dinita L. James
• Pages: 25-28

Published in Litigation, Volume 48, Number 2, Winter 2022. © 2022 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not

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Finding a Satisfying Litigation Practice in

State Administrative

Tribunals

DINITA L. JAMES

The author is an assistant attorney general for the State of Arizona and editor in chief of Litigation.

After 30 years of laboring in the commercial litigation vineyard,

I found myself at a personal pivot point. Family responsibilities

had taken me to my rural North Carolina hometown for eight

months. I got an unwitting preview of the later pandemic prac-

tice, as I remotely moved my Arizona caseload along. I turned

down new matters and attended to the emotionally engrossing

work I was there to do.

When I returned to Arizona, I faced afresh the question of

what to do with my professional life. I had parted company with

Big Law several years earlier, when I closed a national firm’s

Phoenix outpost for a second time. I had no interest in returning

to law firm life. The prospect of undertaking all the work neces-

sary to ramp up my solo practice was daunting. I was still a few

years away from being able to retire comfortably.

I had never before considered litigating for the government.

To me, that prospect equated to being a prosecutor or public de-

fender, and I remained firm in my lifelong conviction that I did

not want anyone’s liberty interest at stake in the cases I handled.

I searched the internet for government legal jobs for which my

litigator’s skills might suit me and that might be a tolerable way

to spend my last years of practice.

One posting from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in-

trigued me. It was not an entry-level job. The salary range ex-

tended into six figures. The position involved representing state

agencies in administrative hearings and other legal proceedings.

It was a litigation job. The interest was mutual. I have been

an assistant attorney general for just a couple of years now. It

has been an eye-opening experience. Two big takeaways capture

most of my observations and insights.

Wielding Trial Skills on Topics That Matter

First, a wealth of litigation unfolds beyond the federal and state

courtrooms, where, for most of my legal career, I directed all

of my energies but spent just a tiny fraction of my actual time.

Second, there are unmet needs for legal services in administra-

tive cases and, thus, terrific opportunities for others, especially

young lawyers starting out, to build a satisfying private litiga-

tion practice.

The opportunities are everywhere. Each state has a multi-

tude of administrative tribunals in which consequential, and

sometimes crucial, matters are litigated. In every state, there is

a host of licensing and other types of regulatory and benefit ac-

tions that go to hearing before state administrative tribunals. The

constitutional command for procedural due process requires that

states administering federal welfare benefit programs must give

“timely and adequate notice detailing the reasons for a proposed

termination” and must give the benefit recipient “an effective