Almost every national CLE program I attend has something about voir dire. I remember one in particular — about a year after I passed the bar — where some hotshot lawyer from another state was regaling us with stories about how voir dire took two days for a medical malpractice case.

He described tactics — how to begin laying the case theme in voir dire, the ability to use voir dire as a preliminary opening statement and what questions were crucial for discovering those jurors who could not decide cases fairly. I worked on a few cases in other states, and the voir dire process was long and drawn out and seemed to require days of preparation.

Fast forward to my first experience with a Maryland-style voir dire. It’s best described as short. In some cases I’ve since been involved in, it can be done in less than an hour. Some of the longer ones have lasted about 3 hours.

The hardest part (although not that hard) is understanding the process of counting in order to make strikes as effective as possible. Other than that, there is little that a trained monkey can’t understand.

Here in Maryland, our judges typically ask all of the questions. The parties submit proposed voir dire questions before the trial. The judge will look them over, decide what he/she wants to do, and if you’re lucky, might ask for some oral argument on the more unusual questions proposed by counsel.

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I rooted myself at the dining room table and attempted to chip away at the next day’s 8:30 a.m criminal docket. The dockets in Rockville’s district court are always heavier than in Silver Spring’s. The types of crimes vary with the demographics.

Rockville covers the more affluent areas, like Potomac and Bethesda, where auto thefts, prescription fraud and financial crimes are more common. Silver Spring invites cases from Wheaton, Takoma Park and other areas bordering the District of Columbia; the majority of cases are drug possession, disorderly conduct, public drinking and the occasional shoplifting.

I immersed myself in docket preparation shortly after dinner. The first step was to create my “sticky” for each case scheduled on the docket, the art of summarizing an entire case file within the confines of a 4-by-6- inch Post-it note.

On the top left corner, I write the defendant’s name. In the top center, the date and location of the violation. To the right, the name of the attorney, if any. Also included is the list of the charges, the witnesses subpoenaed, the factual proffer, the defendant’s criminal history, the state’s offer and recommendation and a blank space for the disposition of the case when resolved in court.

The objective of the sticky is to have uniformity in case preparation so that any other ASA could pick up a file in court and try the case based on the information on the sticky. Once complete, it is meticulously placed (or stuck) on the left corner of the front of the case file.

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As young lawyers, we are often expected to push our comfort zone, which can mean taking on new matters to gain experience and advance in our profession. We all have our “firsts”– our first business transaction, our first trial, our first motions hearing and our first administrative proceeding, to name a few.

So, where, as young lawyers, do we draw the line between pushing our comfort zone to gain valuable experience versus adhering to our professional responsibilities to our clients to provide competent representation?

I was confronted with this issue recently. At 4:30 p.m., a colleague requested I cover a criminal matter the following morning. My professional experience is in civil litigation, and my gut reaction was to say no. The attorney assured me this was a simple proceeding and I was more than competent to handle it. He explained that, due to unforeseeable circumstances, I was the only one in our firm available to handle the matter.

Nonetheless, I could not shake that uncomfortable feeling I was not competent, given that I had very little experience in criminal matters. Moreover, I felt I had inadequate time to perform the necessary study to become competent. If I had a day to prepare, I would have felt more comfortable in my ability to competently represent the client. Although my ego protested, I spoke openly and honestly with my colleague about my discomfort and concerns.

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With the challenges of training behind me, I still felt no relief running dockets on my own. I had relied too heavily on the guidance of my trainer in fashioning plea offers.

There is no formula to it; rather, a plea offer is determined by a series of factors — the strength of the evidence, the credibility of witnesses, the injury to the victim and, of course, the draw of the judge that day. The last factor often controls.

Often retired judges from circuit court make their cameos in district court. Today, I drew a retired judge, who was known to be tough on DUIs. I remembered this judge well from my clerkship when I assisted him during a docket. He was polite and pleasant with parties, but his patience wore thin in the face of cowardice and injustice.

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Two weeks after I began in the state’s attorney’s office, the empty cubicle to my left became occupied by Pedro Shultz, a former law clerk with the judge I clerked for.

Pedro was a former courtroom clerk and decided to go to law school. When the judge asked him to come visit prior to the start of his clerkship, he came in wearing an untucked dress shirt, jeans, brown shoes and a beanie. I gave him the once-over and was unimpressed. The judge welcomed Pedro in.

“Hey, my man!”

“Hey, judge!”

Pedro had a cheeky smile. I couldn’t ignore the sloppy goatee. I was a believer that professional men should be clean-shaven. This guy would never cut it in this chambers.

The next day, I followed up with a phone call to Pedro to remind him to come observe court proceedings prior to the start of his clerkship. I called at 9:30 a.m. to see if he’d even be awake.

“Hi, this is Rosalyn from the judge’s chambers,” I said.

“Oh, hey,” he said.

As I suspected, he was still asleep. What a slacker.

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“You gotta grow a thick skin pretty fast in this line a work,” he said.

I turned around and there stood a police officer leaning on the door to the liaison’s office where my showdown with seersucker ensued. He stood 5’ 11″, had white hair and looked like a 55 year-old version of Guile from Street Fighter.

“I know. I’m getting that feeling,” I said. Being confrontational did not come naturally to me.

“Uh huh. So, you going out of town? That thing is bigger than you,” he chuckled as he pointed at my suitcase.

I was being mocked by a cop. Fantastic.

In my attempt to be overly-prepared for court, I wheeled around a suitcase with my criminal and traffic annotated codes along with my battle books with helpful case law.

Most female prosecutors used carry-on-sized luggage for their books. I topped it with a suitcase that was three times that size and something that I certainly wouldn’t be able to stow in the overhead compartment on an airplane.

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