- law.dawg
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Last Wednesday, the Las Vegas Sun published an article about Senate Bill 98,which limits publically paid doctors, lawyers and supervisors from unionizing. Contained in that article, were Clark County district attorney salary and benefit figures, apparently provided to the LV sun by Clark County managers.
According to that article, Clark County deputy district attorneys’ salary and benefits increased by 15 percent since 2009, and are now an average of $165,529 per year, while the Clark County public defenders’ salaries decreased by 1.6 percent over that same time period (no mention of what their salary and benefit numbers were). If these figures are correct, Clark County district attorneys would be among the highest paid county prosecutors in the country.
Clark County District Attorney David Roger is disputing these figures, so the county has hired an “independent auditor” to get to the bottom of them.
Lets perform our own independent audit. What do the PDs and DAs make here?
An "average" is frankly an unfair figure to look at– it should have been the median not the mean. The top third of the DA's office are old timers with 15+ years who were hired under longevity. They are going to tip the scales and present an inaccurate picture of what a non-longevity DA makes who has been there less than 10 years (which is most Deputy DA's). If after looking at the median you still think the average deputy DA is paid too much, that's fine, but the true number should at least fairly be statistically representative.
They start at about $65k. That's not really much as an attorney. Sure, you get raises every 6 months but it's not like we are raking in the dough. It's the old timers who topped out BEFORE the readjusted everything. It's not longer possible to ever make as much money as those DAs were making. They skew the scales when in reality I think the highest you can go now is $130k. And frankly, I don't think that people should get their panties in a bunch over that amount of money. That's less than any private practice attorney would make about 15 years of practicing.
DAs currently top out at $154,377, without longevity or other sell backs allowed by contract. Not a bad gig, when the benefits (paid retirement!) and hours are added into consideration.
the PDs now start at around 65k – and yes the article is correct, the PDs raises have been frozen while the DAs continually get their raises. The DAs complain about not having enough people/the County not allowing them to staff empty positions…then stop taking raises!
DAs who were more recently hired do not top out at $154,377. Also, many of the DAs stick around and spend their entire career there whereas most PDs eventually leave to go into private practice. So when comparing offices, obviously the DAs average salary is going to be higher than the average PD because the PDs have more new people receiving starting salaires whereas the DAs office has more people who have been working there longer and are naturally making more. I have no statistics to back this up, but it just logically makes sense to me. If one wants to be a prosecutor, there is no private pracrice opion whereas if one wants to be a defense attorney, there are more options beyond the PDs office.
I love the ignorant "hours" arguement. You clearly don't work at the DAs office because if you did, you would see that most deputies and even the law clerks work far more than 40 hours a week.