Outgoing Cook County State’s Attorney Dick Devine welcomed his final class of incoming Assistant State’s Attorneys yesterday.
Devine says it was with some melancholy that he addressed the young lawyers. Every year the office gives recent hires a three day training on everything from ethics to forensic sciences to more mundane topics like bureaucratic organization and details of their new health plan. Devine warned the room full of twenty-something’s that the job isn’t easy.
DEVINE: You will have losses and you will have these frustrations and you will at some times wonder why you’re doing what you do.
But he says the job is important because the young lawyers are instruments of justice.
DEVINE: I leave this office with great pride in what we have done and I hope and I believe that in the years to come, I will have even greater pride in what you do. God Bless you.
Devine leaves office at the end of this month. Anita Alvarez takes over as State’s Attorney December 1.