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Reams persuaded the county to raise the starting salary for assistant county attorneys from $31,000 to $45,000, which slowed the turnover rate and raised the caliber of the prosecution staff. He says, “Our challenge is to create a career track so that we can keep the people we train.” He started filling his vacancies with what he calls “a different kind of lawyer, who was willing to go to trial, work hard, liked police departments and wanted a good career.” In his first year, Reams replaced 50 percent of his attorneys and by the end of his first two-year term he had replaced almost 100 percent. Today Reams’s office has a record of success that is respected by the police, the courts and certainly by the voters. Since he took over the office, the caseload has doubled and the number of indictments processed has increased from 1,250 to approximately 2,500 in 2004. As he explains, “With only a two-year term, you have to produce results.” Currently a state director of NDAA, Reams heads an office of 14 attorneys who prosecute felonies and “about three-and-a-half lawyers” who serve as counsel in three district courts in Rockingham County. He has oversight responsibility for the police departments in 37 towns, ranging from a small department that doesn’t have 24-hour coverage to a department with 80 sworn officers. His Rockingham County jurisdiction, which he describes as “wealthy and rural, but moving toward suburban,” currently has a population of 280,000—approximately 25 percent of the state’s population. It is one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation. With 18 miles of the Atlantic Ocean as its eastern border and situated less than an hour’s drive from downtown Boston, it’s extremely popular not only with vacationers and people who want to live there, but also with businesses that want to locate there. The former Pease Air Force Base, which was closed 16 years ago, has been converted into a large commercial/industrial park that has attracted a number of high-tech firms. Because of his responsibility for overseeing 37 police departments as well as his own staff, Jim Reams spends about 85 percent of his time in administration and supervision and about 15 percent working cases. “It’s hard to be liaison for 37 different police departments of varying sizes,” he says. “I’m on the road constantly and spend a lot of time with the police chiefs, who have been very helpful. Once they saw a positive change in the office, they’ve all supported us very well. I’m asking for raises for our lawyers in this year’s budget and I can call the police chiefs from around the county and they’ll come and testify on behalf of the lawyers.” Reams believes that enactment of federal tuition reimbursement legislation would be “a huge benefit” for offices like his. He says, “People who leave here always leave for financial reasons. We cannot compete with the private sector, but if we had tuition reimbursement, we would—at worst—slow the rate at which people left and would give us more bang for our training buck. Tuition reimbursement, plus what NDAA’s National Advocacy Center and APRI offer, would be a tremendous help in retaining attorneys.” Reams, 57, and his wife Janis have two children: a son, Jackson, a third-year law student at Boston University, who spent the summer of 2003 as a law clerk with APRI’s White Collar Crime program; and a daughter, Ashley, who will graduate in June from Keene State College in New Hampshire. When he has time, he likes to snowboard in the winter and sail in the summer. Why does Jim Reams, who spent 25 years in private practice, like being a prosecutor? “I really enjoy serving a cause other than the almighty dollar,” he says. “The measurement I use in this office for myself and for the prosecutors is: Are we serving justice? That is a much more uplifting and ultimately more rewarding goal than: How much money did you make last year?” He added: “When lawyers leave this office to go into private practice at litigation firms, they almost have tears in their eyes, knowing that they’re giving up probably the best job they’ll ever have. I talk to them later, because I keep in touch with them all, and they all look back fondly on the days when they were doing something more important than making money.” |
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