In 2013, three years before the arrest at Hobbit Elementary, when a bunch of kids were arrested

and brought to juvenile detention for not stopping a fight, a guy named Wes Clark could

just graduate at law school.

Wes was 25 years old, smart, ambitious, but he was also just coming out of a pretty wild

past.

On and off since he was a teenager, he'd been addicted to oxy-contin.

A hopeless love of this shit is how he puts it.

But with that, came Wes's rap sheet, a DUI, some drug charges.

So considering this, he knew the chances of getting a job at a Tony White sheet law firm

were pretty close to zero, but he needed a job.

That's when some lawyers he met in recovery circles gave him a tip.

There's always work in juvenile court.

They were like, hey, this is a place you can go and at least start out and learn the ropes

because there was a need for lawyers to do that.

Court appointed juvenile cases don't pay well, and lawyers have told me that juvenile court

lacks the prestige of adult criminal court.

One lawyer harshly described it as the bottom run of illegal practice, but for Wes, you

know, it was something to do, which was much better than nothing to do.

At the time, Wes was living in Rutherford County, Tennessee.

And so I just went down to the juvenile court and observed a couple of days and then asked

to, you know, be put on the list to take appointments.

And it was in January of 2014 that I got my first juvenile court appointment.

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