In 2013, three years before the arrests at Habgut Elementary, when a bunch of kids were arrested and brought to juvenile detention for not stopping a fight, a guy named West Clark had just graduated law school. West 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

OxyContin. A hopeless love of this shit is how he puts it. With that,

came West's rap sheet, a DUI, some drug charges.

So considering this, he knew the chances of getting a job at a Tony

White'sue law firm, were pretty close to zero. But he needed a job. That's when some lawyers he meant

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 rung of the legal 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 be put on the list to take appointments.

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

Wes's first case was for a girl who was being held in detention on a misdemeanor called reckless burning. The crime Wes had never heard of. The girl was accused of setting a small

fire in a neighbor's barn. So police had picked her up the day before and taken her to

juvy, where she spent the night in a cell waiting for her hearing.

West went down to the detention center to meet with her.

I remember just like physically how small she was, like, kind of struck me, like, wow wow this is a really little kid you know the girl was 12

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