A district attorney (DA) is the head of a local prosecutor's office — elected or, in some jurisdictions, appointed — and the government's lawyer in criminal cases in the area the office serves.
The job splits in two: the DA sets the office's policy and runs it, while the assistant district attorneys (ADAs) it employs are the hired line prosecutors who carry the caseload.
This page separates the two roles, the titles the job goes by, and how to get hired as an ADA.
DA vs assistant district attorney
The district attorney is the office's head; an assistant district attorney is a lawyer the office employs.
The DA's seat is an elected one — or, depending on the jurisdiction, an appointed one — and whoever holds it sets the office's policy and answers for its decisions.
ADAs are the hired staff: line prosecutors who work the office's cases under the DA's direction.
"Prosecutor" is the umbrella term for all of it — the head, the line lawyers, and the same job under any other title.
If you're comparing the work across levels of government, the prosecutor role guide covers it; this page stays on the district attorney's office.
| District attorney | Assistant district attorney | |
|---|---|---|
| Seat | Head of the office | Line prosecutor on staff |
| How the seat is filled | Election — or appointment, depending on the jurisdiction | Hired by the office |
| Focus | Office policy, supervision, public accountability | The office's caseload: screening, negotiation, trial |
The split matters for a job search because the two posts have different doors.
The search itself runs on the hired side of the office: you build a prosecution career as an ADA, and running for the top seat is a separate, later decision.
Different titles by state
The job changes name as you cross state lines.
Alongside district attorney, the head of a local prosecution office turns up in postings and on office websites under titles such as state's attorney and county attorney, and the line lawyers' titles follow the office's name.
The title a vacancy carries is local: the same career posts under different office names from one jurisdiction to the next, so the wording on a posting — and the title in the email signature — changes with it.
This page won't quote office counts or a national org chart: the research behind it did not verify prosecutor office structures, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics is the primary source for that data.
What follows for a search is simpler — run your queries under every variant of the title, because the office you want may never use "district attorney" in its name, and a search on the generic term alone can miss it.
Elected DA responsibilities
The DA's responsibilities sit at two levels.
Inside the office, the head sets prosecutorial priorities and office policy, supervises the ADAs and the office's support staff, and answers for the administration and budget that keep cases moving.
Outside it, the DA is the office's public face — the official who answers publicly for charging policy, and the one other agencies and the public deal with on prosecution decisions.
Where the seat is elected, the election changes the job.
The DA campaigns on prosecutorial priorities and holds the seat by winning it, so the role mixes law and politics in a way a hired post does not.
For an ADA, that accountability is the environment you practice in: the head's policy shapes which cases get charged, what gets negotiated and how trial time is spent.
ADA day-to-day work
An ADA's caseload is the prosecutor's caseload — screening new cases from law enforcement, deciding what to charge, negotiating with defense counsel, handling hearings and trying the cases that don't resolve.
The prosecutor guide walks through that day to day; what's distinct here is the seat it's done from.
Two things shape how the work feels from an ADA's desk.
The first is the office's own policy: the elected or appointed head sets the priorities, so an ADA exercises charging and plea judgment inside the policy the DA has set.
The second is division of labor: work can be split among an office's lawyers — by court, by case type, by unit — so two ADAs in the same building can be doing very different jobs.
The office's own postings are the honest guide to how a particular seat divides.
How to get hired as an ADA
ADAs are hired, so the campaign is a job application rather than an election one.
The postings do the steering: they state what each office wants, how it divides the work and under which title.
- Search every title variant — district attorney, assistant district attorney, state's attorney, county attorney — plus the assistant forms of each.
- Read several postings from the same office to see how it splits work among its lawyers.
- Weight your resume toward courtroom and case-preparation experience.
- Prepare for hypothetical questions about charging and plea decisions — they sit at the center of the job's judgment calls.
Requirements are set locally
Where to find prosecutor jobs
Prosecutor offices are public-sector employers, and they post their own openings — under each jurisdiction's own title.
Browsing by role rather than by one office's name is the way to see openings across every title variant.
On LawFirmHires you can browse prosecutor jobs in one place, with openings as employers post them.
This page is career information, not legal advice. Confirm hiring and licensing requirements with the hiring office and the bar admission authority in your state.