With the boxes representing his career goals all checked, a former star trial prosecutor for the Chester County District Attorney is swapping chairs and taking on new challenges.

Attorney Mark Conte has decided to switch sides and join The Kelly Law Firm’s criminal defense team in West Chester.

“I felt that I had achieved all of those professional goals that I set out to achieve,” Conte said in a Daily Local News report.

And after more than 35 cases in 16 years, the next phase of his career delves deeper into the legal intricacies that first captivated him at Widener School of Law.

“When I was in law school, the interesting classes for me were always the class that dealt with criminal law,” he said. “Those are the courses I tended to gravitate towards. It seems like a natural progression to go into that type of law.”
But the real world of justice has looked much different than he first expected.

“It was a huge education,” Conte said of the early years of his career. “The things you do as prosecutor, and as a criminal defense lawyer, are not things that are taught in law school. The day-in and day-out activities. (In law school) you learn to write and do research and learn black-letter law. But the things you do on a daily basis as a prosecutor, the things you do on a daily basis as a criminal defense lawyer, are not things that are taught in law school. Those are things you learn on the job.”

Read much more of what Conte learned on the job and how he decided to make his move in the Daily Local News here.