DALTON, Ga. — Natalie Glaser knew early on that she wanted to work in public service. But she says it wasn’t until she was working on her master’s of public administration at the University of Georgia that she began to focus on becoming a lawyer.

“Though my course work, I realized that I wanted to learn more about things that could help me affect change,” she said. “That’s what made me think I wanted to go into law.”

Glaser was selected by a panel of state and local legal officials to be the public defender for the Conasauga Judicial Circuit, which includes Whitfield and Murray counties, in January after Mike McCarthy retired from the position.

“I’m actually pleasantly surprised how well things are going,” she said. “Mike did a really good job. We’ve got a great infrastructure here. We have a lot of really qualified attorneys and administrators and an investigator. They are talented and excited about their jobs, so it was a really easy situation to walk into.”

A native of Athens, Glaser earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the University of Georgia, then went to law school at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio.

“Public defense work wasn’t something I’d even thought about before, but I had a lot of good teachers at law school who emphasized how important public defenders are. and after I graduated, I did an internship at the public defender’s office in Athens. They have a clinic there that was really inspirational,” she said.

After completing her internship, Glaser worked at the Georgia Public Defender Council in Atlanta, which represents public defenders in the state, before becoming an assistant public defender in Dublin six years ago.

“That office was more rural (than the Conasauga circuit). It had a little higher caseload per attorney,” she said. “But there are some things that are similar. We have problems all over the state with meth, with drugs. We have problems across the state with child molestation.”

Glaser oversees an annual budget of $709,600, five administrative staff and one investigator. The office has nine attorneys, but she is currently looking to hire three more.

“The public defender’s office is more akin to the district attorney’s office or the sheriff’s office,” she said. “We all work with the same sort of volume. Whereas a private attorney might work with one or two clients at a time, our office works with most of the criminal docket. About 90 percent of the cases come through our office. We have to make sure they are treated fairly.”

The public defender’s office is in Whitfield County Administrative Building 2. But the building, parts of which date back to the 1940s, isn’t handicapped accessible and has plumbing problems. The public defender’s office recently leased the building that formerly housed Ed Staten CPA on Waugh Street across from Dalton City Hall and will move into that this summer.