I also started doing Federal CJA appointments in 2006 and it took about five years to really begin to learn what I was doing in federal court, which is normal for most lawyers. The Sentence Guidelines are a penal-mathematical formula that every attorney must try to master and none completely do so due to the level of discretion, change and ambiguity involved. But, one learns early on that the name of the game more often than not in Federal court is cooperating with the federal government and your guidelines and treatment are usually better. There is even a third or half-off sentence reduction for substantially assisting the federal government in prosecuting other people. Especially in the Eastern District of Texas, things normally tend to get worse with a jury trial in Federal Court unless you have a really good case for a not guilty verdict. Some do, and we do see not guilty verdicts and dismissals.
I did well enough on federal appointments that I started getting referrals to help retained federal clients. Sherman is a great federal crossroads as the smallest town in Texas with a federal courthouse but the second busiest court for extraditions from Latin America, normally regarding drug conspiracies or money laundering. My most famous client was known as the Queen of Diamonds in Colombia, and was a very interesting nationwide jewelry robbery conspiracy allegation. I worked very hard on learning Spanish, and am a low intermediate speaker. It is a very important skill to learn both to understand the evidence and quality of translations better and to truly compete for extradition cases.