How to be a prosecutor
In order to be appointed as a prosecutor you must have a Swedish Bachelor of Laws degree and have undergone a Swedish court clerk merit rating. In addition, you must be a Swedish citizen.
The court clerk merit rating may have been obtained in a district court or a county court.
In addition to the formal merits, there are a number of personal qualities that have to be satisfied. A prosecutor should be analytical, logical and independent, and have a good capacity to co-operate. Prosecutors must also be able to reach their own conclusions and stand by them. They should also have a sound judgement and have a high degree of personal maturity. In order to find out whether or not an applicant satisfies these criteria, use is made of interviews, work psychology tests and reference taking.
Professional role
As a prosecutor, you are in contact with many different people – the victims of offences or the perpetrators of offences, journalists, lawyers, judges, tax auditors and other administrators from various authorities. It is important to be able to establish contact with people in different situations. And if necessary you must be able to make decisions that are unpleasant for other people.
Most prosecutors are concerned with a wide variety of criminal cases, but there are also those who are specialists in, for example, economic crime or drug-related crime.
As a prosecutor you can work on a duty system or be on emergency service duty, which means that you are on duty certain nights and weekends and have to be able to make decisions quickly on whether or not to make arrests or search premises. Higher rates are payable for duty service.