From ABC7News:

Former prosecutor Pat Collins beginning new career
By Paul Meincke
April 6, 2007 - Patrick Collins was the lead prosecutor in the government's Operation Safe Road Probe and at the trial of former Governor George Ryan. Collins has left the US attorney's office for a new challenge. He sat down with ABC7's Paul Meincke and offered some candid thoughts on his years spent fighting public corruption.

There were some who figured that Patrick Collins would become a career prosecutor given his passion, thoroughness and stern-faced demeanor. Collins says that while he admires those who choose that path he's not sure it's in his bones. And so, he has left 219 South Dearborn for a new career just across the street.
Patrick Collins is preparing a new office and a new direction. After 12 years in the US attorney's office, eight of them following the trail of Operation Safe Road, the prosecutor is leaving behind a grind that he says can take an emotional toll.

"Burnout's too strong a word. I don't want to sound like Dick Vermeil or something, but there is definitely a part of me that said I've done one too many of these kinds of cases, and it was time for a fresh and different kind of opportunity," said Patrick Collins, former assistant US attorney.

The new opportunity comes at the law firm of Perkins Coie which is right across the street from the federal building. Collins' job will be to set up a corporate internal investigations practice. In a post-Enron world, it's a mission that a growing number of companies are pursuing. It will involve unearthing corruption outside the public spotlight.

"It's gonna be in some respects refreshing not to have the weight of the world in some of these criminal persecutions on my shoulders, and to do something that is very important for companies or individuals, and not where an individual's liberty is at stake," Collins said.

That is not to say that Collins won't miss what he did in the courtrooms across the street. What began with a tragic accident, and then a low-level corruption probe, eventually climbed the ladder and the years to a governor -- against a commonly held notion that some level of public corruption in Chicago is the norm.

"I'd like to think that a lot of the work we did in the eight years I did corruption work gave lie to the premise that corruption is tax free, that corruption doesn't have cost. Tragically, I do think the Willises -- to many people -- people finally get it, that there can be something really terrible about corruption," Collins said.

Private citizen Collins can now speak more freely than prosecutor Collins, and he is incensed that his friend US attorney Pat Fitzgerald could somehow be ranked by his higher-ups as mediocre.

"It bothers me to no end that a 35-year-old guy can evaluate Pat Fitzgerald and call him mediocre when he doesn't know the first thing about being a public servant," said Collins. "And when the attorney general came to tow last week and was sitting next to Pat, had every opportunity to put his arm around Pat and say, this is one of the best guys I got-- he said nothing."

That anger and frustration over politics in the Department of Justice is shared by other prosecutors. Collins is now free to express it. Part of his new mission at Perkins Coie will be to set up much of the firm's pro-bono work, which may center around juvenile court matters, though that remains a work in progress -- as does a career.