Court of Appeal : Careers: Lawyer Ariel Steele is leaving her job at a prestigious L.A. firm. She’ll have to adjust to the rigors of life on the tropical islands of Palau where, even as attorney general, she can dress casual.

There really wasn’t much of an argument as lawyer Ariel Steele sat in her 43rd-floor office overlooking downtown Los Angeles and weighed the merits of the case before her.

Would she spend 1996 stranded among piles of briefs and transcripts, battered by a sea of ink and angst? Or would the year be spent on a shimmering, palm-studded island awash in an azure tropical ocean?

Steele’s verdict was rendered faster than O.J. Simpson’s.

“I’m leaving Friday for Palau,” said the 26-year-old attorney who until now has worked at the prestigious Latham & Watkins law firm.

“They said don’t bring heels or pantyhose” or her 15 smartly tailored suits. “I’m leaving them all. The best part of the deal is not having to wear them anymore.”

Nobody dresses up in the tiny Pacific island nation where Steele starts work next week as assistant attorney general.

The job will involve enforcement of environmental laws and prosecution of criminal and civil cases for the 16,000 people who live on Palau’s eight inhabitable islands. Although it’s a place where everybody knows everybody--or is related to them--there was no nepotism at work for Steele. In fact, she had never even heard of the Republic of Palau until a friend mentioned seeing a newspaper ad for the job one day at lunch.

On a whim, Steele faxed her application. “It sounded like a blast,” she said.

She was excited when the job was offered a few weeks later.

“I ran over to the library to see where Palau is on the map,” she said.

It turns out the place is 800 miles south of Guam and about 300 miles east of the Philippines. It consists of about 200 spits of land that total roughly 25 square miles. It became an independent country just 14 months ago.

Steele, who lives in Venice, says she was drawn to the job by its guaranteed 40-hour-per-week schedule and by its outdoorsy description. At Latham & Watkins she often works twice that long, leaving little time for her hobbies: backpacking and mountain climbing.

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That means there are both personal and professional adjustments ahead, she acknowledged. For one thing, the island’s highest peak is an 800-foot mound. “They call it Nosebleed Ridge,” she said. “At that height I doubt it.”

For another, there are no movie theaters and no alternative rock music radio stations. TV consists of week-old tapes of San Francisco broadcasts that are flown in.

And her new work environment will be a far cry from the high-tech, marble-and-steel motif of her office tower.

“Some of my co-workers think that after a couple of weeks I’ll miss having people wait on me and going to places like the Ritz-Carlton. And they don’t have the Internet down there, which bums me out.”

She is taking a two-thirds cut in pay. And instead of defending big companies in contract disputes as she does now, Steele will be prosecuting suspects like the Palauan accused of smuggling a one-ton clam from the island’s waters.

“I don’t know where you’d put something that large to smuggle it, to tell you the truth. I don’t even know if they have juries down there. It’s going to be interesting.”

Ari Nathan, Palau’s acting attorney general, predicted Wednesday that Steele will do fine. Since “everyone’s basically related” in the islands, judges, not juries, decide guilt or innocence, said Nathan--a 34-year-old who himself worked at a Century City law firm before relocating to the islands five years ago. Officials of Latham & Watkins say they plan to keep Steele’s job open for a year in case she wants to return.

“I’m probably not as adventurous as she is. I think that would be a tough environment for a lot of people,” said her boss, lawyer Russ Sauer.

Said co-worker John Gomez: “I think Ariel will look good in a grass skirt.” The adjustment problems may come later, Gomez suggested.

“I think the cultural shock will come when she comes back here. That will probably be the real eye-opener for her.”

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South Seas Lawyering

A downtown lawyer is leaving Friday for the tiny South Pacific island nation of Palau, where she will work as assistant attorney general. About 16,000 people live on Palau’s eight inhabited islands.