Legal Firms Answer Student Questionnaire

More than 100 law firms which recruit at Harvard have answered detailed questions about their legal practices in a questionnaire endorsed by 316 Harvard law students.

Law students will use these replies to question the law firms recruiters during their interviews, said Mark I. Green, a third year law student and one of the questionnaire's authors.

The questionnaire-which Green and two other law students wrote with Ralph Nader-asks the law firms to give detailed descriptions of a wide variety of legal practices. These include their minority hiring practices. their legal aid to indigents, and a list of their major clients.

"Although most of the answers to the questionnaire were three to seven pages of polite evasions," Green said, "they still give students more information than they had before and enough so that they canask the recruiters much more specific questions about their firms."

The three law students sent questionnaires to 450 law firms in October, after obtaining the 316 signatures of endorsement. Although less than one-quarter of the firms responded. Green said that 100 replies were more than he had expected.

Michael Hares, a third year law student, Andrea R. Hitchhikes, a second year law student. and Green wrote the questionnaire this summer when they were investigating prominent Washington law firms under the direction of Ralph Nader.