Bucking the Corporate Trend?

A third-year student at Harvard Law School says she has an obligation to take the talent that God has given her to serve the poor. But because of the financial security offered by a job in the private sector, she says she feels a lot of pressure to join the corporate world.

She is not alone with this dilemma.

Many students expecting to graduate from the Law School next spring hope to follow their ideals of ethical responsibility and public service, but the very real gaps in salary, stability and availability between public and private sector positions make such a decision extremely difficult.

Despite the efforts of the Law School to open up as broad as possible a job spectrum to their graduates, students with huge loans to repay and much insecurity about their future stability find lucrative law firm positions tempting, and, in many cases, irresistible.

June Thompson, the director of placement at the Law School, says that of 513 members of the Class of '84, 14 were involved in public interest and legal services, 25 were working for federal, state or local government, 110 were doing judicial clerkships and 353 were working for law firms or corporations. Statistics for the class of 1985 were not available, she says.

Statistics show that the problem is similar, if not worse, at other Law Schools. Says Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of law, "The situation is somewhat better at Harvard. Our students have slightly more options open to them."

Melanie R. Kersey, the adminstrator of the National Association for Law Placement in Washington D.C., compared the national figures for the Class of '74 and the Class of '83. Over the nine years the percentage of graduates in public-interest fields dropped from 5.3 to 3.1, those in government dropped from 16.2 to 11.5 and those in private practice, business and industry rose from 61.4 to 71.2 percent, she says.

Tim S. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of the National Law Journal in New York City, says the trend is a serious problem. "I believe law schools should put more emphasis on training law students for the public sector. Lawyers should remember it's their duty to make the legal profession as accessible as possible to all members of society and not just to the rich. More emphasis should be placed on law as a responsible profession than as a business."

"The major problem is that students don't think they have a choice," says Dershowitz. "Many think realistically available. Thus, the best and the brightest end up serving those elite who need them least. They end up spending far too much time serving the needs of the very wealthy, and don't do enough on behalf of those people who are traditionally under-represented in our society."

According to Thompson, the major factor is the increasing gap in salaries. She says that graduates taking private sector jobs earn starting salaries of as much as $75,000 a year, while those in public service jobs start with as little as $14,000 to $20,000.

Dershowitz agrees, "Many students finish here with enormous debts. As a result, they feel the need to go where the big bucks are right away. Often, that critical gap between the salaries is just that amount the student owes."

Tactics

Law School administrators and students are using a number of tactics to draw students away from high-paying private sector jobs, but they do not appear to have succeeded in creating a large-scale shift to the public sector.

Renda G. Johnson, the Law School's director of financial aid, says her office is making an effort to relieve the financial burden of loan repayments for graduates who choose public service or other lowpaying careers.

Over the last seven years, the office has offered an option known as the a Low Income Protection Plan, under which graduates are provided with interest-free loans or "forgiveness," to help them live with heavy Law School debts, she says. The Law School will "forgive," or repay, the difference between the loan repayments due and the percentage of income that the graduate is required to pay, she says.

According to Johnson, participation in the program has at least quadrupled in the last two-and-a-half years. "We have been able to alleviate some of the fears of the large debt load felt by the students going into public service fields," Johnson says.

"The financial situation is not the only problem," says Douglas T. Schwarz, a third-year law student and executive director of the Legal Aid Bureau. "Many people go with the large firms to gain experience. They feel that the Law School doesn't teach you how to be a lawyer, but rather how to be an apprentice in a law firm which then teaches you to be a lawyer."

But Schwarz cites the increase in clinical opportunities at the Law School: "They are now trying to teach us to be lawyers in law school, and that's good thing."

And Dershowitz says that the Law School curriculum is far from a railroad to private law firms: "We are, if anything, skewed away from that. We educate our students very well for a wide variety of options--human rights and civil liberties included."

To help widen the horizons of law students, the Law School funds four student-run public service organizations--The Harvard Defenders, The Prison Legal Assistance Project The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and Students for Public-Interest Law.

And under a program called the Fellowship for Public Interest Law, third-year students pledge 1 percent of their next year's income to support their classmates in public-interest law jobs.

"The Law School tries very hard to fund and support us," says Jeffrey T. Barbour, operations officer at Harvard Defenders.

The four groups handle criminal defense, civil work, rent-control cases and prisoner affairs on behalf of indigent people needing legal representation, says Schwarz. "We provide legal services free of charge for people whose income falls below federal poverty levels."

Large Recruitment Drives

Attempts to lure students away from the private sector face other serious problems.

Among them are the large-scale recruiting campaigns carried out by law firms each year. "Every fall there is a huge influx of corporate law recruiters who ply students with fancy dinners and offers of free interviewing trips all over the country," says Schwarz. "This institution pervades the atmosphere of the Law School, bringing the focus of the institution onto a future job, rather than learning how to be a lawyer."

"It is very, very easy to get a placement in a private law firm," says Chuck Milligan, a third-year law student. "They come here and take all the initiative. For busy students, it takes a lot of energy to pursue other avenues."

The extensive recruitment efforts conducted by large law firms stand in marked contrast to the more understated recruitment methods used by small firms and public interest groups, and many believe that public interest and small private firms lose prime talent as a result.

Dershowitz proposes a scheme similar to the progressive tax system to alleviate the problem: "We ought to charge a fee for recruitment at Harvard which is related to the size and profitability of the firm."

But Thompson is skeptical. "I don't know if we would really bring more small law firms and pubic agencies if we subsidized them. It's not so much a matter of the money, but the fact that the smaller and recruit."

Many students also emphasize the fact that most public-interest employers only conduct interviews in the spring. "It's a big gamble," says Barbour. "By waiting for a public-interest interview in the spring, you are giving up a position in a law firm that you could have secured in the fall."

Milligan says the placement office has tried to convince private firms to delay their interviews until the spring. "Still, a lot of people worry about being trapped if they go into public-interest," says Milligan.

Molly Geraghty, the Law School's director of admissions and assistant dean, raises another point. "Just because someone starts in a big firm in a big city, we can't say that in five years' time they won't be in public-interest. Law is a very mobile profession."

Many also stress the fact that law firms do a lot of pro bono work, or unpaid legal representation of and advice for the poor. "There is no clear dichotomy between poverty-level work and corporate work," says Schwarz. "A lot of people in corporate firms do this kind of work on a pro bono basis."

Others, however, say that a move toward public service becomes less and less likely over the years. "When I leave Law School, I'll have loans totalling $40,000 to $45,000 to pay off over 10 years," says Philip J. Buri, a second-year law student. "It may be that I hold out in public service for three or so years, but what if start having to raise kids and become hardened and cynical?"