I met Debra Snider on Twitter in a conversation about women & large law firms.  That conversation led to a spirited email discussion, which we've broken down into four blog posts.

After a distinguished 21-year legal and business career, Debra became an author and speaker.  As a lawyer, she handled corporate and securities transactions for two large law firms and a real estate syndication company, then was Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Chief Administrative Officer at a $20 billion publicly held commercial finance company.  Thus, she has the perspective of someone who has been an associate at a large firm, an in-house staff lawyer with management responsibilities, a partner at a large law firm, and a client of many law firms, large and small.

Debra is the author of the well-received novel A Merger of Equals, which is set in the business world.  She has also published two business books: The Productive Culture Blueprint (an American Bar Association Career Resource Center publication that offers a blueprint, complete with case study, checklists and other practical tools and tips, for building sustainable strategic productivity into the in-house law department and enduring, effective relationships with outside law firms); and Working Easier, an organizational design toolkit.  Debra's website is loaded with free career and other resources in addition to more information about her books, her background and her popular speaking topics.

 

Ron: I was not expecting this from you: "IMO training, opportunity, career development & networking far better in BigLaw, even with all its shortcomings."

 

I have been advising lawyers for 25 yrs. Many of them were making a transition from BigLaw. During that time I heard so many stories of dissatisfaction (long hours, boredom, abuse, no training, no feedback, no responsibility, no creativity) that it led me to believe there was NO value to the experience in BigLaw.  Do you think that in BigLaw over the last 10 years (and especially now) there has been (will be) training, opportunity, career development and networking?

 

Debra: I absolutely believe there is superior training, opportunity, career development and networking in large law firms.  There is a great deal that those firms can and should be doing differently for both themselves and their clients, but they continue to be the places offering the best concentration of sophisticated legal work and fine legal minds.

 

Ron:  I wonder how that can be verified.

 

Debra: I thought this was self-evident, but since you ask, I'll give you my thinking.  I believe that good lawyers are characterized by the kind of judgment and knowledge that comes from exposure to and experience with a variety of matters for a variety of clients in a variety of industries, all supervised in the early years and informed in later years by a variety of experienced lawyers, whether senior associates or partners.  The breadth of the experiences is as important as the depth.  A volume shop is - in my opinion and based on my experiences as a rookie, an associate, a partner, and a client - the best place to find and take advantage of the necessary variety.  There are no doubt fine legal minds working on sophisticated legal matters outside large law firms, but the concentration of these in the large law firm context offers the variety of exposure and experience that is essential to developing breadth, depth and judgment quickly.  (More on all this below.)

 

Ron: Do you truly believe that the generic graduate of BigLawSchool who has taken a position with BigLaw is exposed to a "variety of clients" and receives a "variety of practical experiences"? I don't think so!!

 

Debra:  Then you are mistaken or misinformed.  I'll repeat - that experience and exposure are there for the taking. If the generic graduate does not find them, he is not looking.  Why on earth would big law firms hire and pay outlandish salaries to newbies if they had no intent to use them?  It defies logic to suggest they are merely evil cabals designed to turn innocents from public interest practice for no good business reason.

 

In my opinion and based on my experiences, and given my belief that concentration and variety of matters are the hallmark of practical lawyer training, the evidence in favor of BigLaw as an obvious and proven place to gain the exposure necessary to become a good lawyer is overwhelming, both as a fact and in theory.  The easiest place to find concentration and variety is a volume shop that considers it a responsibility to hire, train, and make money from new lawyers, and is betting the health of its long-term business on doing so.  Do you honestly think garden-variety nonprofits have the money, the interest, the responsibility or the ability to hire and train lawyers? Or, for that matter, do solo practitioners as a rule?

 

Ron:  I usually point out to clients the website of a friend who used to be with Proskauer who, for the last 30 years in a firm of 4 lawyers handles complex litigation.  I have also read stories over the years about the excellent legal work performed by a small group of lawyers who have left BigLaw for autonomy, higher income, more flexibility, etc.

 

Debra: I have no problem with small or solo practice as the second phase of a career.  I, too, know many such practitioners and they are terrific - thanks, I believe, to what their BigLaw training and experience added to their innate intelligence and skills.  Remember that I was a General Counsel, as well as a BigLaw associate and partner, so my experience is based not only on my own training, but also on my work with outside firms as their client.  While big firms were the best choices for labor-intensive matters that required a lot of lower-cost associates and paralegals to get the job done effectively and efficiently, "refugee firms," as we called the smaller outfits comprised of former BigLaw partners, did an excellent job for us on various other, equally complex, but less labor-intensive matters.

 

Our original conversation, however, was about lawyers going into small or solo practices right out of law school.  I can't imagine any client willing to hire such a newbie solo practitioner, no matter how intelligent, for any matter of consequence - business or personal.  A small firm populated by recent grads would be equally incompetent.

 

Ron:  I have two reactions.  The first is that the small firms that were formed from those who left BigLaw might be places where the training and opportunities for growth might be better.  While you make a good point about the difficulties or starting out as a solo, these small firms might be a far better option than a BigLaw firm.

 

Debra: If the partners in these small firms were committed to training rookie lawyers, and the firms had both the necessary variety of work and the time and the money to allocate to training, they would be wonderful options.  Some of them may well be, although the ones I know of haven't considered this approach to be economically feasible from the standpoint of the firm.  They have operated in this regard the way my law department at Heller operated.  We realized it was neither cost-effective nor appropriate from a corporate financial point of view for us to allocate Heller resources (dollars and staff time) to training new lawyers when we could easily hire experienced ones who could not only hit the ground running, but also bring with them knowledge of other clients and businesses.

 

As far as I know, there is nothing stopping small law firms that want to take on the responsibility for training rookie lawyers from recruiting them out of law schools.  If you're right that law students are aching for alternatives to BigLaw, these firms ought to do very well at law schools, even if they do have to offer reduced salaries.

 

Ron: Second, there are a number of areas of law and representation which are not the province of BigLaw such as plaintiffs in personal injury matters, tenants and cases against large corporations. Lawyers who want to represent these clients have no option of working for BigLaw. Those with claims in these areas have no option of being represented by BigLaw. The lawyer will either start on his own or work with and for a small firm. There is no evidence that any BigLaw lawyer is more competent to handle a police misconduct case than Michael Avery who has for his career been a solo or small firm lawyer. I could with a little research name hundreds of competent capable lawyers who have started out on their own or with one or two others.

 

Debra:  I'm sure you can.  But would you have hired any of them to represent you or any other client on Day 1 out of law school?  Surely not.  Lawyers who want to represent clients in the kind of matters you enumerate above have to be trained somewhere. Unsupervised on the job training is unfair to clients and probably unethical.  The problem with solo and small practices - and I agree that this is a societal problem - is that they rarely have the interest or the wherewithal to train rookies.  BigLaw won't train rookies specifically in these matters, but it may still be a viable option for 2-3 years, in that it will offer rookies the exposure and experience necessary to become able to think and operate like lawyers - not to mention giving them the paychecks that will allow them to reduce their debt burden and make it easier for them to step out on their own when they feel ready.  And, moreover, why not let small, solo and public interest outfits benefit from BigLaw's training nickel?

 

Perhaps you feel differently, but I would never entrust an important personal matter to an untrained lawyer.  If I were to get divorced, I'd want you, not some kid who's handled only a few cases.  And I'm not looking only for depth of experience when I engage a lawyer; I'm also looking for breadth of experience.  For instance, I've had huge problems even with experienced lawyers on residential real estate matters.  The work these lawyers do has been routinized - which is good because it keeps costs low - but they only know how to do what they do all the time, and even then only if it fits the mold.  For the 1-2 out of 10 situations that presented an unusual issue or otherwise didn't fit the routine, they were lost.  Absolutely lost.  I had far more ability to puzzle out the solutions than they did even though they had vastly more residential real estate experience.

 

Honestly, I don't think we have much disagreement here.  A good, experienced, thoughtful lawyer is just that regardless of how he or she got there.  The issue we're discussing is how best (most effectively and efficiently) to get lawyers there.

 

Ron:  Let's go back to that.  I don't know what you mean when you say that BigLaw is THE place where lawyers develop "the necessary judgment, perspective and experience."  Many of my clients have given me a different picture of life as an associate and junior partner at BigLaw, one that allows for very little decision-making authority, no room for creativity, no autonomy, no meaningful responsibility.

 

Debra:  The necessary training is there for the taking at big law firms.  Perhaps we have a different definition of how lawyers are trained.  In my opinion, training does not start with creativity, autonomy or decision-making.  It's also not about seminars, writing programs and other continuations of impractical law school tactics, although those do sometimes exist (and are typically ridiculed by associates) at big law firms.

 

Training starts with exposure, experience and responsibility.  Any BigLaw associate who's told you he had no meaningful responsibility has no clue what meaningful responsibility is for a rookie.  Let me give you an example.  One of the tasks I had as a corporate and securities newbie was due diligence.  It was my responsibility, for example, to review and schedule a company's loan agreements.  It would certainly have been possible to treat this job as a secretarial one and simply put factoids like loan amount, maturity date, collateral and the like into the little boxes for them on the schedule.  Instead, I used the opportunity to see how loan agreements were constructed, how one differed from another depending on the lender or the collateral or the loan purpose, how the covenants and notice and indemnification provisions worked, etc.  I asked my colleagues questions about the why's behind all this paper and verbiage.  I used my brain and the brains around me to turn this work into the learning opportunity it surely was.

 

Two points here: first, the opportunity was mine to recognize and take, not someone else's to highlight for me; second, many, many of the senior associates and partners I worked with did, in fact, highlight learning opportunities and happily made themselves available to help me learn and grow.  I did the same for every associate I ever worked with.  Within a year or two of approaching my "secretarial due diligence" tasks this way, I had plenty of client contact, decision-making authority, autonomy and room for creativity.  I was by no means alone or unusual in this regard.

 

One of the problems refugees from big firms suffer is, I think, a lack of understanding about how one goes about succeeding in that environment.  One of my partners used to say, "If they need help, they're not good enough."  That's obviously overstated, but it is reflective of a general attitude, and too many of the post-1985 or so law grads I saw, both as Hiring Partner and as a deal lawyer in the Corporate Department, were oddly passive about their own careers.  They seemed to expect a rewarding career to be delivered to their desks.  They had trouble with the truth that a rewarding career is something we must each identify and pursue for ourself.

 

Large law firms do not coddle.  Someone seeking to succeed needs to understand that the rules of the game require taking initiative, figuring out what kind of work he or she wants to do & going after pertinent assignments, demonstrating genuine interest in learning the craft, getting involved in recruiting and pro bono and firm committees and business development and all the other indicia of a full range of involvement, and so forth.

 

Envisioning Law Students Eliminating the Wasted Third Year of Law School

 

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has". Attributed to Margaret Meade

 

There is so much that is defective about legal education. Many of the remedies suggested may take much time and effort to implement and will be strenuously opposed by the faculty and staff of traditional law schools.

 

For example, the acknowledged need to prepare law students for the practice of law upon graduation would require hiring faculty with experience as practicing attorneys and laying off those who don't. Not something likely to be accomplished quickly.

 

The same is true for ending the on-campus interviewing programs and instituting career planning. Such a project would require a substantial laying off of staff whose role for years has been soliciting recruiters and partners of large law firms hoping they will visit their campuses and hire their students. Until a law school hires practicing lawyers as faculty who would then mentor and be career advisors for the students, the school would have to hire career counselors.

 

There is one significant aspect of legal education that CAN be significantly improved overnight; i.e., the extraordinarily high tuition that law schools charge. The resulting high debt load has, in the past, pressured students to take positions in large law firms that held no appeal to many of them except for the salary. Today even many of those with offers do not expect to have enough income from their positions to live on.

 

What is the solution? Eliminate the third year of law school and roll-back, just like Wal-Mart might do, the expected debt by 33%.

 

Over the years I have often talked to students, faculty and staff. In addition many articles have been written on the subject. Rarely has anyone come up with a justification for law students staying in law school for the third year. With general agreement that the law schools take three years not to prepare students for the practice of law, it hardly seems that law students or their careers would be negatively affected if they only devoted two years to not being prepared to practice law. Estimates vary about how much time would be required to teach students how to think like a lawyer. One semester may not be sufficient but a more reasonable estimate would be 2-4 semesters.

 

In view of this, why is law school still three years?

 

Why are there one million lawyers and 80% of the legal needs of low income members of the public unmet?

 

Because we have not really decided we want to change the situation.

 

What would happen if one student at one law school told the administration that because there was no value being provided for her during the third year and since the debt she would have to incur to pay for the third year would prohibit her from being able to take any of the positions she was likely to be offered doing plaintiff litigation upon graduation, she would not enroll for the third year but would expect to be awarded her degree at the end of the second year.

 

The law school would gently or not so gently inform her that attendance for the third year was a requirement for graduations, that the ABA Accreditation Standards so stated, that there was value to the third year, that the economy will improve and that she would likely be able to get a high paying position she was not interested in so she could repay her loan, yadda, yadda, yadda.

 

So it would end .....

 

Unless ...... another student in her class informed the law school of her intention not to enroll for the third year for the same reasons.

 

Two is really not very many and they could both be ignored .....

 

Unless  ..... two other students in their class who expected to find positions in family law practices signed on.

 

Just as the administration is beginning to wonder what is happening,

 

Four more students planning on starting their own law firm signed on to what was now a petition.

 

Now you have a movement.

 

Soon students in other law schools across the country would be informing their administrations of their intention not to enroll for the third year.

 

Last year a small group of thoughtful committed individuals changed the administration of the United States by electing Barack Obama as President. Here is something he said during that campaign:

 

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed law students can begin the process that would lead to the reformation of legal education.

 

What do you think? Fantasy or Future?

 

 

This is for discouraged lawyers (be they unemployed, underemployed or simply dissatisfied) and law students(1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls).  

 

Today I read this post by The Unemployed Lawyer who is in the Seattle area. Here is the comment I added to her blog.

 

"I called the Washington State Bar Association and was told that there are 13,000 members from King County. Based on standard US demographics, that would likely mean that about 75%, or 9,750 are in private practice. Julie Salmon at the WSBA said that about 65% (or about 6500) are in firms of 10 or less. Again based on standard US demographics, 50% of the 6500 are sole practitioners, 35% are in firms 2-5 and 15% in firms of 6-10.  THAT MEANS THAT THERE ARE ABOUT 4000 SMALL FIRMS IN KING COUNTY AND MANY OF THEM NEED YOU.

 

I was then going to add that all you have to do is choose an area of practice, look at yourself either as Susan suggests as a sole practitioner or as an independent contractor, find out who practices in that area and promote and market yourself to them until someone gives you work for some hours, then someone else gives you work for some hours until you finally realize that you are a practicing attorney.

 

But then I read this thoughtful excellent post (what else is new) by Jordan Furlong at Law21, "Graduating into a recession" with solid career planning advice and highly recommend you do the same. 

 

I wish you success in your search."

 

This is an excerpt from the comment that I added to Jordan Furlong's post.

 

"I agree with Susan (Liebel Cartier) and will certainly recommend the article to all who are searching.

 

"I would also suggest that for current law students there is still time to learn the skills. First, while law schools traditionally do not prepare students to practice law, many do offer clinical and other experiential courses. Take them! Second, immediately take Jordan's advice and choose an area of law that interests you. Find out from Lawyers.com and your alumni/ae office who practices in this field in your geographic area. Next promote and market yourself to that group. Someone out there needs your help and will pay you to assist him or her during the summer and possibly during the academic year. With the experience and skills you have gained, you will have the confidence needed to go after part-time to full-time work after graduation."

 

It is critically important at this time when there has been a decline in recruiting by the large law firms who have dominated campus interviewing to deemphasize employer outreach.

A school unable to attract sufficient employer responses adds to the students' frustration. Their self-esteem is diminished since they are not being considered by the firms courted by the school, apparently the ones who have the school's stamp of approval. Some career planners believe they are not using their talents and time to their own best advantage and that of their students. One said that 85% of her resources are devoted to employer outreach from which only 15% of her students found positions.

The goal of employer outreach by career staff is the scheduling of on-campus interviewers to supply students with the knowledge of where the jobs are.  Where there are a substantial number of firms recruiting on campus, many accept jobs they are not suited for because their decision making process is flawed. They are unaware of the breadth of their options and the importance of balancing priorities such as work satisfaction and high income.

Law school support for the emphasis on placement may come from the desire for positive recognition in the USNews's annual "Placement Success Rank" category. This rewards the schools that bring in the most firms and have the most graduates taking the highest paying positions the quickest.

What is the value of this professional degree? It varies. According to the USNews, "To the student, the value of a professional degree often is determined by its worth on the job market." For some it is just that, a way to earn a decent income. For others, the value is a sense of self-worth and satisfaction from having many options, autonomy and significant responsibility, or the opportunity to do "something that matters" to them. Others believe it provides the opportunity to contribute to the common good, to help those who without their assistance might never have a lawyer or to play a small part in bringing about social justice and equal access to the legal system.

The focus on employer outreach obscures the fact that most openings are publicized at the time employers have an immediate opening, not months in advance. As a consequence many organizations students might want to work for will not make their openings known early in the school year, in September, or even December and, more likely, not until after graduation. Furthermore, the way in which they will be publicized will probably be by word-of-mouth since estimates are that less than 5% of all jobs are advertised in writing.

Employer outreach fails to reflect the breadth of legal demographics at some schools and at other simply fails to attract sufficient employers. It needs to be deemphasized and replaced by career planning based on outreach within the law school community. The primary focus would be on educating students about their options, career planning methods and how to search for openings using self-directed employer outreach.

Rather than telling students "There are few jobs and we will try to place you", law schools should move in the direction that will support them most appropriately and "There are so many options and opportunities and we will teach you how to search for the one that will be the most satisfying for you, the one most consistent with your professional goals and your personal values."

 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

For law graduates, a public-service detour on road to success

By Rich Barlow, Globe Correspondent  |  April 27, 2009

 

With his degree from Harvard Law School due in June, Juan Valdivieso makes an attractive prospective hire, and last summer, he scooped up a postgraduation job offer from the white-shoe firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in his native Washington, D.C.

But as the recession deepens, budgets tighten - even at top-notch law firms. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius e-mailed Valdivieso last month that it would have to defer his employment for a year, until the fall of 2010. But the company threw him a lifeline: It would pay him a $60,000 stipend if he spent the year after graduation at an unpaid public service job. The 28-year-old is looking for work in an organization that will indulge his interest either in civil rights or consumer protection.

Paying people to offer help to public service groups may be a noble endeavor, but it also reaps a practical payoff.

The stipend system saves a bundle for such firms as Morgan, Lewis, where starting salaries average around $160,000, according to Harvard's assistant dean for career services, Mark Weber. It also allows them to hold onto promising future lawyers until a possible economic turnaround next year.

Meanwhile, students add a year of real-life work.

"Clients are, from what I understand, not so excited about having first-year associates without any actual experience working on their case," said Valdivieso.

Alyssa Minsky, who is graduating next month from Suffolk University Law School, has had her employment deferred with a stipend by Ropes & Gray. A psychology major in college with an interest in healthcare, she is interviewing for jobs in that field.

"I really do think it's a great opportunity," she said. "I hope to do healthcare law at the firm, so I think I'll have real exposure to healthcare issues."

Law firms have postponed hires in previous recessions, but the public-service stipends are unique, say Weber and James Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, a career counseling, recruitment, and development group based in Washington, D.C.

Valdivieso said he knows of 20 to 30 fellow Harvard students (the graduating class numbers 575) who have had their employment postponed, and many of them have been offered stipends. Students at law schools around the country are getting the same offer, and while no one tracks precise numbers, the trend "is pretty widespread," said Leipold, with participants including such noted firms as Latham & Watkins, based in California, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, based in New York.

Boston's Ropes & Gray has offered stipends to new hires and current associates who'd like to do a year in public service, according to a statement from the firm. Staff lawyers, whose starting salaries are $160,000, receive $60,000 and health insurance coverage; deferred hires get those benefits plus moving expenses, coverage of bar preparation and exam fees, and eligibility for a $20,000 advance, to be repaid after the public service.

The firm has a list of 35 approved service organizations but is open to lawyers and hired students arranging a year's work with other groups, the statement said. Eighty applicants have applied for placement with groups ranging from legal aid services in New York to a public defender's office in Hawaii.

Greater Boston Legal Services, which represents low-income people in civil cases, has seen its finances crushed by the recession, as have other public-interest groups, so getting some help on law firms' dimes is an attractive proposition, said executive director Robert Sable.

"We're in tatters financially because of this thing," he said. "These folks are showing up at just the time when we're having to reduce staff."

Weber's office, which estimates that 10 percent to 20 percent of Harvard's graduating students will be deferred by firms, sent a memo to the class last month to help them weigh options. A year in public service "can be seen as a tremendous opportunity" that will add luster to a student's resume, the memo counseled.

That's important, Weber said, because he predicts a coming boom for legal services when the economy recovers.

"There's a lot of litigation that hasn't taken place," he said. "There's a lot of regulatory work and a lot of appeals that aren't being done right now. So when that stuff picks up, people are going to be busy."

Getting paid to do good has some downside, however. Valdivieso has $60,000 in student loans to repay, and he had planned on a larger salary next year to help with that.

He's hoping to tap a Harvard program that helps students entering modest-paying jobs repay their loans, but that won't be enough, and he is considering moving in with his parents.

"I went from looking at potentially purchasing [a] new home to covering rent [and] covering health insurance," he said. But he is counting his blessings: He is single with no dependents.

At a time when a student may feel pressure to be the next Clarence Darrow to secure one of the dwindling number of jobs, Weber said graduates may have few options. "It's not like the next firm down the street is [hiring many lawyers]. . . . The issue here is making the best of a difficult situation," he said.

 

RON FOX COMMENT IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

There is another side to this story.

At the "selective" law schools there is a powerful "funnel" established by the law schools and maintained by large law firms (BigLaw) that has led for decades to as high as 95% of graduates taking BigLaw positions.

My experience, discussions with those in the legal community and material I have read leads me to believe that without the combined defects and pressures of legal education, a minority of these grads would want to work for such firms, preferring instead a variety of other options, including representing individuals, consumers, small businesses in small firms or even starting their own solo practice.

Not surprisingly, there have been frequent stories over the last 20 years about the high level of dissatisfaction among lawyers. This misplacement is partially to blame.

Another aspect of this is that for decades the public has had an urgent need for legal services. ABA studies indicate that only 20% of the legal needs of 45,000,000 low income people are met. The funneling of these law students to BigLaw continues to divert them from serving the public, the stated mission of many law schools such as Stanford Law School:

"Despite these advances, Stanford Law School's basic mission has not changed since Nathan Abbott's day: dedication to the highest standards of excellence in legal scholarship and to the training of lawyers equipped diligently, imaginatively, and honorably to serve their clients and the public; to lead our profession; and to help solve the problems of our nation and our world."

What is needed is primarily an overhaul of legal education: a reduction in cost by eliminating the wasted third year, teaching students the fundamental skills and values needed so they are prepared to practice law, making them aware of the options they have in SmallLaw/Solo, giving them genuine career advice and eliminating the funnel of on-campus interviewing.

 

LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM STAFF AT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

This career choice is not a 'detour'

May 2, 2009

WE ARE writing to express dismay at the implication of your headline "For law graduates, a public-service detour on road to success" (Metro, April 27) and the tone of the corresponding article.

Your headline assumes that the only definition of success is working at a large law firm and that public service work is merely a detour. This could not be further from the truth.

We have worked with, and are continuing to work with, many Harvard Law School students and alumni dedicated to careers in public service. These students and graduates define success as satisfying work through which they can make a contribution to society.

Among our relatively recent graduates who opted for public service rather than the private sector are Julie Su, who won a MacArthur "genius" grant for her work freeing enslaved Thai garment workers; the cofounders of City Year, Alan Khazei and Michael Brown; and one young man who chose to serve the urban poor in Chicago upon graduating in 1991 - Barack Obama.

Fortunately, many of the delayed-start associates with whom we've been working understand that they have been presented with a wonderful opportunity to use their law degrees to help society - and, in some cases, been given more responsibility than they would likely have had as first-year associates at large firms.

You do a disservice to idealistic law students and lawyers everywhere by reinforcing the image of public service as somehow second class.

Alexa Shabecoff
Assistant dean for public service
Ellen Cosgrove
Dean of students
Harvard Law School
Cambridge

 

COMMENT BY RON FOX IN RESPONSE TO LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM STAFF AT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

How do they say it, "Give me a break".

This letter to the editor from two staff persons at Harvard Law School is misleading.

Does anyone really think that Success at Harvard law School is defined as anything other than taking a job at BigLaw?

Open up the books and look at the jobs taken by HLS graduates over the last 25 years and you are likely to see that at graduation (or after a prestigious clerkship) approximately 95% will have taken jobs at BigLaw.

Think about one of the graduates mentioned, President Barack Obama. Of the many impressive comments made about him, one was that this Harvard law School graduate, the President of the Harvard Law Review did NOT, upon graduation, go to BigLaw but took a position with a small firm that represented individuals in civil rights and other personal matters. If Harvard Law School does not consider serving the public upon graduation as a detour, why was his career path considered so unique?

One of the reasons that Harvard Law School ranks so high in the annual flawed USNews ranking of law schools is its second highest ranking in the criterion for graduate employment. A significant factor of this criterion is the number of those employed at graduation. Since it is almost entirely only BigLaw which can know its needs far in advance, the prize goes to the law schools that send their students the quickest (for the most money?) to the biggest law firms.

(By the way, I recall an analysis I did of the first positions of HLS graduates from the classes of 1984-88. Of the 2500 after 3 years of legal education only FOUR (4) felt prepared to go out on their own and NOT become someone's employee. One of them was Alan Khazei, another graduate featured prominently in the letter.)

Success at Harvard Law School must therefore be defined by the law school (though not by the students) and, I assume, by other selective law schools as going to BigLaw. With that in mind, students at HLS taking positions with public service have good reason to think they are taking a detour.

 

 

QUOTES FROM THE REINVENTION OF WORK by MATTHEW FOX 

 

         Spirit means life, and both life and livelihood are about living in depth, living with meaning, purpose, joy and a sense of contributing to the greater community. A spirituality of work is about bringing life and livelihood back together again. Page 2

 

         All work worthy of being called spiritual and worthy of being called human is in some way prophetic work. It contributes to the growth of justice and compassion in the world; it contributes to social transformation, not for its own sake but for the sake of increasing justice. Page 13

 

         If we are not being served truth and justice as regular fare at work, then no matter how well we are fed materially, we will starve spiritually. Or work must make way for the heart, that is, for truth and justice to play an ever-increasing role in our professional lives. Page 26

 

         How do we prepare young people for the future world of work? ... We should prepare them to be able to distinguish between good work and bad work and encourage them not to accept the latter. That is to say, they should be encouraged to reject meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-wracking work in which a (person) is made the servant of a machine or a system. They should be taught that work is the joy of life and is needed for our development, but that meaningless work is an abomination. Page 30, quoting E. F. Schumacher, Good Work, 118,119

 

         We must become truly critical of the systems that keep so many out of touch with justice and economic fairness. Healthy work lies at the heart of the remedy for this failed promise. Page 45

 

         Wherever there are people, there are needs to be met and thus work to be done. Page 59

 

         Here we come face-to-face with the mystery of vocation, or calling...we find our calling by our natural inclinations, by that which we enjoy doing, are equipped to do, and feel joy in doing.....In our times, we workers are being called to reexamine out work: how we do it; whom it is helping or hurting; what it is we do; and what we might be doing if we were to let go of our present work and follow a deeper calling. Page 103

 

          I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people....Paul when he says that truly the only sin in life is our refusal to do the work we have been called to do. Page 104

 

          All our work worlds, from so-called blue collar to professional, have been tainted by the limits of our civilization's philosophy of work....We can be sure that a paradigm shift will occur whenever the necessities of life are beyond the reach of most citizens. This is happening in our culture today. Health care, education, law, business, economics, politics, and religion are not reaching the people who need them the most. .. We can realize that we are not isolated in our work dreams, that we are not alone in our deepest desires to make our professional life again and be true to their deepest moral and spiritual potentials. The word community, after all, means "to work on a common task together." Page 135

 

          The task needed in every profession, and indeed by every citizen today, is to return wisdom to our work. We do this by returning to the essential meaning of our profession - a meaning that originally had to do with serving others......Is it controversial to suggest that our professions have in great part lost their enchantment? How happy are people at their work? The dean of a law school recently confessed that only 6 percent of his graduates will find a job in law this year. Is the real reason that we do not need more lawyers? Might it be instead that we do not need more of the kind of lawyers practicing the kind of law that we are accustomed to? We do need laws to defend the environment, to defend our children, to defend the poor instead of lobbying for the powerful. Perhaps the crisis lies in the kind of work our society is offering its workers. Page 137

 

          All the professions, no matter how far they may have strayed from their original purpose, were rooted at their origins in the inner life of the community. They began as expressions of the spiritual and corporal works of compassion that the prophets wrote about. We can redeem the professions by returning to the best hopes they hold out for serving others. .. We can be in our professions without being of them, that is, without selling our souls to them. Indeed, that is how we must operate if our work worlds are to help solve the problems of our advanced industrial society.  Page 138

 

           Justice making and other types of healing are forms or compassion because we all live in human societies that yearn for healing from many kinds of injustice.  Page 174

 

           Individuals have values but are often told on coming to work to leave their values at the door. Page 231

 

           The growing desire that workers have to be in control over their own livelihoods, and to be able to create a harmony between their values and their working lives. Page 235

 

           The problem is that our civilization has settled for such a narrow and restrictive definition of work that we are trying to pour human energy into a skinny little funnel that in turn pours into a puny little machine called "industry" or jobs available......those who have jobs are so squeezed in the process of getting them that when they do finally arrive at the workplace they have lost their sense of wonder and amazement and their capacity for grief. Their inner life has been squeezed out of them; their work is too small. They have no energy to create good work and thereby help others join the work world and thus participate in the Great Work. Page 301

 

 

 

The following is from this webpage

 

"Matthew Fox is author of 28 books including Original Blessing, The Reinvention of Work, Creativity, and A New Reformation. He was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years. He holds a doctorate (received summa cum laude) in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris. Seeking to establish a pedagogy that was friendly to learning spirituality, he established an Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality that operated for seven years at Mundelein College in Chicago and twelve years at Holy Names College in Oakland. For ten of those years at Holy Names College, Cardinal Ratzinger, (Ed.Note on 19 April 2005 he became Pope Benedict XVI) as chief Inquisitor and head of the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith (called the Office of the Holy Inquisition until 1965), tried to shut the program down. Ratzinger silenced Fox for one year in 1988 and forced him to step down as director. Three years later he expelled Fox from the Order and then had the program terminated at Holy Names College.

 

"Rather than disband his amazing and ecumenical faculty, Fox started his own University called University of Creation Spirituality nine years ago in Oakland, California. Fox was President and a member of the Board of Directors for nine years. He is currently lecturing, teaching and writing and is President of the non-profit that he created in 1984, Friends of Creation Spirituality. The principle objections from the Congregation of the Faith to Fox's work were that he is a "feminist theologian;" that he calls God "Mother" (Fox has proven the medieval mystical tradition did exactly that); that he prefers "original blessing" to "original sin;" that he calls God "child"; that he associates too closely with Native Americans and people of the wikka tradition; that he does not condemn homosexuals; that he has replaced the naming of the spiritual journey as Purgation, Illumination and Union with the four paths of Creation Spirituality: The Via Positiva (joy, delight and awe); the Via Negativa (darkness, silence, suffering, letting go and letting be); the Via Creativa (creativity); and the Via Transformativa (justice, compassion, interdependence)."

 

 

The following is a review of The Reinvention of Work by Diane Schirf

 

"In The Reinvention of Work, Matthew Fox brings together the work of Eastern and Western mystics, ancient, medieval, and modern, to propose a new paradigm for how we work and what we do. ... Fox explores the concept of work and how it can be healthier physically, emotionally, and intellectually, but primarily socially, environmentally, and spiritually.  Fox believes that the Enlightenment and the industrial age have left us with a machine-centered, anthropocentric world that focuses on outer work and rewards at the cost of inner work and spirituality, and destroys rather than creates. Real wealth results from preserving the health of the planet, not in the artificiality of money or possessions. The result has been a world often at war, where the gaps between affluent and poor continue to spread, where the environmental health of non-industrialised nations is sacrificed for the comforts of the industrialised, and where the work that is available and that most people have serves machines and leaves the worker stressed, addicted to work, ill, angry and even violent, and unfulfilled intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. He also recounts the stories of people who reinvent themselves through work, who are willing to sacrifice position and possessions to find an avocation that matters, like the man who gives up a high-paying position to become a fireman and who is ecstatic about the meaning it brings to his life.  Fox carefully sets up all that is wrong with our modern concept of work and, indeed, life, since so much of who we are, how we feel, and how we live is tied up in what we do for a living, or what we mistakenly call "work." 

"To get billions of conditioned consumers (and their consumers-in-training children) to give up their increasingly complex lifestyles, comforts, and amusements in the interest of a healthier, more just world for all and for better personal mental and physical health requires a utopian change that most people will not embrace. As with the Woolgers in their book, The Goddess Within, Fox tries to find a movement in the mid-1990s that has not materialised yet. Generally, people do not choose to change; they are forced to. Perhaps someday, when the gaps have widened too far, and society and our home can no longer support our appetites (and the corresponding waste), we may be ready to listen to Fox and his adherents, at which point they will need to provide practical answers. What if there is imbalance between what people want to do and what needs to be done? In practical, everyday terms, what does the reinvention of work look like? And do I want to live long enough to experience the disasters that are likely to be required to bring it about?"

 

AFTER YOU HAVE FINISHED READING THIS, I SUGGEST THAT YOU READ QUOTES FROM THE REINVENTION OF WORK HERE.