Law schools have failed their students and the public but college graduates continue to apply and attend without having the facts or information needed to make an informed decision.

I request that you read this post and, if appropriate, forward it to any college students considering going to law school as well as any of those, such as pre-law advisers, who advise such students.

This is a unique, almost chaotic, time in the legal profession.

Large law firms are reevaluating the way they do business as the economic downturn has resulted in their clients no longer being willing to pay for the training of associates. Many also want value pricing not hourly fees.

Small firms are being given a second look and becoming more attractive to lawyers. In that vein, the presentations I am making to bar associations, including one this past September for the New York State Bar Association Committee on Lawyers in Transition, are aimed at helping lawyers learn about small firms and how to find positions there.

Law schools are under attack from all quarters: including law firms asking that the law schools prepare their students to practice law; students who are paying so much and often believing that they are getting so little; the ABA for inadequate teaching methods and devoting too much time to academic research.

Lawyers are expressing great dissatisfaction in their large firm practices. The American Bar Foundation's After the JD study of 5000 associates from the year 2000 on found that 59% of the graduates of the top law schools working for large law firms planned to leave within two and a half years.

A significant aspect of what I refer to as the "funneling" of as high as 95% of the graduates at selective law schools to large law firms through on-campus interviewing is that as many as 50% of the students wanted careers serving the public and were diverted from those careers. As you are aware we still have a crisis in the country where 80% of the legal needs of the 45,000,000 least wealthy of us are not met by the legal profession.

Some articles point out that the high cost of law school is "justification' for law students to take high paying positions. Rarely examined is why that cost is so high.

Those involved in advising college students who plan to go to law school in the past have focused primarily on how to get into the schools rated the best by the USNews annual survey. The problem is that that survey is defective. For example, it does not have a criteria evaluating how well the law school prepares students for the practice of law. Its focus is on intangibles such as reputation and which law schools get the most graduates the fastest into the largest law firms.

What is needed is a group of students or prelaw advisers who will research and inform college students about the state of legal education today. The group might want to design a far-reaching project could evaluate law schools based on whether they teach the fundamental values and skills of the legal profession and other relevant criteria such as reasonable cost. One example of such an evaluation tool is at the end of Overcoming Law School Defects .

The articles on my website and blog contain much information, resources and warnings about the deficiencies of legal education for those considering doing so.

I also recommend you read what Chuck Newton just posted in this Third Wave Blog entitled Death to Big Law (Schools)?

Law schools simply cannot live off the hope that poor (literally), innocent students can borrow ever increasing amounts of money, almost on a whim, to satisfy the peculiar beguilement and distraction of law school insiders. It is having and will continue to have very severe financial consequences for its graduates; marked by intense dissatisfaction for the choice they made to attend law school in the first place.

I invite anyone interested in talking about any of these issues or in designing a law school evaluation project to post a comment here or contact me directly by email.

When I read a the United States Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Committees on HIGHER EDUCATION Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access October 2009, I was not impressed. Those drafting the report seemed to simply accept the statements of law school officials that ABA accreditation has no affect on the cost of law school but the change to a more hands-on resource-intensive approach to legal education has affected cost. The law school officials also said that competition among schools for higher rankings reportedly have affected costs. Admitting that they strive for high ranking in this defective and highly criticized magazine's attempt to compare law schools is hard to believe.

After I read the report I drafted this Memorandum which has been forwarded by my Congressman to the above committees.

MEMORANDUM

TO: U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP)
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor
FROM: Ronald W. Fox, Esq. admin@ronaldwfox.com
Career Planning for Lawyers - Lawyer Satisfaction Blog
DATE: November 2, 2009
RE: Issues Related to the Dramatic Increase in the Cost of Law School

The impetus for my writing this was the New GAO Report, "Higher Education Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access" and briefings made to your committees.

The purpose of this Memorandum is to encourage your committees to solicit the views and opinions of others who can present to you a more in-depth analysis of the reasons why the rate of increase of the cost of law school has been so much higher than the rate of inflation and the cost of living over the last two decades.

There has been criticism of legal education in the traditional law schools ever since the day when Christopher Langdell instituted the case method at Harvard law School over 100 years ago but it reached its peak in 1992.

In that year, the MacCrate Report, also known as the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap - Legal Education and Professional Development - An Educational Continuum was published. The task force, composed of prominent lawyers, judges and law professors, strongly criticized law schools for failing to teach eight of the ten fundamental skills needed to practice law and for not stressing the four fundamental values of the legal profession including the promotion of justice and the importance of taking positions consistent with one's personal values. The report also described as inadequate the traditional method of teaching the two skills it does teach in that it does not allow for the students to perform and be evaluated to ascertain the extent to which the students understand the concept presented .

The same ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (which has been designated as the agency that accredits law schools) recently issued a Bar Report of the Outcome Measures Committee in which it says law schools should shift in assessment from the conceptual knowledge accumulated by students to the assessment of practical competencies (professional skills) and that law schools should incorporate ongoing assessments and other formative techniques to encourage and evaluate a student's development of tasks

Innumerable articles prior to and during this current economic downturn have been written demanding that law schools do more to prepare their students for the practice of law.

Tying together this failure to teach with the increase in the cost of law schools is Rethinking Legal Education in Hard Times: The Recession, Practical Legal Education, and the New Job Market a thoughtful paper by Daniel Thies, a student at Harvard Law School and the law student member of the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar submitted for the Council's June 2009 retreat. After describing the law schools' tepid actions in offering skills courses but stubbornly refusing to reduce the emphasis on academic research (see B. Barriers to Reform and C. Rethinking Priorities: The Questionable Value of Legal Scholarship Today, pages 18-22) concludes:

The economic recession presents a unique opportunity for legal education to shift its priorities. Rather than using student money to subsidize academic research from full-time professors, successful schools will need to seek new ways to train students in practical skills. Only then will schools continue to be able to attract qualified students. There are many different ways that a school can achieve this end, and no two schools' solution will look the same. As long as prospective students have sufficient information and schools have the flexibility to try different solutions, however, the law schools with the best programs will begin to rise to the top. Legal educators have spent much of the last century thinking about how to integrate practical training into the law school curriculum. To echo the MacCrate Report, "[i]n sum . . . the time has come to put the pieces together."

Another source of helpful information on how and why law school costs have risen unnecessarily can be found in The Deeply Unsatisfactory Nature of Legal Education Today - A Self Study Report On The Problems Of Legal Education And On The Steps The Massachusetts School of Law Has Taken To Overcome Them published by the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence Velvel, Founder and Dean. While I am not at all aware of what is needed in a law library, the report looks at the how outdated views of what should be in a law library (perhaps pursuant to ABA accreditation requirements) increase law school costs. The most significant point in the report related to costs is the systematic withdrawal of law school faculty into academic research and scholarship. Not only is it of little educational value to students, it also means that the faculty is unavailable for administrative duties which would be a benefit to students such as career counseling, course advice, admissions, etc. That translates into the need to hire more and more staff to take over duties that faculty have taken in the past.

I have been deeply concerned about the defects in legal education from the day I started as the Public Interest Adviser at Harvard Law School in 1984. I graduated from that school in 1963 and spent the next 20 years practicing law and designing programs aimed at delivering legal services to the public. There is another negative consequence of diverting funds to academic scholarship and failing to prepare students for the practice of law. In a deadly serious satire requesting that I be appointed law school industry czar, I point out how law schools have failed not only their students but also the public as in selective schools 95% of the graduates take positions representing the wealthiest 1% of the society while the 45,000,000 least wealthy of us cannot retain the services of a lawyer for 80% of their legal problems.

Most of the posts in my blog are directed at the defects in legal education and the diversion of law students by law schools to positions in large law firms. The cause of this misplacement are widely known: the failure of the law schools to teach skills or values or the existence of small law firms combined with the huge debt load taken by so many students,

Here is a post I wrote a few months ago, a simple way to reduce law school costs and debt by one-third entitled Envisioning Law Students Eliminating the Wasted Third Year of Law School In it I propose:

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 addition, there is a reason why universities can refer to their law schools as "cash cows". One of the arguments in favor of establishing a public law school in Massachusetts has been that it would boost the state's revenues. Here is my post on why we don't need a public law school.

Many others write often and well about the defects of legal education including the greed and self-interest of the law schools that are behind their consistent increases in tuition and related costs.

Chuck Newton, a lawyer in Huston, writes often about the failings of law school Here is just one of his posts on his blog The Law School Tuition Bubble. Has Logical Reasoning Abandoned Our Law Schools?

Here is a related article by John DiPippa, Dean William H. Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock A Change - in Legal Education - is Gonna Come (with apologies to Sam Cook) where he refers to the current education forces: i.e, calls for fundamental legal education reform gaining momentum, the ABA moving toward outcome-based accreditation standards and students demanding different approaches and wanting to see value for their tuition dollars. He concludes that the "salad days" for law faculties may be over.

Law schools have in many ways failed their students and the public. One and only one aspect has been the runaway and unrestrained raises in tuition over the last two decades. Much of the increase has been unnecessary. As noted above, I suggest that if you would like to investigate further the topic of why law school costs have risen so dramatically, you review the sources above and contact some of the writers and scholars involved. Should anyone want to discuss any of the issues raised in this Memorandum further with me (or any lawyer career related topic), as noted above, I can be reached at admin@ronaldwfox.com..

A proposal for a new public law school for Massachusetts, one of only 7 states in the country not to have a public law school, has generated an enormous amount of controversy with many saying that there is a need for a school with a reasonable tuition and others saying there is at this time no need for a school that would add more lawyers to an overcrowded field. Prominent among the opponents, shocking as that may not be, are the local law schools. What is shocking is that I find myself agreeing with the stand of the law schools.Over a week ago, I submnitted what follows as a proposed op-ed to the Boston Globe. I welcome your comments.

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE PUBLIC LAW SCHOOL PROPOSAL

What's missing from the discussion about the need for a new public law school for Massachusetts is any consideration of the failure of the existing law schools to serve not only the educational needs of their students but also the legal needs of the public.

In 1980, Lloyd Cutler, Esq. (adviser to Presidents Carter and Clinton) remarked that 95% of lawyers' time is devoted to the wealthiest 1% of our society, the 25% most disadvantaged get 5% of their time and the remaining nearly 75% cannot afford and get virtually none of their time."

As Harvard Law School's Public Interest Adviser from 1984-89, I observed that at least 40% of the students hoped to represent individuals in personal plight matters. That school and other "selective" law schools, however, funneled as many as 95% of their graduates to large law firms by failing to prepare them to work in small law firms and by devoting staff time to the insidious on-campus interviewing placement program.

Little has changed. Diverting students from their career dreams has led to shattered self-confidence and rampant dissatisfaction within the legal profession as well as continued lack of access to the justice system for the public. So while we seem to have too many law schools in this state and this country, recent surveys indicate that only 20% of the legal needs of the 45,000,000 least wealthy in this country are met by the legal system.

The possibility that the new school might contribute to the state coffers is not a plus. The law school industry continues to ignore decades of calls that it provide quality legal education at a reasonable cost. For years, universities have been able to consider their law schools "cash cows". Law schools increase tuition to outrageous levels far beyond the rate of inflation with many questioning the value of what students (some borrowing up to $200,000 at a time when starting salaries are plummeting) get in return.

Last Friday's edition of the Harvard Law Record published a copy of an alumnus' response to a request for a contribution suggesting ".. you might concede that the Law School could ease financial strain on students without reducing the quality of the J.D. degree. One way would be to drop the third year or, or postpone it to mid-career."

Law professors teach large classes with little opportunity for students to show their understanding of a concept and be evaluated on that performance. Staff is hired to replace faculty who take less of a role in administrative duties such as career planning and devote time to academic research unrelated to effective student education.

During the current economic downturn, with large firm layoffs and job deferrals, one school's solution is to offer a masters degree, basically a fourth year of law school through which the student can finally learn to practice law. Most law schools, however, are content to promote alternative paths that students are unprepared to pursue, hoping for the return to "normalcy" when they can revive the funnel to the large law firms and thereby shore up their US News ranking.

If law schools fail to reform legal education to prepare their students to practice law at a reasonable cost and to serve the legal needs of the public, the legislature should enact a law reinstituting the former system by which lawyers became members of the bar - "reading the law". California, Vermont, Virginia, New York, Maine. Washington and Wyoming still have variations on this process whereby an applicant may take the bar exam after study under a judge or practicing attorney for an extended period of time. Such a law should also establish an office within the Executive Branch which would provide limited supplementary training to advise and support those pursuing this option.

We do not need another law school. We need to demand that the current ones uphold the fundamental values of the legal profession and devote their efforts to meeting the needs of their students and the public.

_____________________________________________________________
Ronald W. Fox, Esq. directs the Center for Professional Development in the Law and is the author of Lawful Pursuit: Careers in Public Interest Law
______________________________________________________________

AUGUST 9 1989 - HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1963, I worked for a large law firm, served in the US Army JAG and worked in an insurance company. After two years as an associate for a sole practitioner, I founded two small law firms representing individuals and community groups and became one of the first lawyers in the country to offer divorce mediation. Concerned about the issue of the unmet legal needs of the public, I served on the boards of legal services programs, created referral programs for the Massachusetts Bar Association and the National Lawyers Guild, started an association of legal clinics, and served as president of a family mediation association.

In 1983 I returned to Harvard Law School as its public interest adviser. On August 9, 1989, my position was eliminated by a recently appointed dean of that law school. I have reprinted below some material related to the elimination of that position.

Since that time I have provided career advice to lawyers and law students and consulted to law schools, law firms and bar associations. In addition I have advocated for the restructuring and reform of legal education.

From what I have observed over the last 20 years, though there has been much criticism of legal education and calls for reform (including the highly regard 1992 ABA MacCrate Report), the law schools have largely ignored them.

Are you as concerned as I am that during the current economic downturn, the law school industry is desperately trying to maintain the on-campus interviewing "funnel" to BigLaw despite the recent survey of 5000 associates finding that 59% of "top-ten" law school grads plan to leave BigLaw jobs within 2 years while other data indicates that 80% of the legal needs of the least wealthy 45,000,000 of us are unmet?
.
Do you think that there have been and will continue to be positive changes and improvements in the delivery of legal education?

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August 8, 1989

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
Cambridge, Massachusetts 01938

OFFICE OF THE DEAN

Mr. Ronald Fox
Harvard Law School
Pound 310

Dear Ron

Many thanks for your recent gift to the Law School Fund. I appreciate your support of the School's annual giving program.

With best wishes

Sincerely,
/s/ Bob
Robert C. Clark
Dean

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

August 14, 1989

MEMORANDUM
TO; The File
FROM: Ron Fox
RE: Meeting with Dean Robert Clark

On Wednesday, August 9, 1989, at 11:30 A.M., I met with Dean
Robert Clark. He told me that he had made some decisions about restructuring and that I was not likely to be pleased. June Thompson would no longer be in admissions and would be full time in placement and there was also going to be an appointment of a new director of counseling. He mentioned that he did not know what I did in my job, although he had seen one letter that I had written and he thought it was very good. He had decided that it was not cost effective to have a 8/10 position devoted solely to the 6 to 8 people who were interested in public interest, therefore, my position was being eliminated as well as the position of my assistant (Dana Bullwinkel] who is about to enter graduate school).

I asked him to clarify whether or not that meant that I had been fired. He said that that was putting it too bluntly: my position was being eliminated. He said that he did not know how long I had been working at the law school. I was not being told that I had to leave the next day. When the administrative dean, Simone Reagor, returns from vacation, I would talk to her about the details.

When I asked him whether he had mentioned that there was going to be a new position, new director of counseling, he said that was the case, and that it was a position for which I would not be considered. (It now appears that this new position was created by the half of Mark Byers, the career counselor for the law school, that was assigned to the Placement Office and the other half of his time that was assigned to the Counseling Office under the Dean of Student's Office and Mark has been told that he can apply for this job but that he should be looking elsewhere in the event he does not get it.)

I had prepared a memorandum for him and had attached to it some of the material I had written over the last year and a half on public interest career planning and placement problems and issues at the law school and my suggestions and proposals. I gave it to him and told him that if he wanted to discuss any aspect of the material, I would be prepared to do so.

I left the office about 11:37 A.M.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

14 March 1990

PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CAREER PLANNING CENTER
955 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Ronald W. Fox Tel: (617) 868-6669
Executive Director Fax: (617) 876-0203

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE STUDENTS OF HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

I first want to say that my six years spent directing the public interest career activities at Harvard Law School was the most positive, rewarding and satisfying professional experience I have had since leaving the law school in 1963. I talked, wrote to, and learned from, intelligent, talented, concerned, responsible, committed people - students, staff of the law school, alumni/ae, other lawyers, and career planning professionals at other law schools. I also publicly want to let you all know how much I appreciate your personal visits, kind words and public statements in my support. Your actions made a stressful time more comfortable and gave me the reason, strength, encouragement and confidence to found the Public Interest Law Career Planning Center which will assist law students and lawyers who want to pursue careers in public interest, human services and government.

I came to the law school to direct the public interest career and placement activities after 15 years working in private practice and with many non-profit organizations trying to increase the quality and quantity of legal services delivered to people with low and moderate income. It appeared to me that Harvard Law School believed that it had an obligation to make careers in public interest law a realistic option for its graduates. And, in fact, over the next three years I received approval to establish the IL Public Interest Career Workshop; was given funding to publish the Public Interest Directory; was given the time to assist in the development of "Opportunities in Public Interest Law"; was encouraged to solicit $300,000 from an alumnus, Kenneth Montgomery, `28, for a public interest summer grant program which he generously funded; was given the time to establish a Task Force on Public Interest Law of the National Association for Law Placement; and was afforded the opportunity to give advice and guidance to about 100 individuals in each class and many alumni/ae.

I was impressed by the depth of commitment to public interest within the student body. I talked to students, analyzed class lists and read surveys that confirmed my findings that 40% of each class were interested in pursuing public interest careers. A study of one class revealed that by the time of graduation, 40% of its members had attended public interest workshops and/or devoted substantial time to public interest law either during the summer or in a clinical course. I spent many hours listening to students and providing information to allay their fears and to counter pressures from peers, the law school, family, and society in general to take positions they did not want. In addition, I received frequent calls and visits from anguished alumni/ae wanting to leave jobs in large firms they found boring and/or in conflict with their values. Yet every year, upon graduation, over 90% of the class take positions with large law firms representing commercial institutions and others in the wealthiest 1% of the society that the legal profession serves well. At the same time the rest of the society, 247 million people, are either totally unable to afford legal services if they have a housing, health, employment, discrimination or family problem, or, if they are indigent, only able to have a lawyer at no cost to them for one out of every fourteen of these legal problems. I refer to this factual situation as the "Crisis in Public Interest Law."

Many of you presently at the school as well as those who have recently graduated recognized that much of fault for, and the responsibility for remedying, the lack of diversity of career choices of graduates of the law school lay within the law school itself. You questioned 1) the curriculum's reliance on commercial cases, 2) the high cost of attending the law school accompanied by approval of higher student debt 3) the second-class status of the clinical program, 4) the preference given to large firms in the hiring process by the allocation of a disproportionate amount of staff time and resources to a recruiting process dominated by these firms and held in the fall when few other legal institutions know their future legal hiring needs, and by the failure to examine in depth negative aspects of such firms, especially the many student complaints of discrimination and unfair treatment 5) the failure of the law school to challenge the "prevailing wisdom" generalizations based on flawed assumptions, such as "Work in large firms is intellectually stimulating and prestigious and one receives the best training there," "Grades are very important in obtaining any job," "There are no jobs in public interest and even if there were, most students can not afford to take them because of the amount of their debt," "The work in public interest areas is boring, routine, uncreative and unimportant", "There is no training in public interest jobs" and "It is important that you find a job and become an employee rather than going out and creating your own institution" 6) the failure to provide adequate staff and resources for students and alumni/ae looking for career advice 7) the indifference and lack of availability of most of the faculty for career and job advice.

In early 1988, I requested funds from June Thompson, the Director of Placement, for additional staff and resources needed to create a Career Development Division in the Placement Office. Because of her basic disagreement with me about the existence of a crisis and her belief that there was little need for career advice generally and public interest career counseling specifically, the request was rejected. In April, 1988, I submitted a proposal through the Dean's Office requesting that a Career Development Center outside of the Placement Office be established to offer guidance to students, staff, faculty, alumni and others on public interest and many other less accessible and less familiar careers. I know of no staff or faculty meetings called to review the proposal, to discuss career issues, to debate differences in orientation or to set goals and priorities. No written responses were ever sent about the proposal and in early August. 1988, I heard indirectly that a decision had been reached - nothing would be done.

In April, 1989, after two very unsatisfactory meetings with June Thompson, I again renewed my request to the Dean's Office for the establishment of a Career Development Center. At about the same time I proposed the creation of a Center for the Delivery of Legal Services in the Public Interest which would coordinate research and activities on the "crisis" throughout the law school, including placement, career planning, the counselling center, financial aid, and the alumni/ae office. I inquired about the status of the proposals weekly. No staff or faculty meetings were ever called to review the proposals and I received no written response.

On July 1, Robert Clark became the dean and on August 9, 1989, two days after my return from vacation I was told to make an appointment to see him. At the meeting, after I introduced myself, he informed me that although he did not know what I did, he did know that it was not cost effective to have a four day a week position devoted to public interest when only six to eight people were affected so he was eliminating my position and that of my assistant, Dana Bullwinkel. He said that in our place a full-time staff assistant would be hired who would report to June Thompson and counsel students in all areas of the law, not just public interest.

The school lacks, and seriously needs, a well-supported, well-staffed, well-publicized, career development office and a public interest career center. I regret not having been given the opportunity to establish these offices but I remain optimistic. I believe that the law school will in the near future come to grips with the crisis. I do not think that it will ignore the imbalanced and inappropriate diversion of 90% of its graduates to the representation of 1% of the population. I do not think that it will want to be considered an irrelevant factor in the search for equality of access to the justice system. I am optimistic because so many of you spoke out this fall demanding more support, resources and guidance on the many varied public interest careers. I also want to express to all of you my deepest respect for the responsible actions you have taken in support of those who want to pursue legal services for those who need them the most. Because of your untiring efforts, your organizing, your factual and reasoned responses, your requests and demands, and your persistence, you have made many aware of the concerns of students and issues that had previously gone unrecognized. You have provided encouragement not only to students here but to students at other law schools and untold lawyers and college students considering a career in public interest law.

Your involvement is not only important, it is critical and necessary. Almost all of the significant progress that Harvard Law School has made and most of the programs that have been developed in the last fifteen years in the area of public interest career planning and placement have resulted from student demands. The creation of the public interest committee by the new dean with a broad mandate to review the role of public interest within the law school is a recent example. We are truly in the midst of a crisis which will not be resolved while you are in law school. How you respond to it in law school, however, may determine how you respond to it throughout your entire legal career. Your actions this fall have given many people reason to be optimistic. Continued best wishes in your efforts.

Sincerely,
/s/Ron
Ronald W. Fox

I had the opportunity and the privilege yesterday to make a presentation entitled "Think Small: Learning About and Locating Positions in Small Law Firms" for the New York State Bar Association. About 30 who registered were "live" in the "studio" at the law office of Lauren Wachtler, the chair of the Committee on Lawyers in Transition. An additional 175 registered for the webcast

THE VIDEO OF THIS 110 MINUTE WORKSHOP IS NOW ACCESSIBLE ON-LINE HERE..

BEFORE YOU BEGIN, HOWEVER, READ BELOW!

IF YOU DECIDE TO VIEW IT, I SUGGEST YOU DO THE FOLLOWING:
1. PAUSE THE VIDEO AS IT BEGINS;
2, CLICK THE ATTACHMENT ICON AFTER "HANDOUT #1 SUGGESTED READING ";
3. DO THE READING AND THE EXERCISES; AND THEN.
4, WATCH THE VIDEO

I initially talk about how we got to this point (my 50th year in the legal profession) where the vast majority of the public are unable to obtain the services of a lawyer and the vast majority of lawyers are dissatisfied. (I quote from the recent American Bar Foundation "After the JD" press release indicating that 59% of the associates from what they refer to as the "top ten law schools" intend to leave their present large firm employers within 2 years and that those in firms of greater than 250 lawyers are less satisfied than their counterparts in smaller firms.)

I state my belief that the culprit are the law schools which funnel their students to BigLaw through on-campus interviewing and ignore those unable to be interviewed and, in the process, neglect the legal needs of the public by failing to teach skills, values and career planning and charging outrageous amounts for tuition, far greater than the worth of the services delivered. My experience in the last 25 years leads me to conclude that lawyers who are unhappy because they are unable to find employment or dissatisfied at the law firm the law school "placed" them in, will invariably suffer from a lack of self-confidence, self-respect and self-worth.

The second part of the program begins with making lawyers aware of one of the four fundamental values of the legal profession - the commitment of a lawyer to take a position consistent with his or her professional goals and personal values. I then suggest how to go about finding a position in a small firm pointing out that 66% of all lawyers in private practice are in firms of 5 or less lawyers. I advise that they choose and area of law, find out who does it, make contact with some to promote and market yourself, keep doing something and eventually accept a position likely to provide career satisfaction.

I also suggest that, as they implement this process, they might want to look at themselves as independent contractors and, rather than limiting themselves to jobs as employees, look for opportunities to work part-time for one lawyer, then one or two others until they are full time partners, associates or solos.

The program raised a number of issues. Whether or not you view the webinar, I invite you to comment and share what you think about these or any related topics: the legal needs of the public; the need for major restructuring of legal education; OCI and the funnel; dissatisfaction of lawyers in BigLaw; the lack of self-confidence of lawyers generally; the opportunities in small firms.

I HOPE YOU FIND THIS PROGRAM HELPS YOU IN YOUR SEARCH FOR CAREER SATISFACTION..

Ron Fox .

On Wednesday, September 16, 2009, from noon to 2pm (EDT), I will be doing a live webcast for the New York State Bar Association Committee on Lawyers in Transition entitled Think Small! Learning About and Locating Positions in Small Law Firms

"For many years, if not decades, there has been an intense focus on large law firms as if they represent the entire legal profession. The lack of openings within large law firms makes this a most appropriate time for lawyers and law students to realize that there are nearly unlimited options in small law firms. There are jobs; there are positions; there are openings!"

For more information and to register for this free program go to this NYSBA website..

A week ago today, I submitted the following to the New York Times with a request that it be considered for an op-ed stating, as required, that it had not been previously published. The paper's guidelines state that if you receive no telephone call or e-mail within three business days, you should assume that the paper has decided not to print the submission.With that in mind here is the comment I sent to the paper.

The Light at the End of the Funnel

By Ronald W. Fox

The theme of Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools (August 26, 2009) is the negative impact on law students of the reduced hiring by large law firms.

Twenty five years ago this week I became the Public Interest Adviser at Harvard Law School. Over the next five years, based on conversations with students and placement staff at law schools across the country, I concluded that more than half of all law students hoped to work with individuals or small entities.

Sadly, the law schools, deaf to their students' career aspirations, failed them: did not teach them to practice law; did not teach them that lawyers must be committed to taking positions consistent with their professional and personal values; and did not make them aware of the wide range of options for lawyers.

They did, however, set up a well-staffed extremely efficient on-campus interviewing program limited to large law firms, the only ones who could predict their needs two years in advance. These large firms were eager to hire and were quite successful.

In most selective law schools nearly ninety-five (95) per cent of the graduates of each class flowed through the "funnel" to jobs in those firms representing primarily large corporations.

Since I left that position twenty years ago this month, I have had the privilege of working with lawyers dissatisfied with the path they had traveled. Most hoped that the benefits of a law degree would be autonomy, intellectual stimulation, knowledge of a trade, respect, reasonable income and a life of serving others.

Instead many found themselves unhappy in their jobs but felt trapped. With few skills, little awareness of any options or how to look for unadvertised positions, they could not even begin to search for a new position until they regained their self-confidence and a sense of self-worth.

I strongly believe that much of the well-publicized malaise and dissatisfaction within the legal profession is caused by the neglect of, and the disinterest of the law schools' faculties and staff in, the careers of their students.

While the law schools in the past have been wildly successful in raising the cost of attending law school far beyond the rate of inflation often justifying increases (and the debt required to afford it) by not so subtle promises of high-paying positions in large law firms, this is no longer the case.

What the writer of the article might have suggested is that the prospects are dim, not for the students, but for the law schools, as prospective law students, aware of what some have referred to as the law school financial hoax stop applying to law schools that refuse to prepare them to practice law for a reasonable tuition.

The writer might also have looked into the connection between the law schools' neglect of their students and the unmet legal needs of the public.

Upon hearing of the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, my wife and I took our 10 year old grandson to the JFK Library and read in the family's statement about "his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all."

Much like what we are facing on the issue of healthcare, but not as well publicized, are statistics that indicate that eighty (80) percent of the legal needs of the 45,000,000 least wealthy members of the public are not met.

According to the ABA's MacCrate Report, a fundamental value of the legal profession is the commitment of lawyers to: promoting justice, fairness, and morality; helping the profession ensure legal services to those who can't pay; and enhancing the capacity of legal institutions to do justice.

But the lawyers who are law professors and deans of law schools may not be living up to this commitment to justice if they are not preparing students to represent those with middle or low income, not making students aware that two-thirds of all lawyers in private practice are in firms of 5 or less lawyers (including one-half who are solos) and not reducing the cost to attend law school so that debt load does not drive career choice.

They certainly are not eliminating the funnel, the on-campus interview program which "places" students rather than helping them to actively "choose" what interests them.

We are faced with a situation where at least one-half the law students in the country would like to provide services to individuals and have little to no interest in large law firms while millions of the public are in need of their services.

Will law schools take no action except wistfully yearn for a return to the halcyon days when they will again divert law students from representing the public, funnel students to large law firms, and continue without restraint to raise salaries and tuition, all under the banner of "law is now a business"?

Or will they incorporate the fundamental values of the legal profession and act, not based on self-interest and those of large law firms, but for the benefit of law students and the public. If they do, we can be proud of law schools and consider them partners in Senator Kennedy's "tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all."

Ronald W. Fox is the founder and primary consultant of the Center for Professional Development in the Law a/k/a Career Planning for Lawyers .

Additional Biographical Information

Since 1990, Ron has: provided individual guidance to lawyers in transition seeking positions consistent with their personal values and their professional goals; posted on his Lawyer Satisfaction Blog ; consulted to over 25 law schools, including Cornell, Boston College, Notre Dame and Northwestern; presented workshops for the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; created and facilitated the ABA Public Service Division's "Town Meeting" for the six Washington D.C. law schools; and authored Lawful Pursuit: Careers in Public Interest Law published by the ABA Law Student Division;

Ron graduated from Harvard Law School in 1963 and practiced law in a variety of settings for 20 years including two law firms he founded. In 1974 he was one of the first providers of divorce mediation and was active in developing that field until 1990. Working with bar associations, he designed and created numerous lawyer referral and other programs aimed at the delivery of legal services to low and middle income individuals. From 1983-1989 Ron worked at Harvard Law School providing career planning services to law students pursuing careers serving the legal needs of the public and also co-founded the Public Interest Committee of NALP.

Journalists of the legal media could be a force in correcting decades of law school misplacement.

I just read the most recent of the plethora of articles focusing on placement offices and what they are doing for law students during this unique "challenging" "chill" inducing situation where more and more large law firms are withdrawing from on-campus interviewing and not hiring students for summer and permanent positions.

I quickly recognized thirteen issues NOT considered in this article (to a great extent applicable to another such article.)

1, Isn't the use of the word "firm"misleading if it refers to the few firms (only 10%) with > 100 lawyers?

2. Who created the "box' that LS students have to think outside of and why?

3. Were the few firms able to enter the "box" providing positions desired by LS students.

4. Were the few firms able to enter the "box' providing positions through which students could serve legal needs of the public.

5. What are the goals, values & hopes of LS students?

6. What careers do LS students envision upon graduation?

7. What percentage of LS students want positions in regional firms, smaller firms, local firms, or government jobs,"

8. Are there summer paid positions for law students in "popular" cities in firms of < 6 lawyers? .

9. What is the process to go through to find these unadvertised positions?

10. What percentage of LS students want to go solo & not be employees?

11. Has the LS prepared the students to practice solo or in firms of < 6 lawyers?

12. When the economy improves, do LS expect to again funnel students back into the "box"?

13. Why is this concern one for the career staff? Why aren't the LSDeans and faculty being interviewed?

How many other examples can you find where the legal media ignored the fundamental issues and concerns of law students in the areas of career planning and professional development?

Ron: Would you counsel women law students toward or away from BigLaw?

Debra: In my opinion, as I said in Post 1, training, opportunity, career development and networking are far better in BigLaw, even with all its shortcomings. Women, like men, need it; it needs us.  Like every other business institution, law firms need and benefit from women among their leaders.

Ron:  I am sure that they do but the issue is the distribution of scarce resources (women lawyers) where society most needs them (and here would be the key place in which we would have a difference of opinion - more later).

Debra:  Women lawyers are not scarce resources.  My understanding is that in excess of 50% of law school grads are in fact women.  Society needs us in plenty of places, to be sure, but there are enough of us to go around and to represent more than a tiny percentage of the leadership in big firms.

Ron:  Boy do I disagree.  They are a "scarce resource."  As I have mentioned often, 95% of the women (and the men) who have graduated from "selective" law schools (not the best, just the ones difficult to get into) start out overrepresenting the 1% wealthiest of society while most of society has no access to lawyers.

Debra:  Your comment doesn't seem responsive to the scarce resources point.  Women - and, for that matter, men - may be scarce resources in the public interest sector, but that is an allocation issue, not a resource constraint.  There are plenty of lawyers in the US and plenty of law students in US law schools.

Ron: The fundamental question is what women (and men) law students envisioned and wanted to do with their legal training. I spoke to the entering class at Notre Dame Law School. I asked about their career plans. The plurality wanted to represent women and children. To coin a phrase "What Do Women Want?

What if the answer is that a majority want to represent women, children and men in human and civil rights areas such as housing, education, family, healthcare, environmental, employment discrimination, plaintiff injury and gay rights?

Debra:  I think it's sexist and incorrect to presume women have different goals than men in pursuing careers in the law.  Like men, women come in all shapes and sizes, and our goals run the gamut.  Many men no doubt want to practice in human and civil rights areas such as housing, education, family, healthcare, environmental, employment discrimination, plaintiff injury and gay rights, just as many women want instead to be business lawyers, judges, venture capitalists and what have you.  We have to take great care not to make sweeping generalizations about anyone's goals or talents based on gender, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.  I'm sorry to sound like a political tract here, but I see too much jumping from the specific to the generic where women and minorities are concerned.  It's not fair or sensible to make assumptions for these reasons - a fact of which I remind myself every time I'm tempted to disdain stay-at-home moms!  :)

Ron:  I referred to women because our original subject had been about women so I continued to use them as the subject.  You are correct that men certainly want to practice in human and civil rights. But for years I have used a form which allows clients to select a variety of areas of practice that appeal to them. I would πhave to say that more women chose family and divorce and more men chose owning a professional sports team ( - :

Debra: Might you have some adverse selection going on here? If your base group features a plurality of people who don't want to be BigLaw or business lawyers in the first place, these practice area choices may be a foregone conclusion.  Or maybe you're seeing the unsurprising results of all the pressure to choose "humane/girly" areas that many women feel from firms, law schools, parents, the whole white male power structure that permeates our society.  Or maybe I'm just a feminist baby-boomer with a real fire in her belly who doesn't want to admit that her younger sisters feel differently in larger numbers than they once did.  :)

Ron: You are probably quite correct here. Much of my efforts have had the label of "public interest" attached to them and many of those seeking my advice would likely be predisposed to such areas. Again, what I would like to see is a massive restructuring of legal education so that law students (women and men) make informed choices about what they want to do after graduation.

 For information on the genesis of these posts and on who "Debra" is, click here and read the intro to "Debra and Ron Post 1."

Ron: When I began to work as the public interest adviser at Harvard Law School in 1983, I knew that there were thousands of capable lawyers who represented those truly needing legal services, what we referred to as the underrepresented in society. Students had no way of knowing that this was the case. What I did was to create a new public interest category "private public interest law firms", contacted hundreds of such lawyers across the country, and list them in the Public Interest Directory I edited in 1986.Quite soon, Harvard law School students were choosing summer positions with them and eventually taking permanent positions.

The reason so many law students at selective law schools take positions with BigLaw is not that it is a more satisfying option for them. It is simply that BigLaw has convinced the law schools to take your position that it is just too difficult to find better placements for their students (of course it helps that the recruiters for BigLaw wine and dine and provide great resorts for lovely social events for law school career planning staff at the annual NALP conferences).

Debra: All true, but I continue to dispute the "shunted" theory, and I continue to be certain that law students without the gumption to resist wining, dining and social events as they seek to make career decisions are highly unlikely ever to make good lawyers - particularly in the public interest arena.  I also wonder how many better or more satisfying options there are - truly - for rookie lawyers.  There are plenty of rookie MBAs, college grads and other entrants to the work force also on the hunt for careers and, as we've discussed above, very few companies and even fewer nonprofits are actually hiring untrained beginners.

I don't think the fundamental educational question is what law students envision and want.  That's a personal question each individual has the right to answer for himself, but I think the fundamental educational question is what do we need, as a society, from our lawyers.

Ron: I agree.  I agree. I agree.

Debra: In my view, Karl Llewellyn had the right answer to this question.  In a 1942 speech given in the context of there being little call for lawyers and "no pervading appreciation that law skills can be mobilized to serve" in the war effort, Llewellyn spoke of the special skills of lawyers and the risks of viewing lawyering as "mere monopoly of the knowledge of law" rather than as "vision and sense of the whole, and skills in finding ways, smoothing friction, handling men in any situation, with speed, with sureness. . . .a craft of doing and getting things done with the law."  That's what I think society should demand of lawyers and what law schools should prepare lawyers to offer.

Ron: That may take only one year of law school. Take a look at the mission statement of Stanford Law School and perhaps a number of other law schools. What is a fundamental provision and one of the fundamental values of the legal profession - serve the legal needs of the public. We have had twenty years of "selective" law schools funneling 95% of their graduates to BigLaw to represent the 1% of the wealthiest of our society. I believe that is contrary to the public interest. In fact, I wonder if the government should guarantee or provide any benefit for loans that go to those attending a law school that permits that distribution of its graduates. The fact that 80% or more of those attending these law schools do not envision working for BigLaw is just an added bonus ( - :

You and I differ here on a fundamental point. You suggest that each individual is free to make his or her own choice and is solely responsible for that decision. That ignores so many of the factors that pressure law students. We all know (I think) that law schools have never tried to control their costs which have far outstripped the rise in the cost of living. We also know (I think) that the cost could immediately be reduced by one-third by eliminating the useless third year. We know that it is only BigLaw that is given access to law students as the only game that can make (or was able to make) commitments 18 months in advance. We also know that the debt burden on law students when combined with the offers of BigPay from BigLaw leads many of them to believe that BigLaw is the only "reasonable" choice. In so many ways the law school "educated" law students that BigLaw was the place to go (in part because of the indifference of faculty.

Debra:  I must argue with the notion of "funneling."  Again, anyone who allows himself to be funneled into a career option he considers unacceptable is not someone I'd bet on to be a capable, zealous advocate - in any setting.  Starting one's legal career in BigLaw is a proven method for gaining experience and developing and honing practical skills and work habits.  For some, it's a career; for others, it's a useful first step; for still others, it's no doubt a bad fit.

I remain staunch in believing that it is up to each individual to choose for himself.  I was not funneled into BigLaw by the University of Chicago Law School or by anything or anyone else.  I made a conscious, informed choice, based on my interests and skills, to be a business lawyer.  Call me coldhearted if you like, but I have no sympathy for anyone who lets himself be funneled into doing something he does not want to do.  We are in charge of our careers, our happiness and our choices; it's short-sighted and adolescent to attempt to blame someone or something else when we choose poorly.

If 80% don't want to join BigLaw, then they shouldn't.  Not only would they presumably be happier elsewhere, BigLaw would have to make some needed structural changes if the well dried up and firms actually had to work to attract new grads.

Furthermore, neither I nor my firms represented only the top 1% of the wealthiest in our society.  Our clients ran the gamut from big to small to individual, and the businesses I helped clients take public, buy, sell, expand & finance created jobs and opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people.  This is clearly in the public interest.  The law firms I worked for as a lawyer, and with as a client, also funneled (to use that term more acceptably) millions of dollars, in time & money, to a huge variety of charities and pro bono causes.  I think it is just as misguided to suggest business and the lawyers who support it are contrary to the public interest as it would be to assert that all solo practitioners are saints dedicated to furthering the public interest.

Ron:  I realize that I have made some negative generalizations about BigLaw and that there are cases where they are incorrect but I think it is fair to say that BigLaw represents BigBusiness and many small firms represent LittleIndividuals. My worldview, of course, is that it is more important to take on the cases of those with claims for violations of their human and civil rights than to work to help form successful businesses but we need both and I am simply trying to level the playing field. I appreciate that BigLaw and BigBusiness contribute to charitable causes but prefer that lawyers who wish to have the opportunity to devote 100%of their time to such efforts. (I don't need to get into the stories of BigLaw associates who described being told they could not appear at a critical hearing for a pro bono clients because of what seemed to them a meaningless chore demanded of them by a partner.)

Debra:  There are certainly partners who make pro bono involvement difficult (just as there are multitudinous associates with no interest whatsoever in pro bono work), but all of the firms I've worked for as a lawyer or with as a client have healthy pro bono programs and are, in fact, casting about for associates willing to devote time to NPO boards, fund-raising efforts, case administration, etc.  We are totally in agreement, however, that lawyers who wish to have the opportunity to devote 100% of their time to such efforts do not belong in BigLaw.

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. 

As many of you may know, in July 1992 the ABA's Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap issued what came to be called the "MacCrate Report", a withering critique of traditional law schools. In substance, the task force compiled a list of the 10 fundamental skills and the 4 fundamental values needed to be taught in order to be a trained member of the legal profession. It found that law schools teach only 2 of the skills and not well at that.

While it did not make specific findings about the deficiencies in teaching the values, it suggested more emphasis on them including a recommendation that law schools should be concerned to convey to students that the professional value of the need to "promote justice fairness and morality" is an essential ingredient of the legal profession. .

At the heart of the report is its "demand" that: law schools affirm that "education in lawyering skills and profesional values is central to the mission of law schools"; they should use effective teaching methods, and they should make students aware of the full range of opportunity for professional development in the rich variety of private practice settings.  

The response to the issuance of the report was immediate. Some law school deans opposed the findings of the report. The basic argument of the deans was that the report looked at legal education from the point of view of practitioners. There has been opposition from law school faculty for years of anything that smacks of turning their institutions into "trade schools".

However, there was a flurry of activity in support of the report. A task force was formed within the AALS to implement the MacCrate Report. Within the ABA, in February, 1994. a resolution proposed by the Illinois and Iowa state bars asking the ABA House of Delegates to support of some of the recommendations of the report passed. The ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar sent the resolution to the deans of all the ABA approved law schools and was scheduled to report to the House of Delegates at its next annual meeting. The Commission on Legal Education of the State Bar of Wisconsin proposed reforms of legal education based on the recommendations of the MacCrate Report.

All of that was in 1994. For the last 15 years, other than when I write an occasional article in praise of it, there seems to be scarce mention of the MacCrate Report.    Now while I am not a believer in conspiracy theories, I do have to mention that about 1994 the ABA decided for the first time to hire an Executive Director and the person chosen for the position was prior to that a dean of a law school who had written and spoken out against the MacCrate Report.

Even if you have not read the entire 414(!) page report, you will still be able to recognize how comprehensive the recommendations are, and how the adoption of these, 25 recommendations (which can be found on pages 330-334) would fundamentally change the way in which legal education is delivered.

As usual, comments are invited and welcome.

C.  Enhancing Professional Development During the Law School Years

1. Law schools and the practicing bar should look upon the development of lawyers as a common enterprise, recognizing that legal educators and practicing lawyers have different capacities and opportunities to impart to future lawyers the skills and values required for the competent and responsible practice of law. (Introduction, Chapter 4.D, Chapter 5.C, Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.B, Chapter 7D, Chapter 8.E and Chapter 9)

2.  Standard 301(a) regarding a law school's educational program should be amended to clarify its reference to qualifying "graduates for admission to the bar" by adding: ". . . and 40 prepare them to participate effectively in the legal profession." This would affirm that education in.lawyering skills and professional values is central to the mission of law schools and recognize the current stature of skills and values instruction. (Chapter 7.C and Chapter 7.B)

3. It is time for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to revisit generally the treatment of skills and values 4instrüction in the accreditation process in recognition of the skills and values identified in the Statement of Fundamental Lawyering Skills and Professional Values as those with which a lawyer should be familiar before assuming ultimate responsibility for a client. (Chapter 7.C, Chapter 4.D, Chapter 5.C, Chapter 7.A and Chapter 7.B)

4. In light of developments in skills instruction and the Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values, the interaction between core subjects, treated in Standard 302(a)(i), and professional skills, treated In Standard 302(a)(iii), should be revisited and clarified. The interpretation of Standard 302(a)(iii) should expressly recognize that students who expect to enter practice in a relatively unsupervised practice setting have a special need for opportunities to obtain skills instruction. (Chapter 7.C, Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.B, Chapter 4.D and Chapter 5.C)

5. Each law school faculty should determine how its school can best help its students to begin the process of acquiring the skills and values that are important in the practice of law, keeping in mind not only the resources presently available at the school, but the characteristics of effective skills instruction. (Chapter 7.3, Chapter 4.D and Chapter 5.C)

6.  To be effective, the teaching of lawyering skills and professional values should ordinarily have the following characteristics:  development of concepts and theories underlying the skills and values being taught; opportunity for student& to perform lawyering tasks with appropriate feedback and self-evaluation; reflective evaluation of the students' performance by a qualified assessor. (Chapter 7.3 and Chapter 4.D)

7.  The Interpretation to Standard 201(a) relating to the self-study process should require law schools to evaluate their programs in the light of Standard 301(a) and (c) and should refer to the Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values and the literature analyzing the roles and competencies of lawyers, (Chapter 7.C, Chapter 7.8 and Chapter 4.D)

8.  Each law school should undertake a study to determine which of the skills and values described in the Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values are presently being taught in its curriculum and develop a coherent agenda of skills instruction not limited to the skills of "legal analysis and reasoning," "legal research," "writing" and "litigation." (Chapter 7.3, Chapter 7.C and Chapter 4.D)

9. Law schools should identify and describe in their course catalogs the skills and values content of their courses and make this information available to students for use in selecting courses. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 6.8 and Chapter 4.D)

10, The Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values should be made available to all entering law students to inform them about the skills and values they will be expected to possess as lawyers and to help them seek appropriate educational opportunities in law school, in work experience and in continuing legal education. (Chapter 4.D, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6,8)

11. Law students should be advised with respect to course selection to consider what opportunities may or may not be available to them after law school to develop the skills and competencies they will need in practice. (Chapter 2, Chapter 6 and Chapter 7.8)

12. Law schools should continue to emphasize the teaching of the skills of "legal analysis and reasoning" and "legal research," as described in the Statement of Skills and Values, through a wide variety of instructional modes, including well-structured clinical programs. (Chapter 7.3 and Chapter 4.D)

13. Law schools should be encouraged to develop or expand instruction in such areas as "problem solving," "factual investigation," "communication," "counseling," "negotiation" and "litigation," recognizing that methods have been developed for teaching law students skills previously considered learnable only through post-graduation experience in practice. (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7,8 and Chapter 5.C)

14.  In view of the widely held perception that new lawyers today are deficient in writing skills, further concerted effort should be made in law schools and in programs of transition education after law school to teach writing at a better level than is now generally done. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 7.C, Chapter 8.E and Appendix B)

15.  Law schools through well-structured clinical programs should help students understand the importance of the skill of "organization and management of legal work," although it will remain for the first employer or mentor to translate that awareness into a functioning reality through providing supervised practice experience. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 7.D, Chapter 8.E and Chapter SC)

 16.  Law schools should play an important role in developing the skill of "recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas" and in placing these issues in an organized conceptual framework, although the exposure in law school clinical programs or classrooms is necessarily very limited compared to the variety and complexity of the dilemmas presented in practice. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 7.D, Chapter S.E and Chapter 5.C)

17. Law schools should stress in their teaching that examination of the fundamental values of the profession" is as important in preparing for professional practice as acquisition of substantive knowledge. (Chapter 7.A and Chapter 5.C)

18. The practicing bar should be assiduous in discharging its responsibilities for inculcating professional values through contact with students in part-time work and summer jobs and as colleagues or mentors in the early years of practice. (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.D and Chapter 5.0)

19. Law.school deans, professors, administrators and staff should be concerned to. convey to students that the professional value of the need to "promote justice, fairness and morality" is an essential ingredient of the legal profession; the practicing bar should be concerned to impress on students that success in the practice of law is not measured by financial rewards alone, but by a lawyer's commitment to a just, fair and moral society. (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.D and Chapter 5.C)

20.  Law schools and the organized bar should work together to make law students aware of the full range of opportunity for professional development in the rich variety of private practice settings, in panels for prepaid and group legal services, in positions in the public, sector, in staff counsel's offices in corporations and other organizations, and in the practice of public interest law in all its dimensions, as well as of the profession's expectation that all lawyers will fulfill their responsibilities to the public and support pro bono legal services for those who cannot afford a lawyer. (Chapter 2, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.8)

21.  Law schools and employers of law students should work together to inject educational value into any work experience during the law school years, developing models for strengthening the educational content of part-time employment and developing workshops offered at the beginning of the summer clerkship season to support the educational aspects of summer employment. (Chapter 7.D)

22.  Since the employment marketplace is a crucial forum in which the practicing bar transmits its values to law students, members of the bar who recruit, interview, and hire should convey to students, both by words and by their decisions, the importance they place on a student's having had exposure to a broad range of skills and values instruction, including clinical courses, (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.D and Appendix B)

 23. The National Association of Law Placement (NALP) should be asked by the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to add to NALP's annual employer questionnaire questions designed to elicit information  pertaining to the educational quality of law office summer programs. (Chapter 7.D)

24.  Law schools should assign primary responsibility for instruction in professional skills and values to permanent full-time faculty who can devote the time and expertise to teaching and developing new methods of teaching skills to law students. In addition, law schools should continue to make appropriate use of skilled and experienced practicing lawyers and judges in professional skills and values instruction with guidance, structure, supervision and evaluation of these adjunct faculty by full-time teachers. (Chapter 7.8)

25.  There should be faculty involvement in the design, supervision and evaluation of every program of extern experience, and accreditation standards should emphasize the critical importance of faculty responsibility for overseeing extern programs. (Chapter 7.B and Chapter 8)

When the U.S. News & World Report issued its ranking of law schools in March, 1990, I drafted a letter criticizing one major defect in its analysis; i.e., failing to include as a criterion the extent to which the law school ensures that its graduates fulfill the legal profession's obligation to serve the legal needs of the public. I never sent the letter but, as I reread it, I was not surprised as I realized that most of it was still relevant and current. I decided to post it with edits such as raising the starting salary at BigLaw from $70,000. I reconsidered because I thought that you might want to be aware of how much change is needed in the education provided by law schools and how little progress has been made in the last 20 years. 

To what extent does your rating chart perpetuate or create the crisis in public interest law? To what extent will schools try to conform to your criteria? To what extent will students in colleges choose law schools based on the criteria which you use? To what extent will law schools continue to encourage the kind of results that will be defined as success?

If the criteria of the best law school is the one carrying out its responsibility to the public to ensure that its graduates fulfill the obligation to serve the legal needs of the public, the order may have to be reversed. We can't be saying that society won.

Studies, statements and articles all indicate that anywhere from ninety to ninety-seven percent of the public cannot afford legal services for their housing, health, employment,   education or family legal problems. We are left at the present time with a situation best described by Lloyd Cutler, in 1980, and still  appropriate, when he said, "The rich who pay our (lawyer) fees are less than 1% of our fellow citizens, but they get at least 95% of our time. The disadvantaged we serve for nothing are perhaps 20-25% of the population   and get at most 5% of our  time. The remaining 75% cannot afford to consult us and get virtually none of our time."

A recent ABA study found that legal services and all pro bono programs provide representation to the disadvantaged in only one of every fourteen of their problems.   THE NET RESULT IS THAT THE LEGAL SYSTEM SERVES WELL ONLY THE EQUIVALENT OF ABOUT SIX MILLION PEOPLE AND LEAVES OUT OF THE JUSTICE SYSTEM ABOUT 244,000,000. As Derek Bok noted in 1982, "The blunt inexcusable fact is that this nation, which prides itself on efficiency and justice, has developed a legal system that is the most expensive in the world, yet cannot manage to protect the rights of most of its citizens."

There is a vast need for lawyers in this society to represent the millions unable to afford to seek economic or social justice. I usually equate the word "success' as a triumph or a victory. If that is your intention, are you implying that the schools with the highest rating have the most victories? If so, it is important to know who won and perhaps find out who lost.

In the explanation of "Placement" in your March 19, 1990, edition you state, "To the student, the value of a professional degree often is determined by its worth on the job market." Some describe this as the ability to be able to go someplace that is good. Others think of a professional school as a place to go to become good. For many that  I met in the years that I directed  public interest career planning at Harvard Law School,     the value  of the degree is the skills and knowledge they obtained enabling them to find work with significant responsibility and the opportunity to do something to better   society, to solve some of its terrible problems, to help people truly needing legal services who without them would not have access to the legal system, to obtain a feeling of self-worth, to find satisfaction, to be part of the movement for social and economic justice,  while at the same time having a significant amount of control and autonomy in making   decisions about matters that are important to their lives.

Are there many law students who feel this way - who would like to use their legal education to help individuals in the personal plight problems they face in their daily lives,  in health, housing, education, employment, family and children, environment and discrimination? In a 1988 Harvard Law School survey students were asked why they came to law school.  The responses mentioned most frequently (40%) were intellectual stimulation and the pursuit of public service careers. My independent research indicated that 40% of each class wanted to pursue public interest careers and 40% did in fact attend public interest workshops and/or devote substantial time to these areas either during the  summer or in a clinical course.   What they want from the law school is interested, experienced, involved and concerned faculty, staff, alumni/ae who will support them in their desire to pursue careers serving the legal needs of the public generally and specifically, provide them with individual career and job guidance.

During the 80's a small number of employers - large law firms - wooed and "won" the services of almost 90% of those law students graduating from the most selective law schools. After a first year in which students are consumed with learning to think like a lawyer, they often find a position for the first summer and immediately upon the return to law school are faced with the on-campus interviewing process in which a number of very large law firms, representing a tiny percentage of those in our society, spend millions of dollars and inundate law schools with interviewers overwhelming and often, in fact, becoming the Placement system at most of these schools. The appearance on the campus of this small number of employers, not at all representative of the wide range of legal employers, often convinced students that they represented the world of law practice.

Because these firms monopolized the visible system and offered large sums of money, professional brochures and Broadway tickets, students, without the life experience needed to make a sophisticated analysis of their real financial needs or how to balance issues of income with career goals and life satisfaction, were often convinced that because they were in debt for `lots of money' they needed to earn lots of money.  Many students twisted, distorted and give up their beliefs, values and ideals to fit the perceived needs of these employers. Students who did not believe all that was being presented to them were not being provided with sufficient information about other options. 

Public Interest and small firms were left out of the hiring process. Those who found out were astounded to learn that only 15% of those who practiced law were in law firms with 10 or more lawyers and that more than half of all practicing lawyers are sole practitioners. Most students were pressured by forces all around them, faculty, staff, other students, family and friends to take jobs with these employers. The higher the salary the greater the victory.

A week before graduation, Lillian came in to see me and said "Ron, would you do me a    favor. If you see me with my parents at the graduation reception, would you please sit down and explain to them that it is acceptable for a Harvard Law School student to graduate and not have a job? Lillian knew that she wanted to work on Capitol Hill and that the only way to get a position there was to immediately respond to the notices. To do so, you had to be living in DC which she did after graduation and did find a position in October. The last I knew she was involved on the national level with issues of significant concern to women. Having not found her position until four months after graduation, she would be an example of a placement "failure".

After being courted by these firms in the fall of their second year, the decision is made on December 15. They then take the job in the summer and, in the boom times, ninety percent would return with offers of permanent employment. There is then the opportunity to interview in the fall of the third year. About half of the students accepted the offer from the summer employer and another half took offers from another firm they interviewed. For most students, their involvement with law school ends as they begin their second year.

In a recent recommendation for someone who also realized that the kind of position he wanted would not be available until after he graduated, I wrote "It is hard to imagine the stress involved in facing your peers every day - almost all of whom are "winners" - they struggled to get into the "best" law school and have not "won the prize" - $70,000 to start at the biggest firm in . . (select a city).  Many question your abilities and value when you don't have (or it is that you can't get?) a job."

Every year only about 5% of the graduates took public interest positions similar to the situation during the past decade at most highly selective law schools - over 90% of each  graduating class taking positions, either immediately or after a judicial clerkship, with large law firms representing commercial institutions - 1% of the population.

Is this a successful law school in the placement area? That depends on what the role of the law school is. If its goal is to survive financially, then channeling students to large  firms based on earned income potential and wealthy and contributing alumni/ae is a sign of success. If the goal is to provide equal access to the justice system, it has lost. If the goal is to provide a legal training and education for the students to enable them to find satisfaction in their careers, it has lost.

I would argue that the best school may be the school that is the most concerned and has the most substantial interest in what students do with their legal education - the one that provides students with the best preparation to take positions from which they will derive satisfaction - the one that recognizes the incredible dissatisfaction of its alumni/ae and the depth of the anguish of so many who feel that their careers and their lives are devoted to trivial pursuits. I would argue that the best law school is the one that takes most seriously its responsibility to provide lawyers to the society in such a way that there is equal access to the justice system - the one that says that the present situation in which almost all of this society cannot afford legal services is an abomination and a tragedy - the one that says that the responsibility for this lies primarily in the hands of the law schools and that they need to do all within their power to ensure that careers in human services, public interest and government are a realistic possibility for all those students who seek them.

The role of the law schools and the legal profession in this crisis is to state that there primary obligation is to the students and society - to let students and alumni/ae know that there are innumerable reasonable alternative options and to stop consciously or unconsciously acting as though their primary obligation is to serve the needs of the large law firms.

There needs to be strong support for and encouragement for students early in the first year to use the counseling and other services in the Career Services office. A student can not know about his or her options in the world of the practice of law without guidance. Many students are not interested in working for large businesses in large cities and it is not in the society's best interests that they all do so. Very little in the way of career planning is done in the fall when it is needed.   Time can only be devoted to serving the true needs of the large firms and what "appeared" to be the desires of the students. Very  few, of course, had thought when they came to law school with a vision of sitting in a library for two years focused on Count 24 of the complaint in real estate deal gone sour. The staff had very little time and very little resources and very little support from the law school faculty and deans. What they do is to sacrifice the opportunity to provide meaningful career planning services.

There should be an examination of a student's  interests, skills, values and options before the search for a summer job begins - the  opportunity to discover organizations, the ones most appropriate for them, in -small towns, in small law firms, in many small public interest and government agencies. In the fall of the second year students would begin the process by evaluating the previous summer's experience. All on-campus interviewing would be moved to a time later in the academic year. No one law school which wants to improve its ranking in your survey would do so because the students at other schools would get the jobs being offered by those employers leading to a lower "score"  although  it would give government, public interest and other small law firms the opportunity to interview since the present system excludes those not aware of their hiring needs one year in advance. Without change the recruiting system will continue to be operated by and for the benefit of the large law firms.

The law school must also take responsibility for the fact that many generalizations about    law  practice remain  unchallenged  and that very little support is given to the study of the realities of the practice of law,   Commonly heard statements include "Work in large firms is intellectually stimulating and important and one receives the best training there",   "Grades are very important in obtaining a job", "There are no  jobs  in public interest and even if there were, most students can not afford to take them because of the amount of their debt", "The work in public interest areas is boring, routine, uncreative and unimportant", "There is no training in public interest jobs" and "It is important that you find a job and become employee rather than going out and creating your own institution", Every one of these statements contains flaws. Each deserves to be talked about and treated with the respect given to cases in the classroom.

At least one study and the perception of students at many law schools is that the faculty role in this area can best be described as mostly indifference and lack of concern or interest in what students do after law school. I cannot recall one time in my six years that   a member of the faculty contacted me for any public interest career information. Not until the faculty make the lack of diversity in law graduates' career choices and the lack of access of the public to the legal system priorities is there likely to be a substantive change within the law schools.

Law schools have an obligation to do all within its power to help make careers in public service a reality for those wanting them. The law school has a stake in the career decisions and the career paths of its students, graduates and alumni/ae to the students, the legal profession and to society. If a substantial number of its graduates are dissatisfied about their careers and if a substantial proportion of the legal profession is failing to provide services to nearly ninety five per cent of the population, if no one goes to work helping those with low and moderate income with the legal problems they face in their daily lives, such as health, housing, education and family law, the law school is failing in a major aspect of its mission and is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the search for equal access to the justice system and the search for social and economic justice.

If the criteria of the best law school is the one that is providing the training and education for its graduates sufficient to allow them to find professional fulfillment, there may be no successes. It is difficult to fully relate the depths of the crisis. Every day for the last six  years I heard from 1) frustrated students facing pressure from peers, the law school, financial institutions, family and society in general who wanted to use their legal education to help those in desperate need of legal services (who did not do so on graduation), 2) anguished alumni/ae practicing law in a corporate law firm wanting to leave, doing work that was, at best, boring and unsatisfying, and at worst, offensive and contrary to their deepest beliefs, not understanding how they ended up in this position wanting to know how they could make a transition into a public interest, human services or government position, or 3) an overworked and underpaid lawyer with a public interest law organization providing legal services to a  terribly underrepresented group of  people in an area of basic human necessities like housing or health asking if there were  any students available to work for two months in the summer to alleviate some of the strain.

A substantial number of practicing lawyers are totally dissatisfied with their work, their profession and their lives. A recent ABA survey found that 66% of all practicing lawyers would change jobs if they had a reasonable alternative option. I recently spoke at a program sponsored by the Massachusetts Law School Consortium and the Massachusetts Bar Association on "Changing Directions: Career Options for Lawyers".    A staff person for the MBA stated that she had never had so many telephone inquiries about a panel. Many were turned away  because the program  was sold  out a week  efore the program and over 150  showed up to find out how to search for "alternative positions for lawyers both within the legal profession and in other fields,"

The law school also has an obligation to respond to the voices of its dissatisfied and disillusioned alumni/ae and to provide more resources such as the formation of a public interest  alumni/ae committee which  could create a public interest career advisors network. With such assistance many would be made aware of public interest options and some would take them and find satisfaction in the law rather then leaving it,

At the present time, the current slump in the economy has led to fewer large firm employers visiting schools and fewer positions. This should not be seen as a crisis.       The crisis occurred in the 80's in the days of placement success as described in the article.

The present situation is an opportune time to respond to the crisis and many law schools  are doing so. Many have created "Career Services Offices" to replace the "Placement Office" - offices where the emphasis is on the students, their hopes, their visions and their dreams of how they want to use their legal education. Law schools are creating joint task forces including not just the career services staff but deans, faculty, other staff, students and alumni/ae to talk and create and implement programs to support the students pursuing public interest opportunities. Programs that make students aware of over 100 exciting and rewarding options they have - public interest law centers, legal services,   district attorneys, small law firms that represent individuals in "personal plight" matters, public interest advocacy groups where there are no lawyers and the knowledge that one   does not have to become an employee - that one can establish a practice or a non-profit organization. Programs that provide them with information about all these options,   programs that inform them about how to choose and search for opportunities appropriate  for them rather than relying on being "placed" in ones that are not, clinical opportunities to practice law while they are in law school,  and sufficient staff to ensure that they can have meaningful individual guidance. Programs that teach and educate students that it is not enough to be able to go someplace that is good. Law school should be seen as a place where you receive an education in order to become good.