Lawyer Satisfaction Blog

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.

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?
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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

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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.

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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.

 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.

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: 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:  I'd like to see the data supporting that statement, which seems unlikely to me.  Even if you're correct about that, however, there are plenty of lawyers in the US and plenty of law students in US law schools.  Different societal incentives - like decent paychecks, prestige, availability of training, etc. - would benefit public interest law positions just as they would benefit teachers, social workers, day care workers, nurses and every other underappreciated career in our overly money-focused society.  But the choice of where to devote one's career efforts remains, thankfully, a personal one.  Requiring anyone to pursue a career path he does not want to pursue is as wrong and short-sighted as barring him from going after one he does want to pursue.

Ron: I think that the law students/lawyers that I know most intimately are those that graduated from law school since 1986. From 1984 to 1994 I spoke to individual students, made presentations to classes of students, spoke at student conferences, worked with NALP career planners and spoke to faculty at law schools. There is no doubt in my mind that upwards of 80% of law students at the selective law schools had no interest in working in BigLaw.  Much of what you criticize associates for can be attributed to the reality that so many of them never wanted to be there in the first place.

Debra:  Then what on earth were they doing there?  Who held a gun to their heads?  If they didn't want to be there, it was incumbent on them to be elsewhere or to make the best of the situation in which they put themselves, not to whine about having made a poor choice.  (I feel compelled to note as well that they were happy enough to collect their outsized paychecks.)

Why would BigLaw have any responsibility whatsoever to tailor itself to the whims of a bunch of highly paid whiners without either the long-term commitment to the practice or the brains, courage and initiative to choose what they actually wanted in the first place?

Ron: That is the subject of my book and many others. The fault begins with the deficient education system (public primarily) which has failed miserable in teaching critical thinking but has done a magnificent job in training kids to be lemmings. Just do what you are told to do to get to the best college, do the best to get to the best law school, do the best to get to the best law firm. Hold on, I hate it here, what happened?

Debra: All I can say here - and I say it with all due respect - is baloney.  I remain certain that anyone without the strength of character, initiative, critical thinking skills and balls to make his or her own decisions will never make a good lawyer - regardless of where he or she starts out after law school.  My law school classmates seemed to have no trouble thinking for themselves 30 years ago, and I have reason to believe (based on my own two 20-something children and the majority of their friends) that young people are no less capable of doing so today.

Ron:  My book, Lawful Pursuit, Careers in Public Interest Law, is a guide on how to avoid those aspects of law school that will pressure you into a job in BigLaw and divert you from what you hoped to do when you entered law school. Those aspects include no mission of the law school, no teaching of skills, no teaching of values, no teaching of career planning, a massive on-campus interview program, no feedback about the dissatisfaction of alumni/ae in BigLaw and high debt.

Debra: This is great.  I'm sure your book is very helpful.  To suggest, however, that the current system is some sort of evil cabal seeking to swallow innocents who have no opportunity to escape its clutches is disrespectful to the intelligence and free will of law students.

Obviously, the BigLaw approach is not for everyone, but it's specious, I think, for anyone to slam BigLaw for its failure to babysit with people unwilling to do what it takes to succeed there.  And, honestly?  It wasn't that hard.  With a true interest in the work and a zeal to learn, improve and excel, it was quite doable, as well as highly rewarding and satisfying, even for a woman like me who was (and is) also a wife and the mother of two kids.

Ron: While there were some for which this was a good choice, over the years there were surveys and articles about the extraordinary high degree of dissatisfaction of associates in BigLaw.

Debra:  You know the media - it loves a negative story more than a positive story every time.  In addition, survey results can easily be skewed by the nature of the questions asked.  There is always room for improvement in any institutional setting.

It is also a characteristic of post-baby-boomer generations that they are not willing to work as hard as baby boomers.  This is a healthy thing in many ways, but the generational differences in BigLaw between management and new hires remain large and largely unresolved.  I've worked with hundreds of people who, all things considered, were - and are - content with their BigLaw choice.  The overall discontent may well be overstated, however virulent in any individual person.  Even if it's not overstated, it would hardly be surprising, would it, if you're correct about 80% of post-86 LS grads not wanting to be in big firms in the first place (and, I guess, there just for the money).

Ron: I am confident restating that the percentage of those deeply unhappy at BigLaw has been extraordinarily high over the last two decades (and probably higher today during the current economic downturn.) I also agree with you that there are probably many who are content at BigLaw but, as you have said, it's not about them. It's about the needs of society. Fortunately, there is a coincidence and overlap of those who are dissatisfied and those who want to help deliver legal services to the public.

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. Does any law school ask them (or the men)? Does any law school care? 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 question the notion that a plurality of law students have the career goals you've described.  They may say they want to represent women and children (although that surprises me too), but I doubt they mean in the direct representation way you've outlined.  If they do, they're not likely to find satisfaction because that's a very romantic - and quixotic - notion of how to improve the lot of women and children in the world.

Ron: And yet that's the career path that thousands of lawyers around the country have followed. In fact, I was a divorce lawyer from 1970 to 1990 but thought that the adversary system was a totally inappropriate way of handling a divorce so in the mid-70's we started something called divorce mediation. Others in legal services and in organizations have taken on major reform in areas such as gay marriage.

Debra:  It's a fine career path for people who have developed the necessary judgment, perspective and experience to do it capably.  My question is where you think new lawyers will develop those qualities and gain that experience.  On the job without supervision?  Yikes!

The creation of jobs, the formulation and implementation of sensible and beneficial education, healthcare, housing, daycare, environmental and other policies, and the zealous representation of victims of civil rights abuses cannot be effectively undertaken by green law school grads with no experience of business, economics, the means of production or the mechanics of capital.

Moreover, while many of the lawyers who have followed this career path have undoubtedly helped individuals, which is great, I am certain that to effect lasting reform, it's necessary to have lawyers working systemically in addition to one plaintiff/client at a time.

Ron: That is correct so much of what I have written is focused on the deficiencies of legal education.  I urge is the restructuring of legal education so that students are taught by qualified instructors and perform the skills they need during law school. With that training, they will have the confidence (that few graduates have) to enable them to begin to look for mentors and support to represent individuals on graduation.

Debra:  No disagreement here.  Law schools could do a much better job.  But whether it's apprenticeship of the kind you describe or of the BigLaw variety, new grads must still be exposed to a variety of clients, colleagues, cases, opinions & practical experiences in order to develop the judgment that characterizes all capable practitioners.

BigLaw is an obvious and proven place to gain this exposure, as we've discussed.  With initiative and patience, new grads could, I'm sure, also develop it elsewhere.  I have my doubts, however, that new grads without enough initiative to make good choices for themselves or to take advantage of what BigLaw has to offer them in this regard will somehow manage to do what it takes to research, identify, seek and find it in the big outside world.

Law schools could do a much better job of grounding students with this sort of knowledge, but they can't provide the perspective and judgment that come from practical experience with a variety of business clients and legal and financial colleagues.  Neither can practicing solo.  Small firms that do sophisticated legal work and large firms are the only places I know of where this kind of experience is readily available to anyone who wants - and is willing to do what it takes - to grab it.

Ron:  With the media laser focus on what happens in BigLaw, what do we really know about the abilities of the hundreds of thousands who practice in firms of 5 or less lawyers?

Debra:  Speaking from the standpoint of a business client, we have neither the time nor the money nor the inclination to interview, discern the relative skills of, or try out any of these thousands.  If they can find a way to demonstrate their fitness and suitability to handle our matters - as the "BigLaw refugee" firms can and do - we'll hire them, but otherwise we don't need them.  Even if they're superior to BigLaw, which has not been my experience, the cost-benefit ratio of determining that is out of whack for a business client.  Going with BigLaw's proven track record for delivering results and negotiating mutually beneficial cost & service arrangements with them is the efficient, cost-effective choice, as well as the path of least resistance.

From the standpoint of a new LS grad, how is he going to determine outside the ranks of BigLaw where the mentoring and training will be first-rate and where it will falter?  Say what you will about BigLaw, virtually no one who succeeds and remains in that environment is a poor lawyer with only one area of experience.  The same cannot be said of every lawyer practicing on his own.  It would be a craps shoot to pick a mentor from among those ranks.

Let's not forget, too, that slick ambulance chasers do as much to harm the reputation of the profession as smug BigLaw fatcats - and there are more of the former.  A knee-jerk bias against BigLaw is as flawed as a knee-jerk bias for it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron:  I wonder how that can be verified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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