Gavin, your reaction was exactly the same as mine when I first read Esther's post. Considering the long line of law school graduates struggling to vie for the few coveted spots in big law factories, does the decision not to join one make any bit of a difference in the broader scheme of things? Hitler analogies aside, if I decline to put my money in Exxon stock because of their exploitative practices, wouldn't another investor jump at the opportunity to buy? Perhaps the better approach would be to buy the stock and then pressure the company to change its practices from the inside. Although I'd hesitate to mislabel your approach "someone has to do it, so why not me?" since I think that's downright reductionist, your idea does raise some interesting points.

But I do have two disagreements with your approach. First, even if choosing to work at a law firm over the next guy makes no difference to the net level of "evil" in the world, the situation would certainly be different if the person taking the firm job ended up feeling disillusioned, dirtied and guilty as a result. I don't think anyone rationalizes the decision to work at a firm in the way you've described, but IF they did ("I don't want to work at a firm but I'll do it cause there'll be no difference if I don't"), there certainly would be an extra cost to your utilitarian calculation in the form of attorneys miserable with what they do. There would be less evil in the world, I think, if people who didn't want to work at firms chose not to while leaving the jobs for those that did.

Secondly, I think your approach in 'changing the law firm' from the inside may be futile if the "evil" we attribute to the law firm is endemic to what the law firm IS and DOES. While this is an extreme example, it would be silly for a person who is fervently opposed to capital punishment to become an executioner with the goal of "changing the system from the inside." In the same way that killing is a function of the executioner's job, perhaps the evil we see in law firms is simply within the nature of the law firm itself.

Obviously, it would be necessary to tease out what we mean when we say "evil," but taking Leslie's view into account, if representing big corporations is what a law firm does and that in itself is an evil, what exactly is there left to change?

Btw, Gavin, why do all of your posts get a special box around them?

-- YoungKim - 28 Feb 2009