From the Classroom to the Firm

-- By AmandaHungerford - 11 Feb 2008

Introduction

Nine months after graduating from CLS, 78.3% of students are employed by a law firm, while only 4.3% work in public interest. But why such dramatic flocking to the firms? The pay is better, but the hours are worse, the work is more tedious, and it could be years before young associates see the inside of a courtroom.

One thing driving the masses to Big Law is three years of acculturation. From the first day of law school students are assimilated into firm culture. Thurman Arnold wrote of organizations that “the environment puts great pressure on [] individuals to conform to what is expected of them in terms both of practical results and the representation of sentimental ideals.” (350) So, too, do law schools put pressure on students to conform to firm culture.

What follows is a functional analysis of law school. For simplicity’s sake I have broken the study into two discrete categories (actions and beliefs), although I realize in practice these categories often have overlapping effects.

Actions

Law school is adept at shaping the way students act. Those actions will become habits that students continue once they reach Big Law.

The Curve

The curve is one of the first mechanisms to influence new students’ thoughts and behavior. Through it, students are effectively told they will no longer be measured by merely their own merits, but also by the merits of others. In subtle ways the curve thus affects students’ interactions with others. Suddenly, helping fellow students becomes much less attractive, because by doing so you may decrease your own odds of success.

The you-against-others mode of behavior will become a large part of firm culture, too. With only a few partner positions available, associates have an incentive to look out for themselves. This mentality will also play a role in associates’ legal practice, since lawyers are judged not only on the strengths of their own case, but also on the weaknesses of their opponents’.

Sacrificing Relationships

ILs quickly find that law school’s pace is frenetic, and the work all-consuming. It doesn’t have to be that way. Given that law schools must have a (notoriously undemanding) third year, the IL year could be relaxed, and the workload spread out more evenly. Yet, as suggested by Adam Carlis, having little free time in law school gets students accustomed to having little free time when they go to firms. By then, sacrificing personal relationships for Big Law will be the norm.

Few people would willingly sign up for a lifetime of work, so the sacrifice is always framed as a temporary one: it’ll just be like this until IL is over; then, until law school is over; then, until I make partner. Young lawyers become ingrained in choosing work over relationships before they realize what is happening.

Beliefs

In order to fully assimilate to firm life, it is necessary to not only change student’s actions, but also the beliefs that inform those actions. The indoctrination begins early, even before the first class is held.

The Application Process

In my experience, many students choose law schools based in large part on the US News rankings. Picking a law school based on ranking is easy: someone has already done all the work for you. US News has complex mathematical formulas to prove their work is objective, so why would anyone pick the #10 school when #5 is clearly better?

But just as students identify schools via their relevant numbers, so, too, will they come to identify themselves by those numbers. Again, this indoctrination starts with the application process. When applying to law schools, only two numbers matter: GPA and LSAT. Firms will later reinforce that identification with numbers, since firms mainly care about the applicant’s GPA. All the things that used to define a person (hobbies, etc) no longer matter.

This belief – that numbers define us – is crucial to being integrated into firm life. That is because the one thing firms hold over many graduating students is another number: salary. If firms can get students to judge their self-worth by how much money they make, then they have a crucial advantage in getting those students to work for them despite all of the obvious drawbacks.

The Culture of Spending

Students are willing to endure the drudgery of the week by looking forward to the debauchery of the weekend. Come Thursday, students flock to Bar Review (conveniently sponsored by CLS) to spend their money, get drunk, and forget their lives. This ritual becomes habit, and when new associates finish their first horrible week at Big Law, they know exactly how to forget their troubles.

The lesson students take away is that things can make up for what is missing in their life. We can already see the beginning of this with student attendance at firm receptions. While these receptions are boring, people go anyway because they will get things (food, alcohol, and toys). This reasoning will eventually carry itself into many students’ career choice. While working for a firm will be dull, people choose to do so anyway because they will get lots of money, which they can use to buy even more food, alcohol, and toys.

Concluding Thoughts

While some law students do enter CLS planning to work for a big firm and never look back, many more come in with vague plans about “doing good” while “supporting themselves.” By the end of law school, however, the vast majority of people will have agreed to work for a firm. Many will likely find they have ended up in Big Law not because of some purposeful path they set out on, but rather because they got swept along in the tide of CLS. It was easy; moreover, it was what their law school experience was designed to have them do.

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