I Won't Feel Helpless

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ll feel helpless when it’s all over anyways. Three years and 130K. I’d pay more if they charged it.

Law school is my alternative to feeling helpless. I came to law school hoping to find power, to morph words and logic into positive social change, to protect liberties and human rights with discourse instead of death. How many lives can I impact as a lawyer? It could be thousands, hundreds, or just one person. Maybe I won’t help anyone at all. Maybe I’m just buying an overpriced opportunity to fail. My willingness to pay still stands.

-- ChristopherBuerger - 18 Jan 2008

I think you hit the nail on the head, Chris. I feel exactly the same way.

-- JuliaS - 20 Jan 2008

Chris and Julia: In regards to helping people (in the way that you seem to be describing it), just remember: the context (whether in a firm or elsewhere) in which you work does not mean as much as you may think it does. Others may have different opinions about this, but my (admittedly Midwestern) experience has shown that many firms encourage associates to donate a certain number (50 comes to mind) of pro bono hours annually to the project and client of their choice. Based on the information I’ve received, associates who go beyond the 50 hours are applauded. In addition, I know several attorneys who donate time outside of the work environment to various social programs, including child-focused organizations that are involved in juvenile diversion and child advocacy. Attorneys who have ongoing work experience at firms and who donate time to these types of programs add another voice and oftentimes much-appreciated perspective to the work of those who are working from within the programs themselves. Just make sure that wherever you work, you’re left with the time and energy to do this (minimum billable hours requirements can catch up with you, depending on just how many hours we’re talking about). I’d love to hear from you this coming fall what you did this summer and how you felt about it. Best wishes.

-- BarbPitman - 21 Jan 2008

I have always worried about these "pro bono" hours and really how much "help" they actually provide. If you spend 3,000 hours during year 1 defending GE in toxic tort suits and then donate 50 hours to a non-profit doing breast cancer awareness, I imagine your efforts would have caused more cancer than they prevented. I know this is a pretty crude calculation, but if you have, say 3,000 hours in a given year to work, I just can't see how 50 (or even 150) of them dedicated to "helping people" could counteract the thousands spent defending the status quo.

They may "help" you, but making you feel good/human/etc., but I am just not sure they actually "help others" when all is said and done.

-- AdamCarlis - 21 Jan 2008

Adam, Thanks for your point. Keep in mind that I referred to a combination of both pro bono work within the firm structure and outside work in addition to firm commitments. If you are just looking at official firm sponsored pro bono hours, then I can understand your perspective. But if you approach these efforts from more than just that one angle, you can effect a more balanced approach to practicing law. Secondly, several of the attorneys I know do not do the type of work to which you refer -- plenty of corporate and municipal clients need real estate contracts, bond financings, bankruptcy assistance, etc. In my opinion, it's best not to look at options solely in black-and-white terms -- as I just mentioned, there are plenty of non-litigious ways to be involved in the private practice legal community that don't present the type of ethical dilemma to which you refer. The choice of exactly what you do and how you do it is more yours than I think you are consciously admitting or realizing. (Again, my perspective is Midwest big firm, but I still think that my point of view is applicable, perhaps in a modified form, to other geographic areas and firm structures.) Thanks for your input -- keep it coming if you still think there's something I've missed (I appreciate the learning experience!), and I'd love to hear from others on this as well.

-- BarbPitman - 21 Jan 2008

Adam, wouldn't it make sense to ask why someone who considers it socially harmful to defend toxic torts actions on behalf of GE--as you and I both happen to do--would be caught doing it for even one hour? Why should any lawyer, under all but the most exigent possible circumstances (the "last lawyer in town" situations), ever be doing work she thinks is unethical or socially harmful? No matter what anyone else thinks, if you have a license to practice you are permitted to take clients according to your own view of what constitutes justice. There isn't the slightest reason why--no matter your inclination to pawn--any of you should anticipate a future in which in order to secure your livelihood you will be required to do work you believe is harmful. That should be a predicate of your existence, a definition of integrity: not one of you has so few resources of intellect or character as to be required to sell out what you believe to be right in order to make a living. Instead, our question should be how to ensure that our practices have positive social meaning from our point of view, and are not merely a matter of pawning the instrument for what the market will give.

-- EbenMoglen - 21 Jan 2008

Barb: It is hard for me to move from "black and white" as you put it. When I try to, I end up right back where I started. For example, you state that "corporate and municipal clients need real estate contracts, bond financings, bankruptcy assistance" and, from my reading, you are implying that such work is - at worst - morally neutral. I just can't agree with that. You and I and everyone else have a limit to how much time we have in any given day. If we are spending that time helping a company through bankruptcy, that means (assuming we find deep satisfaction in bankruptcy law), we are not using that time to help a working-class family escape from crushing debt through bankruptcy. To me, one is "helping" and one is reinforcing the status quo. I am not (here, at least) making the argument that reinforcing the status quo makes you a bad person or means that you are wasting your degree. I am simply saying that the status quo is a pretty messed-up place and so even seemingly innocuous actions that support it (helping a big box store with a real estate transaction, for example) (1) take away precious time from making real change and (2) further entrench the messed-up status quo, making it that much harder for those working to change it.

Eben: I think that is right. There seem to be many of us, however, who are contemplating doing just what you are cautioning against. For those with a different worldview, there may be nothing wrong with protecting the status quo or further entrenching our unique form of capitalism. I fear that the same argument I make above - which for me means sitting on one side of the courtroom means, for them, sitting on the other side. I guess I am under the assumption that people take jobs that represent who they are and you seem to be implying that quite often people take jobs that are not truly representative of who they are and that is what makes them unhappy. I wonder if it is actually the realization that they are not who they thought/wished they were that causes such unhappiness. If I am right, then more energy should be spent (if you think defending GE is “bad”) convincing folks of your worldview then on convincing them to follow their heart. If you are right, quite the opposite is true. In the end, are you advocating that folks follow their heart, so to speak or that folks change the status quo (i.e. is happiness enough)? I am only advocating the former if it leads to the latter.

-- AdamCarlis - 21 Jan 2008

Adam, The black-and-white perspective you espouse doesn't take into account the fact that anything that you do as a lawyer (or in life, for that matter) that affects the "big box" stores to which you refer also affects many other people and companies in many different ways, including the "little guy." Since you focused on bankruptcy, I would respond that helping a large company (like a bus company or discount department store) avoid bankruptcy or implement a financial reorganization plan allows people (no matter their economic status) who depend on those companies' services or buy their goods to continue to do so. Additionally, many lawyers I know don't just limit their work to either helping only lower-income families with bankruptcies or only big business with bankruptcies. The need for bankruptcy services comes from a variety of people, places, and situations. To stereotype the nature and scope of bankruptcy services as falling into only two distinct camps (those of the "big box" or of a working class family) is not to see the other situations and people out there who need legal help and also not to see that helping a certain segment of society affects us all, in varying degrees of directness.

-- BarbPitman - 21 Jan 2008