‘There’s More to Law Than Helping the Rich’
Excuse me, Prof. Alan Dershowitz, but as a recent law school graduate, I must reply to your article (Editorial Pages, Sept. 4), “There’s More to Law Than Helping the Rich Get Richer.”
It’s easy to pontificate from your cozy office at Harvard Law School about how law students should aspire to enter an area of law in which they may represent the “downtrodden,” i.e., anyone other than the “super-rich.” Your challenge to your criminal law students, to devote some of their professional lives to representing the needy, is compelling indeed; it is especially so in light of the statistics you cite that nearly all of those students will end up representing the rich and powerful. Alas, in only three short years those very same students will be faced with a basic--and burdensome reality (which you have completely failed to consider)--student loans.
Legal education today is very costly , and it is not uncommon for graduates to face monthly loan payments of more than $600. If the new lawyer went to a private school as an undergraduate, the debt incurred will only be greater. So, let’s not be so hard on today’s new, young lawyers. If they are “lured by the big buck,” isn’t it possible that they are motivated by something other than naked greed?
Oh yes, I also liked your picture of the recent law graduate, perched comfortably in his penthouse office, discussing mergers over a drink. Those of us in law, though, know what the reality is for new lawyers in the megabuck firms: toiling away until 2 o’clock in the morning--with more work in store for the weekends. The new lawyer today is lucky if he can spare the time to run downstairs to buy a can of Coke. But leisurely sipping cognac? Come on, Professor!
Contrary to the glamorous picture you present, new lawyers today work long, hard hours. To get those high-paying jobs, they devoted long, hard hours to their legal studies. And to get to your law school, or practically any law school, for that matter, they made similar sacrifices as undergraduates.
Is the fact that they now choose to enjoy the compensation they deserve after all their work really so scandalous?
During Roman times those who practiced law were from very wealthy families and thus they had the leisure to forgo compensation for their services; a modern remnant of this attitude persisted in the French legal system, in which, until recently, les avocats wouldn’t think of charging for their representation. But even that has changed, and unfortunately, very few of us entering the American system today are free of financial burdens, which would make representation of the underprivileged a realistic alternative.
But Professor, I ask you to not be so impatient with us. Give us time to pay off our debts and establish our careers, and I’ll bet you’ll see many of us defy the odds and meet your challenge to devote at least some of our time to the less fortunate in our society.
JOAN E. MOUNTEER
Pasadena