It’s not the speeches or the blunders or the hilarious rewriting of the Reagan era. No, my favorite part about election season is how easy it becomes to recognize class denial in America. The routine has become so commonplace that we hardly bat an eye: poor whites protest anything and everything that would raise their minimum standard of living, from healthcare to housing assistance; meanwhile, wealthy whites (and the wealthy are overwhelmingly white) think anything more than a 35% tax rate for the rich (half of the 70 percent rate when Reagan took office) would be a Stalin-esque slide into class warfare. Poor whites deny the magnitude of their own poverty, and rich whites pretend they’re scraping by like the rest of us.
It’s a good thing we attend such a thoughtful institution, where similar delusions of hardship would never survive a minute of peer-on-peer Socratic, right? Yet it’s that same idea that plagues the wealthy—that they’re “scraping by” like the rest of us—that I find strikingly present at HLS. And it’s that same idea that promotes an even calmer, more insidious class denial among HLS students than the one we witness on a national scale.
It’s easy to mock Romney for coming from heinous amounts of money. I mean, how hard can it be to stay rich when your folks are auto magnates? But the demographics at HLS show that you don’t have to be the scion of a government-backed industry to have it easier than most Americans.
Let’s start with the numbers. Did you know that nearly 60 percent of students receive zero need-based grants to cover the $225,000 price tag of an HLS degree? We all know that the cost of law school is outrageous and that the standardized metrics to calculate family contribution are broken and outdated. But three in five? Really? One can only imagine what this statistic says about the average, or even median, family income at HLS. After all, most “middle class” families—defined as the middle three quintiles, whose incomes range from $20,000 to $100,000—would clearly qualify for need-based grants. This likely means that well over 60 percent of HLS students are “upper class,” like it or not.
There are, of course, a number of students who overcame incredible socioeconomic adversity to attend HLS. But these students are the inspiring exception to the broken rule. The truth is, with only 40 percent of students receiving need-based grants to pay for $225,000 of school, we’re looking at a lot of class privilege at HLS. How do HLS students recognize and respond to that privilege? It’s, well… complicated.
HLS students certainly don’t like to think of themselves as rich. You can hear the class denial in the awkward dialogues students so frequently have with one another. One minute, a student will say he “needs” to work in corporate defense to pay off his loans. The next, he’ll say he “needs” to start making $160,000 to support a family. Talk about out of touch — I highly doubt it takes being in the top 10 percent of earners (not counting bonuses) to support your family.
Many students join socially conscious clinics and student organizations, like Harvard Defenders and Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Yet how many of our friends went on to work for firms that undermine the very principles of those organizations? A number of HLAB graduates go on to defend the same corrupt financial institutions and practices that forced their former clients into foreclosure. As for those that defend poor clients through Harvard Defenders? Given HLS’s employment statistics, these students are most likely to take their best-in-class criminal defense training and use it to defend wealthy, white-collar (and white) criminals and their corporations.
To be fair, many of these organizations and clinics offer much-needed relief from the overwhelming number of students who fail to even ask themselves this most basic of questions: What does it mean to use my social privilege to further the practices of the world’s most powerful, often corrupt, and politically manipulative institutions?
Perhaps it seems natural. Perhaps it seems silly to even question. Of course rich students—again, those with families that make more than $100,000 (in 2010)—would use their privilege to defend other rich people. It’s as natural as under-funded schools in poor neighborhoods, or windfall profits for polluting oil companies. We’re told this is the world we live in, where the rich have each other’s backs and the poor have nothing. Where nobody deserves a bailout, but only the rich get them. To question that paradigm is naïve at best and treasonous at worst.
So what can we do about it? I am not proposing a school-wide vow of poverty, nor am I proposing a Gandhi-style march into unemployment (though the fear of unemployment is as overstated as the “need” to pay off loans). Instead, I am proposing an ethic of fairness, honor, and honesty.
By fairness, I mean striving for a “do unto others” professional philosophy. Your privilege has likely opened a lot of doors—private schools, LSAT courses, and ultimately HLS. If you didn’t have these opportunities but someone else did, how would you want them to use that opportunity? To further enrich themselves, or to rise to the occasion of their own privilege?
By honor, I mean pursuing work you’d want to tell your grandkids about. Work you can be proud of. Surely you swelled with pride when you got the call to get into HLS—was it really pride about shuffling papers for JP Morgan? Or shoving elephantine Exxon profits into tax loopholes? Or was it pride that you would have even more opportunities—even more incredible, diverse, and exciting paths to choose from?
Lastly, by honesty, I mean being honest with yourself and your peers when it comes to the reasoning behind your professional choices. Enough with the “training” spiel or the supposed “need” to make more than 98 percent of Americans by the time you’re thirty. Pretty soon you’ll start believing the stories you tell to smooth over rough conversations. Pretty soon, the stories will change you. They will turn you into the kind of rich person who genuinely believes he’s “scraping by” with his two houses and three cars—like the rest of us.
Next time one of your declared “progressive” friends makes a crack at Romney or Ryan, ask them what they’ll be up to this summer: Will you spend your career defending the Bain Capitals or the Lilly Ledbetters of the world? And if you were Ms. Ledbetter, working in a rubber factory in Gadsden, Alabama for twenty years, what would you hope the HLS grads of the world would do with their prestigious degrees—and their class privilege?
Or don’t. After all, you won the pre-birth lottery and made it big-time. You did it all on your own, just like the tax-cutting job creators. You’re scraping by like the rest of us. Right?
Sean Hamidi is a 2L. His column runs every other Tuesday.
The views in opinion editorials, columns, and letters do not necessarily reflect the views of The Record.
This is good stuff. I came across a quote recently that I really liked and that I feel should be etched in stone above every doorway at Harvard:
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” – Horace Mann
Certainly the admonition is strongest and most applicable to people in our position. I’m glad you’re making the effort to encourage people to realize it.
It seems like admissions made a special effort this year to curate a 1L class with strong PI backgrounds. Here’s to hoping it’s for propogation and not conversion.
“After all, most “middle class” families—defined as the middle three quintiles, whose incomes range from $20,000 to $100,000—would clearly qualify for need-based grants.”
I’m a student who falls in that range, and I’ve never gotten a need-based grant from HLS. This article makes some good points, but it doesn’t take into account the fact that there are many students who finance the giant price tag of a Harvard Law education by taking loans – essentially mortgaging their future – on the gamble that on graduation either their job satisfaction or compensation will make that price tag worthwhile. Like me, they may have gotten here from a place that was much less than privilege, through a combination of work and very good luck – scholarships, fellowships, and working through school. That’s a critical element of what’s described here as the “rich people defending rich people” phenomenon. While the analysis may be correct for many cases, for many others it’s probably more like “people afraid of being poor defending rich people.” We should talk about that too.
Yeah, it’s totally okay to defend “poor clients,” but “white-collar (and white) criminals”? No way! Defending those people would clearly “undermine the very principles” of Defenders — one such principle being, I suppose, that only poor (and nonwhite?) people deserve zealous defense advocacy. Frankly, why defend people like that at all, given that they’re “criminals”? (“Clients” are okay, “criminals,” no good.)
Best to remind yourself that life is about being and becoming, not having and acquiring.
Dynamic asset value always trumps static asset valuations.
Do we care what incomes our grandparents, 7 generations back, had? Think continuity.
We put currency prices on relatively few of the things we utilize. How much to sell your:
spouse?
citizenship?
kids?
siblings?
parents?
friends?
co-citizens?
Just to name a few.
I’m in the 40% you mentioned that gets need-based grants, just to say where I’m coming from. I’m very grateful for that, by the way. The way you set up the choice students face – $160k defending white collar scum vs $50k plus LIPP making the world a better place – it makes students look pretty bad, I admit. But you and I both know that isn’t the choice. A few thoughts:
– Firm jobs aren’t just better paid, though they are. They are also way, way, way easier to get, and shaky as some firms are they are pretty solid propositions. Foregoing EIP means basically gambling that you get some sort of fellowship to cover your job for the first year – when, good intentions or no, you have no idea how to be an attorney and are probably not really helping anyone – and then gambling that wherever you work will have the money to hire you full time.
– Choosing to do public service doesn’t make state, local, and federal finances any less of a disaster than they are; I’m fine with working for $50k with LIPP, but I can’t work for free. Do you know what kinds of applications prosecutor’s offices and PD’s get? Hundreds of sterling resumes for every available job.
– The whole “raising a family” thing is about more than $160k vs $50k. If you are single and have no other responsibilities, you can live for you and take risks for you. That’s easy. When other people are depending on you, though, when losing or not getting a job means disrupting your entire family, taking a kid out of one school and putting him in another, or moving somewhere else, being cavalier with “well, maybe I’ll get hired at the end of this EJW fellowship,” is a little harder. People like me, whose families can’t afford to bail them out or pay their rent when things are rough or whatever – as you point out, in fairness, most people at HLS are not in this position – need to know that they will most likely have a job and they will get paid. That means a firm, not hoping you win the federal government hiring lottery.
– As someone who has seen the public defender system from the perspective of the family member of a victim, they defend scum too. Poor scum, scum with better reasons for being scum than some sleazy bank executive, but scum. I don’t like an economic system that places a lot of people in difficult places and leaves a lot of people out, but never, never forget that not all left out people act the same way. Most wish for better and do the best they can. A few get violent, maybe because they think their circumstances justify that, or maybe because they don’t care. This group winds up being represented by PD’s just the same as the folks are victims of a system that catches a lot of people for little or nothing more than being poor or unlucky. So just as 160k vs 50k isn’t as stark as it seems, neither is big firm vs. public defender.
Admissions always seems to make a special effort to curate a 1L class with strong PI backgrounds. We’ve seen how that works out!
$160,000 promises the good life but I am not sure it provides. Read The Bonfire of the Vanities. Our graduates become Sherman McCoys who master the universe at work but still slave away working for the fancy apartment, vacation home, etc. Then again, many of our PI types who crave the fellowships become Larry Kramers who slave away equally in the public interest (for both altruistic and selfish motives, if those are even different) and have an equally difficult time enjoying their lives.
Maybe one thing which admissions should start curating is a class of people with the confidence — or maybe the stubbornness/naivete — to get off either “path” and do something which is really satisfying.
There’s a lot of confusion out there about LIPP, and your comment exhibits some of it. You do not need to secure a “public interest” job, like a PD or prosecutor’s office, in order to qualify for LIPP. It is income based, not public service based. There are plenty of small employment, labor, bankruptcy, consumer, personal injury, or other law firms that won’t pay big firm salaries but that would be happy to have an HLS grad. LIPP basically lets you take a job that pays only, 40, 50, 60 thousand a year and still not have to pay loan payments. So the debate really is about whether you want to live on LIPP or not. If you’re planning to practice law after graduation, there is no valid argument that you will be ineligible for LIPP. You will have an HLS degree, and will be able to find a job.
I’m not confused about LIPP; in fact it is even broader than you mention, in that in addition to any private law job you can do literally any nonprofit job and qualify. I seized on PD’s and prosecutors because the author is setting up a fantasy choice between big, bad rich people who can afford lawyers and defending the little guy, and I was pointing out it was more complicated than that.
As for your example of plaintiff side firms, I’ll grant that it is interesting work and not something on the radar of a lot of HLS students. The school should probably do more with that. I worked at a plaintiff side firm my 1L summer and it was a very interesting experience. But as to whether these firms would love to have an HLS grad or not, well, that’s a different story. They probably would, but many small firms can’t afford to have a new attorney on the payroll who can’t do the work because they’re a fresh grad, and they hire in far smaller numbers over all than do big firms.
Back to what the author is saying, I think plaintiff side firms, even if they represent regular people and not corporations, are not exactly always angels either. Some do great work, others are ambulance chasers and patent trolls. You’re right that no one’s going to be out in the cold, loan-wise, with LIPP around.
But the author also mentions how terrible HLS students are for claiming they need $160k to raise a family. If they really say that, they are terrible, because of course they don’t. But there are certainly places in the country where raising a family will be a challenge on $40 or $50k per year, especially large legal markets where LIPP eligible jobs are likely to be. Impossible? No, obviously not, and many people work hard to do it every day. But I don’t fault someone for not wanting to work hard to obtain a Harvard Law degree and still worry about paying the bills.
To say that only 40% get scholarships from HLS and completely ignore the statistics of student loans (which are not counted in that figure) is horrendously irresponsible demagoguery. A major reason people go to firms, even if only for a few years, is to pay off massive student loan debt. I would expect an HLS student to know how to do their research before authoring something like this.
-A recent grad working in public interest.
I am a biglaw associate. Do I defend big corporations? Yes. Do I make a big salary? Yes. Do I try to pretend I do this work to help some common good? No. But I love my job and the people I work with.
Quite frankly, earning a bunch of money is important to me. I like having a nice apartment, buying nice shoes/handbags, going out for nice dinners, and having box seats at the opera. I think the difference between the people you complain of and those more like me is that I actually admit those things. People do need to stop pretending working in biglaw is done for bizarre reasons, instead of admitting they do it for money, prestige, and power.
As someone who just graduated and also was in the 40% need based category, maybe you should understand a couple other things about LIPP before you say there is “no valid argument that you will be ineligible for LIPP.” For instance, the fact that LIPP is determined by household income, so if you get married and your spouse makes money, your LIPP will be decreased or maybe even eliminated completely. Second, LIPP covers NO pre-law school loans (i.e. if you had to take out undergrad loans) and only a certain percentage of law school loans (apparently my 65 year old mother was expected to liquidate her retirement to pay for my HLS education even though I’m now 28 years old and that’s all the money she has to retire on…so that translates into all private loans that re not LIPP eligible).
I completely agree with this article for the percentage of people that actually come from rich backgrounds, but for those whose parents (or parent in my case) are not rolling in the dough, taking a job where you’re only getting paid $35-$40k is really not an option ($1500/mo loan payment X 12 = $18K per year, you do the math).
Why is it immoral to defend white collar criminals at a law firm, but saintly to defend drug dealers and petty thieves as a public defender? Does the author think that people he personally dislikes (although he’s never met them) don’t deserve the opportunity to defend themselves from accusations that haven’t been proven beyond a reasonable doubt? This article reeks of “Harvard guilt.”
Wonderful article. While there are some over-generalizations, it is true that HLS is a privileged community often out-of-tact with the rest of the world around it (in particular, Cambridge and Boston). Every time I ride the bus home after a long day at school, I try to remind myself of the real world and how to best use the first class education I get during the day to help make that world a better place…I hope I won’t forget this after a few years of continuous “molding” and won’t start thinking of only how to make myself feel better about my accomplishments (whether that be a high-paid job or a highly prestigious low-paid one)…and believe me, such thoughts have already started creeping onto me.
This is really, really good. I just graduated and am working at a firm, doing finance and transactional work. I’m not under any impression that I’m positively impacting the world by, for the most part, helping the wealthy stay wealthy, but I’m always amazed at how many people have fooled themselves into believing they are or that this was their only option. I’m constantly reevaluating my decisions and professional goals. This call to be more honest and in touch with reality was needed.
It’s unclear to me what this article accomplishes other than catharsis for the author. Putting aside the misdiagnoses, over-generalizations, and astonishingly shallow and narrow analysis (to be more precise, there is no engagement with any of the well-known arguments that dispute your views on the value of corporate representation, the shape of the legal market, and class affinity) nothing new or revelatory is presented, no novel solution proposed. Do I believe that the legal profession needs to address the fact that much of its top talent is devoted to helping giant companies become giant-er, or get away with some terrible acts? Absolutely. But I also recognize that the drivers of that reality are substantially more complex than the absence of an “ethic of fairness, honor, and honesty.” Until you have some ideas about how to address those drivers, maybe reserve your rants for wild nights at Queen’s Head. I guess what I’m trying to say, in short, is… cool story, bro.
Sean, if reading your column is what I get from winning some kind of pre-birth lottery, I may have to reconsider my views on abortion.
P.S.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154822/college-know-it-all-hippies
I am deeply troubled by this article (full disclosure: I’m a wealthy white person. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of it, but I am very appreciative of the extent of my economic and racial privilege. I’m also planning to work for a firm after graduation. I picked it partially because it prides itself on its commitment to public service and treating other human beings decently, but I chose to work at a firm largely because of the money.)
It is great that some people want to commit their careers to public service, and it’s great that resources like LIPP make that possible. I have no problem with using some of my tuition dollars to subsidize those who choose to take lower-paying public interest positions, much in the same way that many of the “wealthy” that this article lambasts support higher taxes, give money to charity, or do volunteer work. Contrary to Mr. Hamidi’s suggestions, you don’t have to be a do-gooder to do good work.
My problem with this article is that it paints HLS students with too wide a brush, casts unwarranted aspersions, and unnecessarily demonizes those who choose to work in big firms. To be more specific:
(a) I think the article vastly overstates the extent to which HLS students are economically privileged. In many areas of the country, $100k is simply not that much money. Wanting to make six figures isn’t about owning 3 cars, taking vacations in St. Bart’s, or owning $5000 purses. It’s about being able to buy a house and have a family. It’s about not having to tell your kid that he or she can’t go to the college of her dreams because you can’t afford it.
(b) $200k is a lot of debt. A ton of debt. LIPP (as well as IBR) certainly help, but they aren’t perfect, and those who make little enough to take advantage of these programs often have to postpone other aspirations (like a family or a home) to do so. Other people already have large financial obligations that they can’t work around right out of law school – spouses, children, or other unavoidable expenses (example: I, as well as some of my classmates, have a chronic health condition that can be disabling or deadly without access to high-quality health insurance, and can be expensive to manage even with it). Again, it’s great that some people are willing to do so, but it’s not fair to demonize those who want to pay off their debts, enjoy basic creature comforts, and not have to postpone ordinary middle-class aspirations until their 40s.
(c) Neither big firms nor the big businesses they represent are inherently evil. Energy companies make it possible for people to heat their homes and drive to work. Banks provide capital and liquidity so that entrepreneurs of all stripes can order inventory, pay their workers, and put food on the table. These companies would not be in business if they did not generate value for society, and they would not be in business without the advice provided by lawyers at big firms. Pollyanna? Maybe, but it’s no more inaccurate than the caricatures of big business and big firm lawyers that this article draws upon. Big firms also do outstanding, socially valuable pro bono work. Gay people in Texas could still be imprisoned for sodomy but for the excellent appellate advocacy provided pro bono by lawyers from a big firm, to give just one exmple.
(d) Most disturbingly, this article is totally bankrupt as a piece of advocacy and political strategy. If you want to encourage your classmates to work in public service or to support public interest lawyering, I cannot think of a worse way to do so than to castigate them for choosing to work in the private sector, to diminish the very real pressures that a heavy debt load imposes, or to insinuate that they are blind to the extent of their privilege and good fortune in life. Most people at HLS are far more honest and introspective than you give them credit for. They are natural allies of public interest lawyers, but nothing will turn them away from supporting public interest causes more effectively than the shrill, sanctimonious attitude that this article adopts. You don’t build coalitions by demonizing everyone who’s not a “true believer,” and you don’t make allies by casting aspersions about people’s motives for their professional choices and accusing them of intellectual dishonesty.
It is totally possible to work in the private sector, do good, socially valuable, intellectually enriching work, give back to the less fortunate, and be honest about the extent of your privilege. Indeed, this is what Mr. Hamidi’s article ostensibly encourages students to do. But I don’t see how pissing all over your classmates, demonizing big corporations, and implying that we are blind to our privilege is a call for “honesty.” In fact, I think it’s downright dishonest, and I’m glad that most of the public interest students I know are far less sanctimonious and far more sensitive than Mr. Hamidi.
Great article. Even at UC Berkeley, a school known for its class-sensitivity, I’ve observed this class-denial dance. From other convos, it seems relatively ubiquitous across top law schools.
I think the point you raised about being honest (i.e. not buying into canned justifications for taking the big money route) are essential. Even if folks *are* in a position where they’re heading to a firm for legitimate reasons, and heading to a firm that provides a mix of great pro-bono experiences and unfortunate corporate ones, that level of honesty will lead to a more meaningful legal career.
The big question left unanswered is what are socially minded folks to do when available PI jobs are few and far away? Perhaps part of being honest is just saying, “I didn’t think I’d cut it for the more competitive route to a PI job, and I was worried that even if I got one, I wouldn’t be able to handle my financial obligations with such small pay.” It’s definitely naively inaccurate at best and willingly disingenuous at worst to say you’re taking a firm job for “skills” (you’ll get more hands on work more closely connected to your interests at a PI job). But it’s still worth validating the legitimate, often hard to admit reasons folks trend towards firm jobs.
All in all, great post and incredibly well written. 🙂
What do you mean “heading to a firm for legitimate reasons”? Nobody needs your approval for their choice of a career.
With great power comes great responsibility right? Defend everyone except the ones with too much advantage in the legal system already and volunteer occasionally at a legal aid foundation. The pay is still good but you can sleep at night. Do you need obvious forms of luxury? Ed loans are easier to pay back and they don’t look bad when applying for a mortgage the way a huge long standing debt at Rent a Rimz does.
You are actually completely wrong about how LIPP works. It covers up to $30,000 of undergraduate loans (http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/borrowing.html), as well as all borrowing to cover for your parent’s assessed contribution (http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/borrowing.html), so your hypo doesn’t make any sense.
I think there is another element. Pursuing money for money’s sake (as you are happy to admit to) is simply lazy. You were endowed with great talents and you are wasting them….and selfishly living off the hard work of others that were endowed with talent and chose to make the world a better place. I’m not a lawyer but I see it all of the time…talented people that pursue the simple sure path to making money verus one where they make a difference AND earn significant money — but they lack the courage.
McSarcasm–of course, you’re missing the point. It’s not about the principle of defense–it’s about what goals you are furthering through allocating your capital to (a) a PDs office or (b) a white collar crim defense practice. Are you devoting your advantage to helping the disadvantaged protect themselves from the overbearing power of the state, or are you devoting your advantage to helping other powerful folks protect themselves from the power of the state–considerably less overbearing given the WC defendants’ relative station in life? Too clever by half, buddy. But, solid try!
Additionally, try identifying yourself if you actually believe in what you’re saying, instead of hiding behind the anonymity of the internet.
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