In his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama (JD ‘91) reminded each American that “our collective future depends on your willingness to uphold your obligations as a citizen.” It echoes Harvard Law School’s mission statement, which is to “educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and well-being of society.” Unfortunately, a page on the Office of Career Services’ website strongly encourages Harvard Law students to participate in Washington’s regulatory revolving door, a corrupt practice that runs counter to the President’s message and our school’s stated mission.
Recently, students received a ‘Hire Ground’ email with a link regarding “Law Firm Reception Etiquette Questions.” When a student clicks on that link, they are taken to a page that encourages students to browse OCS’ “Researching Employers” page. If one declares their interest in the “Washington, D.C. Legal Market,” they are invited to browse a document and podcast transcript produced in partnership between the Office of Career Services and the legal recruiting firm Garrison & Sisson about the D.C. legal market.
In the documents, a Garrison & Sisson representative directly recommends, in explicit terms, that students participate in the revolving door between corporate interest advocacy and government regulation. In Point 14 of the tip sheet, under a header with a literal pictogram of revolving door corruption (“Government ←→ Law Firm”), the OCS-endorsed document recommends that students should: (1) work first for a corporate interest law firm, then (2) work for a government agency or department “that governs the activities of private sector clients facing specific regulatory issues” (which, the document reminds us, “provides contexts and skills to re-apply to the private sector”) and then (3) return to a corporate interest law firm as a senior associate.
In the interview elaborating on the takeaways, the Garrison & Sisson representative explains how Harvard Law graduates should first “learn how the law firm game is played” in a corporate interest firm and then “get some government experience” for two to three years. During these two or three years of government work, he recommends that students should work for the the federal agencies that “govern the activities [where] private sector clients are facing specific regulatory issues.” To make himself even more clear, he recommends that students work for agencies that govern “the types of clients that have government problems and deep pockets” so as to develop “context and skills to re-apply to the private sector.” Afterwards, the OCS partner recommends that students should “return to the law firm” with “government experience” in tow, allowing us to ascend to senior associate and receive a higher paycheck (likely four times the median American salary) funded by the deep pocketed (his words, not mine) interests for which we conducted immersive research over the prior two to three years.
The OCS-endorsed recommendation reads like a corrupted version of President Kennedy’s inaugural address. Instead of calling young people to work for the federal government by challenging them to “ask what you can do for your country,” the Office of Career Services at the law school of Kennedy’s university is directing students to statements that call students to work two-to-three years for the federal government by challenging them to ask what you can do to gain knowledge and skills for deep pocketed future clients. “The federal government,” Point 12 reads, “is a great place to gain practical experience and training.” Indeed, the school whose mission is “to educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and well-being of society” frames government work no longer as service to our national community, but rather as experience to be strategically monetized.
Garrison & Sisson even point directly at the agencies with the most lucrative revolving doors, citing, for example, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration as “good platforms” for future corporate interest advocacy. They explicitly recommend against working for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division — which is designed to “uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society” — presumably because they do not primarily govern “the types of clients that have government problems and deep pockets.” However, the Garrison & Sisson interview transcript provided does namecheck the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau — the agency that Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren designed to ensure that the 2007 global financial crisis, which plunged millions into poverty, is not repeated — in saying: “we’re already seeing demand for attorneys from this agency already increasing to go into law firm positions.” Indeed, the law school which launched the public-minded, transformative career of the citizen who founded the CFPB is providing students with a statement encouraging them to work for it with the primary purpose of developing skills to evade, resist — or even, possibly, subvert — its mission.
Fortunately, Garrison & Sisson’s OCS-recommended tipsheet does include one takeaway that, in a way, serves Harvard Law’s public interest mission. In Point 20, Takeaway #5, Garrison & Sisson informs readers of the hollowness behind some of the claims by Washington’s corporate interest law firms that they are seriously committed to pro bono work:
The section opens by stating that “what firms use to sell you on the firm are not necessarily things you should ask about.” As an example, they cite firms’ pro bono commitment claims, explaining that “firms like to emphasize their commitment to pro bono” but that “firms are increasingly mindful of ‘becoming more like a business’ where billable hours and profitability reign supreme.” The document cautions against making pro bono “the focus of a meeting because this could raise concerns” about your “understanding of” what practicing at their corporate interest firm is like. This is a useful moment of candor in the corporate interest firm recruiting process: upon reading these documents, one gains an understanding that claims of pro bono commitments can often be simply window dressing for organizations that allow profitability to reign so supreme over the public interest that they encourage the practice of doing public service work in our nation’s government with the primary intent of using that service to gather intel and connections for future wealthy and powerful clients.
In his State of the Union, the President argued forcefully that “democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.” Democracy, the President said, requires “basic bonds of trust between its citizens.” When citizens begin to believe that their public servants are not working for them, but instead working for their future careers serving narrow interests, they lose trust in the system. They start to believe their voice doesn’t matter. They start to believe their pockets are not deep enough to be worth D.C. insiders’ time.
Harvard Law School’s Office of Career Services should not exacerbate this corruption. America needs corporate lawyers. America even needs industry lobbyists. But America does not need young law students working for our national government with the mindset that they will bring the intel they learn there back to serve powerful interests. If our nation’s oldest law school is going to recommend people to go into government work, it should only be in the context of entering such work as a public servant with our national community’s interest in mind while one works there.
One may not find a serious problem in strategically planning one’s career around monetizing their government work. However, the organizations tasked with ensuring government and regulatory integrity take revolving door corruption very seriously. Almost every agency mentioned by the Office of Career Services documents as ripe for corporate interest experience is threatened by regulatory capture. Two years ago, the Project on Government Oversight recently published a report, Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Door at SEC Creates Risk of Regulatory Capture, which describes how alumni of the SEC help firms avoid regulations. Last year, former Delaware senator Ted Kaufman, who chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel, said there was a “gigantic built-in conflict of interest revolving in and out of” the Justice Department. When lawyers shuffle back and forth between prosecuting and defending white-collar criminals, he told VICE News, it makes observers wonder “whether the laws are the same for everyone.” The attrition rate from CFPB to corporate interest law firms is raising concerns and The House Oversight and Financial Services Committees penned a letter saying that “the close relationship between the CFPB and its former officials ultimately could harm consumers.” In recommending that students explicitly work for these agencies with the intent of quickly leaving them to serve the interests that are regulated by them, OCS exacerbates the above problems.
True, the Office of Career Services is supposed to provide a frank picture of the reality of the legal job market. But we, as a community, have to decide if that frankness should come at the moral cost of implicitly endorsing the corrupt practice of revolving door career paths that monetize government experience for narrow, deep pocketed interests. A school with a mission like ours in a nation that depends on public trust as much as ours must draw the line somewhere. The millions of Americans across the country that the President mentioned in his State of the Union address — the “quiet, sturdy” citizens whose “goodness and decency and optimism” maintain our public life; whose “grit and good humor and kindness” have “helped America travel so far” — deserve better from us.