Following the point-counter-point published here on The Record over the One Day’s Work program, I feel compelled to issue a counter-counter point disagreeing with both sides. The original opinion article suggested that the program is a good way to support a good cause. The anonymous dissenter thinks the program is a bad way to support a good cause. I, on the other hand, think that One Day’s Work is the best possible way to fund an unworthy cause.
First, the nice part.
One Day’s Work seeks funds through individual voluntary charity. There are, undoubtedly, people who want to give their money away so that others can work for the government or charities. One Day’s Work allows them to give a fairly large amount in an exoteric way. This is a remarkably efficient solution: literally no one is worse off than they are under the status quo. Saintly spendthrifts can give, curmudgeonly Scrooges like me can decline.
Note that this “give if you want, don’t if you don’t” model is far more forthright and fair than coercive measures like the Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP) or Summer Public Interest Funding (SPIF). The only difference is that LIPP and SPIF draw their funding through the money we students pay as part of our general tuition.
The powers that be could jack up tuition 200 percent and there would still be a line of people a mile long willing to mortgage off another few years of their working lives to come here. Knowing this, HLS can force us to pay for every little feel-good capricious frill that someone in power wants.
A Green Living program that demands that we sacrifice paper cups as piacular penance? Absolutely, those paper cups have a carbon footprint roughly equivalent to a grasshopper’s flatulence. An ice rink in front of the Science Center? Definitely, we don’t want the Canadians to feel homesick during this mild winter. A computer lab full of high-end computers so that law school students can print out their readings and surf Above the Law? Well, would you print readings from your own laptop if you could do it from one of 20-odd beautiful new machines?
Each of these silly expenditures is a tax on tuition that results in the absurd outcome of one section of HLS students paying about four million dollars worth of tuition each year. Just imagine what we might save if these urgent measures, like One Day’s Work, were left up to the conscience of individual students rather than the disinterested whim of administrators.
Kudos to One Day’s Work for being up-front and honest with their request for charity. The only problem is that the purpose of One Day’s Work is highly suspect.
A brief note on the provision of legal services. Imagine a law student named Ames Greenleaf. He works as a summer associate at a private firm and makes quite a hefty haul. He spends his days that summer writing research papers on civil procedure esoterica to help, say, a can manufacturer get out of a suit. His efforts raise the probability that the can manufacturer survives the suit and can continue employing dozens of workers who would otherwise end up indigent.
Now, imagine a law student named Barry Chosenone. He works at a public interest firm that files copyright paperwork for indigent NEA-grant artists. One such artist gets his copyright and airs to the world his passionate magnum opus “Piss Christ.” Barry loves this work, but he is worried because it does not pay well enough to support an uptown New York lifestyle.
Which of those two students has done more to help the community? Who can honestly claim that Barry deserves Ames’s money? Baldly, public interest work is more emotionally rewarding because it involves directly helping people, a fact which leads many good-hearted people to choose public interest vocations. Private firm work does more ultimate good, however. The clients pay more because they ultimately provide more benefit for their communities than individual down-on-their-luck litigants.
Personally, I don’t want to pay an extra couple hundred dollars to incentivize my fellow students to get a legal job at the Department of Health and Human Services that will be paid for with the tax money I already have to pay to the government anyway. But that’s just me, and One Day’s Work proponents can at least say that I don’t have to pay for more government bureaucrats if I don’t want to. Would that LIPP and SPIF possessed the same basic honesty.
John Thorlin is a 3L. His column runs Thursdays.
Are you kidding? People helping insurance companies destroy lives because they give jobs to people? What kind of reasoning is this? If you don’t want to give, that’s more than fine. But don’t rationalize it like that. Either you are writing in bad faith or are simply misinformed.
Private firm work does more ultimate good? I’m sorry, what? Obstructing justice may pay well, and you may be fine with it, but what you say is simply not true.
The high pay for private firm work suggests that clients derive a great deal of value from private firms. One could argue that public interest work helps primarily the poor (or the government, but let’s keep the scenario as favorable to progressives as possible), however that in and of itself does not explain why public interest work is not profitable.
Wal Mart provides all sorts of goods at the lowest price possible, dramatically improving the lives of the poor and making a heap of profit to boot. If public interest work created similar value for the poor, we would expect such work to be better compensated.
As for the obstruction of justice point(?), if the legal system doesn’t work, we should probably change the system, not complain when private firms advocate effectively on behalf of clients forced to litigate in an unfair system. (Of course, if the system were actually rigged in favor of large litigants like insurance companies, they probably wouldn’t need to pay such large fees for private firms, would they?) To capture the overall point yet one more time, if public interest jobs did a better job of fighting this supposedly unfair system, people would pay more for it.
The above may not fit into the filiopietistic love of progressives for public interest work, but it is the cold economic truth.
I don’t see any particular reason why “[p]ublic interest law firms can’t deal in high volume at low prices and leverage economies of scale to generate profits.” “Anon” seems to be making an unhelpful distinction between companies that provide goods and companies that provide services, and the comment implies that sellers of goods can achieve economies of scale whereas sellers of services cannot. But that’s demonstrably false. First, Wal-Mart itself sells services, as you know if you have been in any of their supercenter’s recently and got an eye exam, got your nails done, or got a haircut. Second, many service providers in other industries can achieve economies of scale; medical clinics in stories like CVS are good examples, as are some airlines (Southwest). Thus, it is not that public interest firms can’t achieve economies of scale, it is that they have thus far been slow to innovate or too inefficient to do so. And you encourage their inefficiency by giving them “free” money. (It is true that the government also discourages innovation with state bar regulations forbidding corporate ownership and unauthorized practice of law, which casts doubt on the government’s claim to serve the “public interest.” Those in favor of public interest work and access to legal services ought to be strongly opposed to such regulations.)
As for ability/willingness to pay, it is of course true that the marginal utility of the dollar declines somewhat as income rises. But two points bear remembering: 1) If a consumer is willing to pay but lacks the present ability to pay, he would be willing to take out a loan to pay the current required amount and repay an economically equivalent amount in the future, taking into account the time-value of money. He could, equivalently, take out a legal insurance policy. These options suggest that ability to pay is a less significant problem. 2) You cannot seriously claim that willingness to pay does not also reduce demand for public interest work. One problem with public interest work is its refusal to conduct rigorous cost-benefit studies of its work. Of course, that’s not surprising as long as such groups can mooch off students’ hard-earned tuition money through the programs the article describes.
“As for ability/willingness to pay, it is of course true that the marginal utility of the dollar declines somewhat as income rises. But two points bear remembering: 1) If a consumer is willing to pay but lacks the present ability to pay, he would be willing to take out a loan to pay the current required amount and repay an economically equivalent amount in the future, taking into account the time-value of money. He could, equivalently, take out a legal insurance policy. These options suggest that ability to pay is a less significant problem.”
Are you serious right now? Look, the world isn’t as simple as basic economics and finance concepts. It also takes a lender to make a loan, and the lender will risk-adjust the loan to suit the profile of the borrower. As such, these types of clientele either won’t be able to find a lender, or, if they do, it would be completely cost-prohibitive. And we haven’t even begun to consider the economic literacy of some of these clients. Furthermore, we’re talking about the tradeoff a lawyer faces between a corporate law salary and a public interest salary, and if you think these sorts of loans can make a ‘significant’ difference in bridging this gap, you have no sense of reality.
“ 2) You cannot seriously claim that willingness to pay does not also reduce demand for public interest work. One problem with public interest work is its refusal to conduct rigorous cost-benefit studies of its work. Of course, that’s not surprising as long as such groups can mooch off students’ hard-earned tuition money through the programs the article describes.”
When did I ever claim that? My point is that there are many other dominant factors.
“I don’t see any particular reason why “[p]ublic interest law firms can’t deal in high volume at low prices and leverage economies of scale to generate profits.”
I like how you conveniently clip out the rest of the quote, which makes all the practical difference, in order to launch into your straw man argument that 1) I am claiming economies of scale aren’t possible in services and 2) that because they are possible means that they can be achieved across all service industries and to the same degree Wal Mart et al can. What I actually said was that Wal Mart’s business model can’t be utilized in ***anywhere near the same way,*** and if you can’t see ‘any particularly reason for that,’ then I really don’t know what to say. I was responding to the ridiculous comparison between Wal Mart and public interest law, which falls apart with any level of scrutiny.
Furthermore, while your examples of services (nails, eyes, etc) are interesting, they are more examples of a company leveraging their size to strategically enhance their product offering than examples of economies of scale in and of themselves. And if economies scales do exist in those businesses, they don’t exist to anywhere near the same degree they do in Wal Mart’s larger business of goods. Furthermore, I think the analogy is quite loose between a nail appointment or eye exam and legal services; I think a bit more nuance will show these are all quite different in nature, both in terms of what it takes to deliver and the tradeoffs faced by the professionals. And this is the point of my response – if you think public interest law can be as successful as Wal Mart, you’re off your rocker, but godspeed. Hah, if even a minority of private sector businesses could be as successful as Wal Mart.
“Thus, it is not that public interest firms can’t achieve economies of scale, it is that they have thus far been slow to innovate or too inefficient to do so.”
Perhaps! That is quite an assertion, rather than a fact, but I am all for innovation. And my argument doesn’t rest on public interest law needing to achieve economies of scale to succeed, but again, it was about the validity of the comparison to Wal Mart. In any case, I think instead of making these hand-wavy statements that public interest law simply needs to ‘innovate’ and we can all sing kumbaya, we should be a bit more realistic and understand the realities faced by public interest law might preclude such fast, simple solutions. In fact, if it were so simple, why hasn’t the private sector figured it out? No, I don’t think the regulations you suggest explain that away.