Yes, I hate my job, and yes, my clients are the scum of the Earth, and yes, my life sucks. But think of all the kids I can help get de-wormed!
When I heard about the Harvard Law Record’s essay by law student Bill Barlow titled “Want To Save The World? Do Biglaw,” I mistakenly assumed that he had made a persuasive, or at least coherent, utilitarian argument. After all, some fairly distinguished blogs took notice, and set about rebutting him. I was shocked when I actually read the piece. From what I can tell, Barlow understands nothing he was writing about—not the profession of law, not charity, not careers, not values, not law firms, not ethics, not money, not life. Why is someone who thinks like this in law school? What are law schools accepting people capable of writing this? Why is Harvard allowing someone this naive and shallow to display a Harvard degree?
This is literally all there is of substance to the article:
“So there you have it—be a corporate lawyer, donate 25% of your post tax income to charity, and save 150 lives a year, or de-worm 25,000 kids. Alternatively, go into Public Interest, Government, or Academia, and feel warm and fuzzy about yourself. Sadly, when people at this school talk about public service, they mean the latter, rather than the former. If only people applied the same amount of cognitive skill used in just one LSAT logic game to the most critical question of what to do with their law degree, hundreds of lives could be saved.”
Ugh. Where to begin?
1. This formula comes from someone who makes it clear that he thinks working for “BigLaw,” that is, large firms that represent the largest companies and the wealthiest individuals, is working for the bad guys, or at least, he presents that description without rejecting it. Thus he believes that the stain of working for clients who want to despoil the environment and humanity can be balanced or cancelled out by “good deeds.” This is a fallacy, called “The Ruddigore Fallacy” here, and also the false wisdom handed out by the homeless lady in Central Park in “Home Alone 2.” “Do you know that a good deed erases a bad one?” she asks Kevin (Macaulay Culkin). No, because it doesn’t. These are on separate ledgers, much as all the robber barons who set up charitable foundations would like it to be otherwise.
2. What matters to the ethical coherence of the argument is that Barlow believes that working for a big law firm is a sellout, but in fact he is wrong. Lawyers for large firms do many good things, providing obviously necessary expertise, advice and services that allow companies to keep making things, doing things, selling things, hiring people and keeping the economy running. If you don’t believe that, it is idiotic to be corporate lawyer (it is also idiotic, period.) Why would anyone who has contempt for what companies do work for a big law firm?
3. The answer, in Barlow’s case, is that this is the way to make the most money, and to him, being a productive, virtuous human being comes down to how much money one can acquire to give to other people who actually do good things with it, even if you have to do bad things yourself, or what people you don’t respect want you to do, to get that money. The lack of imagination and worldliness that would provoke such a bizarre belief is staggering. He apparently sees lawyers as aspiring to nothing higher than being resource distribution conduits. Good lawyers do work for bad people, take their money in exchange, and give it to the poor, the sick and the wormy. Bad Lawyers keep that money for themselves, their families, and their children.
4. Apparently Barlow doesn’t have a family, doesn’t want one, or has never encountered the concept of family. You know, Bill, lawyers who work hard and earn high salaries don’t have to spend the money, as Barlow describes it, “on themselves buying big cars, big apartments, big diamonds, and a host of other things that will never make you happy in life.” Who was this guy’s neighbor, Scrooge McDuck? Most lawyers in big firms tend to spend their money on good educations and security for their children, a good place to live and have them grow up, and maybe even manage it so one parent can spend the day parenting rather than working. Is creating a stable family and contributing productive members to the next generation of society important, rewarding, and a generator of social utility? Not as much, apparently, as giving a large slice of the money necessary to do that to the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, where you can de-worm children at a rate of $0.73 to $0.99 per child, rather than bet your gold on the achievements of an offspring.
5. This sad and narrow law student apparently can only see one valid way to benefit the human race, and that is to alleviate human suffering with money. Since he is unacquainted with any ethical thought that I can see beyond the Frankenstinian “Charity…GOOD!,” the possibility that his talents, energies and inspiration might accomplish as much or more than sending off a set percentage of his gross income to de-worm children doesn’t occur to him. Lawyers build institutions; lawyers make society more just; lawyers advise non lawyers how to do more good, and less wrong, in their enterprises; lawyers save lies, solve problems, prevent disasters; lawyers write novels, histories, and plays, and make the arts accessible by actually doing things, and using what money they make practicing law, presumably also doing productive, necessary work that helps people and makes the system work ( this is why law is called a profession) to allow them to continue these activities. Where did Barlow get the idea that social utility is measured in dollars and cents? Is this the kind of person law schools are attracting? I have long suspected it, and this does not cover the profession with honor.
6. Yes, Barlow has outlined a sure-fire formula for a lawyer to maximize his social utility, if that lawyer is a solitary, unimaginative, joyless, venal, conventional, boring, narrow-minded, compassionate and ascetic slug. The essay is not without value, for such lawyers are not rare. But I pity the lawyer for whom such a scheme really defines his or her best chance at making his time on Earth a net gain for the rest of us.
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Pointer: ABA Journal
Sources: TaxProf Blog, PrawfsBlawg, Above the Law
Ethics Alarms 
“This formula comes from someone who makes it clear that he thinks working for “BigLaw,” that is, large firms that represent the largest companies and the wealthiest individuals, is working for the bad guys, or at least, he presents that description without rejecting it.”
I don’t read into his article that he believes working for corporation means one is working for the bad guys. It’s true that he presents the description without rejecting it, as you say, but in presenting it he describes it as “conventional wisdom”. It seems pretty obvious from the piece that he doesn’t give much credence to conventional wisdom.
It’s clear from the article that he doesn’t give much credence to wisdom, period.
OK, that was flip, but it was hanging there.
I’m sorry, but he is obligated to say what he thinks someone is doing/standing for/ accomplishing by working for law firm, and he doesn’t, because it’s “just a job” as in “just a way to make money to save kids from worms.” By definition, a profession isn’t just a job. He has no idea what a lawyer does, or why he should be one, except the money. Pathetic.
Now go read the “counterpoint” piece and cry. It makes Barlow sound wise.
http://hlrecord.org/?p=19758
True, Chernick’s piece reads mostly like a rallying cry by another quixotic warrior against “borderism.”
But do you completely dismiss Chernick’s last two sentences? “The way you spend your money matters. But the way you spend your time and your talents — the way you spend your life — matters more.”
I’ll dismiss them in the context in which she places them…a standard issue, socialist, enviro-fascist, anti-capitalism screed. She’s an Occupy Wall Street drone, and he’s a dufus.
I couldn’t get past her first ridiculous paragraph about driving coal companies out of business and how drug companies didn’t deserve the patents they earned after millions of dollars of R and D. This is ideological insanity equally at odds with ethics and reality as “anti-borderism,” but much more popular. What must the education have costed that melted her brains to that extent, and how can such irresponsible and incompetent institutions and teachers be held to account? They might as well program students to be arsonists,
Yours are all good points that I appreciate, thanks. I was nonplused by Chernick’s final sentences because of their context. I thought, “Okay, but you (Chernick) didn’t really support those concluding statements, as you obviously think you did.” In another context, I could have imagined Ronald Reagan saying those final words, but with persuasiveness.
JM: “I couldn’t get past her first ridiculous paragraph about driving coal companies out of business and how drug companies didn’t deserve the patents they earned after millions of dollars of R and D.”
You can argue her point, provided that you don’t become too enamored with your own ideology. There’s no intrinsic reason why you can’t place a limit as a society on the amount of profit one can earn from one’s labor. And as for putting coal companies out of business, pollution is a form of subsidy to the polluter; if the cost of a coal-fired power plant is 100,000 new cases of asthma, perhaps it shouldn’t be built in the first place.
As for the drug companies, we should slap them with an excise tax of 95% on the excess of what they charge us here over what they sell their drugs for in Canada and Europe. We shouldn’t have to subsidize the Canadian to the point where our own seniors have to go over the border to get their drugs. That is but one example of a reasonable societal limit on capitalist excess. And can anyone explain why Hasbro should have a monopoly on Monopoly in perpetuity? Abuses of IP law could be curbed, as well.
She writes: “But the money for your pro bono work and your salary has to come from somewhere. It comes from wealthy, powerful clients who pay your firm extraordinary amounts of money to protect their wealth and power. These clients will ask you to defend them against the people they have injured, defrauded, and discriminated against — people who must rely on the law to protect them because they do not have the wealth and power to protect themselves. Or they will ask you to draft contracts and facilitate their corporate mergers.”
Her point is well-taken, if not necessarily by you. There is a palpable difference between enjoying the benefits of the rule of law, and being ruled BY law. Throughout history, plutocrats have always used “law” to ossify their advantage. For the Koch brothers and hedge-fund managers — people like Romney are the ultimate parasites — it is cheaper to buy politicians and influence elections through fraud and deception than pay taxes. You can either join that noxious tribe or fight it, and that is a moral and ethical choice.
As a rule, corporate mergers produce nothing, and are often destructive to competition. By way of example, we fired our trash pickup service, to find out that our new vendor had been bought out by our old one, which resulted in a local monopoly. An enforceable anti-trust law is another reasonable societal limit on capitalist excess.
She writes: “At worst, your job will be to use your clients’ resources to prevent the poor and powerless from using the law as a tool to address those structural issues.”
This is the short definition of a DoJ lawyer.
1. “There’s no intrinsic reason why you can’t place a limit as a society on the amount of profit one can earn from one’s labor.” The reason is the Declaration of Independence. For someone who caterwauls about judicial immunity not being in the Constitution, you’re pretty airy about discarding life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I think “it’s un-American is pretty good intrinsic reason.
2. Pollution is a by-product of life. By all means, control it and limit it. Crippling industry, commerce and progress to avoid it just shows silly, anti-human priorities.
3. “…who pay your firm extraordinary amounts of money to protect their wealth and power.” Laughable. You think that’s a fair and objective description, do you? I wonder how she left out “evil”? How about “to protect their business, labor and enterprise”?
4. Warning, Art—I stop reading when anyone evokes the idiotic “Koch Brothers” boogeyman, and I should alert you—it is signature significance for partisan hackery.
I categorized Art as a partisan hack a while back, on the discussion about abortion. I’m still amazed you didn’t ban him as a troll after that, but his comments since have been occasionally interesting, and not always 100% wrong.
Sometimes it’s worth engaging the intelligent partisan hacks just to see how far from reality they will actually go in order to avoid acknowledging any flaws in their belief system.
Art has issues. I don’t think he is a hack, though. He writes well, holds his temper, is good natured, and occasionally enlightening. He’s an asset here, I think.
That could have been a fluke. I think his writing has improved since then. However, as you can probably guess from my response to that I saw none of the qualities you listed in that comment, and to me is signature significance that he is a left wing partisan hack, even though he pays lip service to libertarianism. The kind of person that thinks freedom is just great … except for the free market, spending money to buy ads in favor of politicians, smoking, right of unborn infants to live, and any number of other left wing exceptions to personal freedom. Granted I lack direct evidence on some specific issues, but his rhetoric usually has more in common with DailyKos than with reason.com.
Why did you remind me of THAT post, and the daft “How dare you say its irresponsible to have unprotected sex if you don’t want to have a baby” thread? I prefer to think that Art’s brain got up on the wrong side of the bed that day. I could be wrong.
Because that was the exact post where I stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt, as described in my first comment on this thread. The linked comment in particular looked like something only a hack could write. He’s not a hack on every issue I suppose, just certain left wing pet topics.
Was that a rhetorical question? 🙂
“(or, perhaps more accurately, $aving)”
Well tee hee, isn’t that just the epitome of humor and class, I see what you did there. And now I can’t unsee it. Jesus. These people are representing HARVARD for fucks sake. HARVARD.
That should have been a reply to Alex’s comment. Argh.
Remember that Harvard gave us Jack. *ducks*
At least, he doesn’t have to own Harvard Law.
I don’t see that he is saying corporate lawyers are evil or work for evil. He is just saying that in popular culture, to ‘make a difference’ you have to work for low-income groups, or oppressed minority causes, or teach, or go do foreign aid work. To do productive work for corporations is seen as ‘selling-out’ (think in the hippie/progressive/hipster sense). If he is in an environment where people are insisting that if you don’t dedicate your life to a valid ’cause’, you are a sell-out or evil, I can see the point of this article. He is making an argument (I think) that people who do corporate work and donate their money are the ones actually paying for the people who dedicate their lives to such causes and without the people putting up the money, such work doesn’t get done. Doing corporate law is a valid ‘making a difference’ decision even by hippie/progressive/hipster standards. Where he falls down is that he doesn’t point out that corporations are a big part of what make this country run. They provide jobs, services, and they create wealth. This is good in itself and he ignores or dismisses it.
Now, he is very superficial and has a very materialistic view of wealthy attorneys and I’m not sure that I can disagree that many do spend their money that way (thinking of some people I know). I think he is trying to be flippant and callous and lighthearted in this article, though. I could be giving him more credit that he deserves, however.
If that’s what he wanted to say, how come you articulated it so clearly, and he didn’t articulate it at all?
All he thinks of regarding any legal job is that its about money, because that’s what the “lawscam” generation of law students went to law school and amassed absurd debt to do wanted—the money. Now, for the few who have the option of choosing between sectors, he’s explaining that money can buy character too.
The article made me want to use my diploma for toilet paper.
Those who gravitate to the bench do it for the power. I think we’d be a lot better off if we followed Gerry Spence’s advice, drafting veteran lawyers to sit on the bench for single five-year terms.
It is a variant of William F. Buckley’s famed “Boston telephone book” quip about the President.
“Those who gravitate to the bench do it for the power.” Some day you have to explain your irrational hatred of judges. I know several, and not one of them sought, or seek power, or fit your cartoon description of their profession.
I don’t think Gerry Spence’s suggestion is a bad one, however.
Michael: “Doing corporate law is a valid ‘making a difference’ decision even by hippie/progressive/hipster standards. Where he falls down is that he doesn’t point out that corporations are a big part of what make this country run. They provide jobs, services, and they create wealth. This is good in itself and he ignores or dismisses it.”
If they create wealth for the few at the expense of the many, ultimately reducing GDP, is it a good thing?
What a total lack of imagination! So he doesn’t want to sell out to big business OR work barefoot for the Peace Corps in Africa. There’s plenty of other things he can do and still make use of his hard work and training. There’s plenty of non-corporate people who need legal assistance. I could be charitable and say he’s burnt out or snide and say he’s setting up for washing out.
But really he should find a job that will make him at least content, preferably happy. Everyone has had jobs that don’t like at the time, but planning on that is some combination or stupid and sad.
JM: “Why is someone who thinks like this in law school? What are law schools accepting people capable of writing this? Why is Harvard allowing someone this naive and shallow to display a Harvard degree?”
Uh, what rock have you been living under, Jack? Have you seen the kind of “product” they have been turning out at Harvard Law, for fuck’s sake? One of those clowns — a federal judge, for cry-iy! — actually stated in an opinion that a Fifth Amendment damage claim could not proceed against the government because “the Bill of Rights clearly does not contain any congressional mandate expressly waiving sovereign immunity.” Not just a partisan brief from a BigLaw LawWhore, but a ruling by an actual judge!
Forget the fact that the Court acknowledged the self-executing nature of the Fifth Amendment in an eminent domain case. Jacobs v. United States, 290 U.S. 13, 16 (1933). How bat-guano crazy do you have to be to claim with a straight face that the Bill of Rights is literally unenforceable because no one bothered to write an eleventh amendment declaring that “we really, really, really, really DO mean it”?
In my experience, this is not so much the exception as the rule. Harvard Law actually offers a class on Animal Rights; methinks they don’t spend a lot of time studying law up in Baaaa-ston any more.
As a fellow Crimson, you really ought to be hanging your head in shame. A degree from Harvard is not worth what it once was.
What in your comment contradicts anything I wrote, or have ever written? I’m pretty sure that I never even mention my alma mater here except to criticize it….and I come from an all-Harvard family.
Uh, there was an awful lot of sarcasm in the actual article, Jack. You must have turned off your snark detector. But just for fun, let’s take his remarks (and your rebuttals) at face value:
JM: “1. This formula comes from someone who makes it clear that he thinks working for “BigLaw,” that is, large firms that represent the largest companies and the wealthiest individuals, is working for the bad guys,”
While it does not necessarily follow, it is not unfair as a generalization. In America, more so than in any other First World country, you get about as much justice as you can afford, and the wealthy have ‘gamed the system’ to their advantage. It ultimately comes down to philosophy, and whether you think that is a good thing. Reasonable people can disagree.
JM: “2. What matters to the ethical coherence of the argument is that Barlow believes that working for a big law firm is a sellout, but in fact he is wrong. Lawyers for large firms do many good things,”
And to be honest, many that reasonable people would describe as bad. In a large firm, you don’t get to choose whether you take Lincoln’s collection case, and at that level, winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing. There is a lot of pressure to bend (and even shatter) the ethical envelope. If you place a high value on ethics, you can see his point. I’ve had both Forbes 400 and Fortune 500 clients, and they don’t like to lose.
I concur emphatically with respect to your Point 3. Jackson Browne’s “Rock Me On the Water” is germane:
“Oh people, look around you
The signs are everywhere
You’ve left it for somebody other than you
To be the one to care
You’re lost inside your houses
There’s no time to find you now
Your walls are burning and your towers are turning
I’m going to leave you here and try to get down to the sea somehow…”
IMHO, scrubbing walls and hammering nails to make a place suitable for a displaced family to live in is more rewarding than writing a check. Money is no substitute for actual charity. He wasn’t the Son of God or even a distant relation, but Jesus had a valid point.
JM: “Who was this guy’s neighbor, Scrooge McDuck?”
In all likelihood, yes. Remember, he did go to Harvard, and odds are that he was a legacy. The Bush-Gore “Gentleman’s C” crowd….
At the elite schools, certain girls are referred to as JAPs: Jewish-American Princesses (see e.g., “Spaceballs”). And, having had a Jewish roomie in undergrad, I can attest that a lot of Jewish humor is grounded in reality…. 🙂
JM: “Is creating a stable family and contributing productive members to the next generation of society important, rewarding, and a generator of social utility?”
Not so much, if you don’t have someone to do it with. When you move from “me” to “we,” your attitude and priorities tend to change. Problem is, your BigLaw employer doesn’t see it that way. They rather expect 2,200 billable hours, and don’t care what it costs you.
JM: ” lawyers save lies[sic]…”
A Freudian slip, Jack? ROTFL! (I know that you’ll fix it, but I saved it for posterity. 😉 )
JM: ” Lawyers build institutions; lawyers make society more just…”
A law license is a little like a gun. It can be used for good, but just as easily for ill. E.g., the recent Lincoln example. Abe Lincoln might not have taken the collection case, but a hungrier lawyer will. Truth be told, any group with a reputation like that has probably done something to deserve it.
JM: “6. Yes, Barlow has outlined a sure-fire formula for a lawyer to maximize his social utility, if that lawyer is a solitary, unimaginative, joyless, venal, conventional, boring, narrow-minded, compassionate and ascetic slug. The essay is not without value, for such lawyers are not rare.”
Indeed, I would argue that the obverse is true. In fact, the worst offenders tend to wear black robes.
Age mellows us all. As one wag put it, if you are not a sage at 70, your life has been a failure.
There are too many wild generalizations, silly assertions and outright craziness in this post for me to tackle at this hour. Mayne later, if I get bored. My favorite: “Odd are he was a legacy.” Harvard Law is not big on legacies, the college has largely eliminated them, and even at their zenith, they were never the majority of the class or close to it. By the way, I’m pretty sure that I was a legacy at Harvard college, though I had the credentials to be admitted on merit, and the bulk of rejectees do.