i say give away all of your possessions and wash the feet of homeless people on the subway.

phil telfeyan

First to say second commenter quoted is probably a glibretarian moron with only the faintest idea of how societies function, whose political and economic ideas are culled from the Amazon.com review of The Fountainhead.

"Should I work in the nonprofit section where my services are passed directly along to the most needy, or should I get the high-paying firm job and donate the difference in my salary to charity?"
Is this the altruistic version of the "bet-the-company litigation or cross-border transactional work" troll?

From a conservative perspective or an economics perspective, of course, the idea that lawyers add "friction" to the economy is silly. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were able to achieve their wealth because of the rule of law, aided by lawyers.

First to ask: I am graduating from T2 law school in three years, and want to know whether I should do cross-border pro bono work, or try and concentrate on bet-the-non-profit-foundation litigation?

Lawyers from my high school added value all the time. It was no big deal.

Lawyers grease in the wheels of commerce. Try to run an organization without enforceable agreements.

The people on the guest blog are clueless. In this economy, most 3Ls don't have that binary of choice, unless the OP is currently completing a prestigious clerkship.

since his goal is to maximize the value of legal services to the needy, the answer depends on two variables: the annual salary (S) of a public interest lawyer and the amount of money (M) he would donate to legal charities every year as a biglawyer. If S is greater than M, he should become a public interest lawyer. If M is greater than S, he should be a biglawyer, pay someone to be a public interest lawyer and have some leftover M too.

Yup, lawyers have never helped out society. Especially things like Brown vs. Board...

Economists, denigrating another profession as offering no "net contribution to society"?

Well, that's really something, huh?

9: you're reading "value" too literally.

ATL is Dead, all hail bitterlawyer.com

12: what do you mean? (9).

i like turtles.

Brown was wrongly decided on stare decisis grounds.

"Lawyers rarely add any value to the economy . . . . Lawyers don't make anything but they consume large amounts of capital, both human and financial. Had you wanted to be a net contributor to society, an MBA or engineering degree or medical degree or some such would have been the way to go ."

wow.

lawyers have added many things of value to the economy, such as:

- $ and equitable recovery for individual, corporate & govt wrongdoing;
- rights (created through legislation or litigation) to welfare, shelter, education, asylum, equal pay, equal protection regardless of race, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, etc.

some parts of this added value may be less tangible than others, but no less so than, say, the profit that someone with an MBA makes for an investor on a transfer of securities.

"goal is to maximize the value of legal services to the needy"

14: value isn't construed as a strictly financial calculation. Value could mean many different things in a variety of contexts, including negotiating a rent control agreement, babysitting their kids, and avoiding the patronizing attitude that they are somehow needy people who need the help of naive law school graduates.

I'm SICK of misinformed assholes saying that lawyers don't add value to the economy. People who say that don't understand how economics works. They are basically Marxists because they think that the only thing that has "value" is the labor of the proletariat. They don't believe that police officers (you can't say that lawyers don't contribute anything and police officers do; that wouldn't make sense), prison guards, accountants, financial advisors, etc... and CEOs contribute anything. They don't realize that these professions are necessary to make society better and are the reason that AMerica has a modern economy. Basically, if someone will pay you to do something, you are contributing something to economy. If you aren't contributing something, then why would somebody pay you money?

I have little original thought here, but to quickly argue against that post, below is an excerpt from an article in the latest American Interest , which in turn quotes Fareed Zakaria:

"Democracy, he acknowledges, is a worthy objective, but certain things have to come first: personal security, political stability, economic sustainability, the rule of law, the sanctity of contracts, a working constitutional structure. You can’t just topple a tyrant, hold an election and expect a democracy to emerge. How, then, did the idea get started that democracy could sprout where it had no roots?"

So, obviously (assuming you agree with the above, which I do), attorneys not only have a tremendous role to play in the economy (for the roots of our economic capitalism are intertwined with our democratic principles), but are vital to our whole economic and political infrastructure. It's worth noting, too, that a vast number of legislators (including founding fathers) and all judges are, of course, attorneys.

17: yes, but an MBA usually has more disposable income for donating hospitals and light posts to Rwanda.

And, yes, all finance is useless, unless you're a venture capitalist that invests in non-profits.

Giving to charities or working for nonprofits only encourages idleness and mooching. If you want to help the poor become a big law partner and frequently remodel your kitchen.

As lawyers we can only hope to add enough friction to start the fire that will burn this mother down. Then we can all start over in Galt's Gulch.

First to say Lat is trolling on his own site, trying to rile up the readership (and up his revenue).

Another thing. If you REALLY want to help the poor (and not just be a self-righteous asshole), become a lawyer for a big firm. Because you -> helping out a big corporation -> big corporation gets richer -> produces more jobs and produces better goods at lower prices for poor people. Most dumbass liberals can't think that far ahead and just want something that instantly makes them feel good. Most of the great things in this country (parks, universities, companies, etc...) were created by big rich capitalists helped by their lawyers.

Americans have a very high standard of living. This standard of living didn't come about by people doing charitable works and joining nonprofits. It came about my people busting their ass to make this econmy great and doing things like working in big law firms. Liberals don't realize this.

Let's poke deeper. WHY does a democracy need more attorneys? And does it need more BigLaw attorneys? More Civil Rights attorneys? And when are there too many lawyers? (A different issue altogether.) Or too many lawyers in one field?

These platitudes won't settle our discussion, unless we're on the freak economics blog, apparently.

I'm graduating from a T1 law school next fall and will begin working at my V1 law firm at that point. Is it better to do sophisticated cross-border transactional work or bet-the-company litigation? Someone, PLEASE answer.

24: and all this time, we thought we were only reviewing boxes of paper. We're American heroes, dammit.

"WHY does a democracy need more attorneys?"

Cuz people are inherently assholes and want to cheat others out of their money. In totalitarian regimes the government just steals from the people and the people are too scared to do anything, but since we don't have that, we have to make sure that people can't steal from each toher.

"And does it need more BigLaw attorneys? More Civil Rights attorneys? And when are there too many lawyers?"

When the market doesn't support it anymore.

"WHY does a democracy need more attorneys?"

Cuz people are inherently assholes and want to cheat others out of their money. In totalitarian regimes the government just steals from the people and the people are too scared to do anything, but since we don't have that, we have to make sure that people can't steal from each toher.

"And does it need more BigLaw attorneys? More Civil Rights attorneys? And when are there too many lawyers?"

When the market doesn't support it anymore.

This query can't be serious....... I read it as a joke.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett = hypocritical elitists.

Why do they accumulate such monumental personal fortunes during their lives simply to give it away posthumously??

I understand accumulation of wealth to ensure the fiscal security of future familial generations, but the accumulation of wealth demonstrated by Gates/Buffet says “I know better than anyone else how to distribute $$ to charity so I’m going to gather up as much of it as possible so I can live high on the hog while alive and divvy it up to whomever I choose once I pass on” (although I’m pretty sure Gates has divisions of scientists and engineers working on a solution to that pesky death problem).

s/The legitimate Children of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet

"24: and all this time, we thought we were only reviewing boxes of paper. We're American heroes, dammit." You ARE. People who don't realize that don't understand economics.

30: why can't it be serious?

There's already plenty of lawyers serving Biglaw and their corporations. If you can afford to work for a non-profit or public interest firm, where your work is provided pro bono, then you should do that.

There will always be plenty of lawyers making money and giving it to charity (at least I hope so), but there aren't plenty of lawyers that can afford to work for the small salaries that legal clinics, non-profits and others provide (mostly because most lawyers owe their soul in student loans).

So go help tenants against slum landlords, or Vets get their benefits, or the elderly make out their wills and get their health benefits and provide legal services to those that can't afford to pay a lawyer $300 an hour.

I think we're setting up and killing a strawman here. You can easily think that the rule of law is a valuable public good that requires lawyers to create and still think that many lawyers today are engaged in professions that limit economic growth. When you add the American rule to our tort and securties laws you get a lot of lawsuits driven by attorney's fees rather than the vindication of rights. To the extent that these lawsuits channel money towards litigation that retards economic growth without enhancing rights lawyers may represent an economic drain. It isn't really the lawyers that drive this result though, it is the incentive system that drives the lawyers.

FIRST to point out that if this guy graduated from law school without a job, he isn't likely to get a high-paying biglaw job, and I'd venture to guess that his services wouldn't be very useful to the needy. Sounds like he's f#cked.

35 - who is the "strawman" we are "killing"?

34: aren't there plenty of TTT graduates for those jobs? (Serious query.) Whatever happened to Loyola 2L and his unemployment quagmire? When he couldn't obtain a BigLaw position, why didn't he help Vets obtain their benefits?

Big ups to 27... LOL.

I think you mean "strawperson." Sheesh.

36: I suggested that he's currently clerking. Otherwise, you're right.

answer: go to the big firm. that will allow you to donate money and do some charitable work.

Why not do both? If you're so hung up on personal sacrifice, why not bill your 2100 hours to the devil, and then in your spare time, do pro-bono work. Then, you'll have the resources of your firm behind you instead of trying to solve the world's ills with dos computers and dot matrix printers. Plus, you can still give away your excess cash -- you won't have time to spend it anyway.

22 For POTUS!

I think the idea of the post is that a large part, though by no means all, of the laws currently on the books can be circumvented with the help of a lawyer (i.e., much of the 33 Act is rendered superfluous by a lawyer well-trained in Reg D). Such laws were passed by lawyers, with the idea of giving more business to their fellow lawyers (such as the new banking regulations currently under proposal), and serve no purpose that is extrinsic to the business of law. It would be easy enough to eliminate both the laws and the lawyers that are served by their existence (i.e., those who would have no jobs were it not for those laws) and society would be no worse off for it. Then the money spent on lawyers could be allocated elsewhere (such as to scientific research) and potential lawyers could move on to more productive pursuits (such as engineering, medicine, etc.). Some laws are clearly necessary (many criminal laws, basic contract enforcement, etc.), but many more are clearly useless once they are considered in conjunction with the presence of a robust legal profession.

9:

We need to follow Paris Hilton's example and develop a hybrid analysis involving S&M.

Ronald Gilson described business lawyers as transaction-cost engineers, which is pretty much just a fancy way of saying what everyone else here has said. The litigation lawyers are more engaged in redistributive work, rather than value-adding work, so it's slightly harder to justify their function (but still not too hard). We, like just about everyone else, actually do move the economy along.

I agree with 34. You've got to think of the end result of your work in BIGLAW, as well. You're essentially ensuring the flow of wealth to the already-wealthy about 99% of the time (please spare me the "but we do so much pro bono!" argument). If how you expend your labor/brainpower/time is important in your calculation of what's charitable, you should serve the poor directly. Serving on a board of a charity just isn't the same (though I know it's valuable).

I agree with 34. You've got to think of the end result of your work in BIGLAW, as well. You're essentially ensuring the flow of wealth to the already-wealthy about 99% of the time (please spare me the "but we do so much pro bono!" argument). If how you expend your labor/brainpower/time is important in your calculation of what's charitable, you should serve the poor directly. Serving on a board of a charity just isn't the same (though I know it's valuable).

Go work for Biglaw. Spend time doing pro bono work -- helping clients with meritorious claims who really deserve it. Serve on your firm's pro bono board -- encouraging other lawyers at your firm to do more pro bono work. Devote a substantial chunk of your money to charity. It's what I'm doing.

50: student loans much?

"Devote a substantial chunk of your money to charity. It's what I'm doing."

50: If you think all of your pro bono clients have meritorious claims, you clearly haven't done that much pro bono work (unless it's some high-falutin' amicus brief to the SC or something).

Devote a substantial chunk of your money to charity?

I do: my charity is called the Federal Government. You all should chip in.

My goal as a lawyer is to destroy the economy.

18: general point - if you're doing an economic analysis (remember, this comes from the freakonomics blog), you need to find a way to quantify value. Second, even assuming for the sake of argument that a PIL lawyer's services are worth more than he gets paid, that doesn't change the equation. If you can pay someone the market rate to perform those services (whatever their "real" value) in your stead and still have some moeny you can donate to charity left over, working in biglaw is the better choice.

I defend corporations from product liablity suits, but I would be first to say that tort litigation is NOT simply a drag on the economy. Not only does it pay my salary, but it also encourages inovation, redesign, research, and, well, safer products. If we closed the door on mass torts, we'd have a lot more flacid products on the market and very little accountability. The government certainly isn't looking at Chinese manufactured toys. Of course there are frivilous suits, but they don't take money out of the economy, they just move it around a little. It's no big deal.

Does legal aid provide you with health insurance and other benefits? The low salary is one issue, but the lack of decent benefits is another.

start your career in biglaw because if you change your mind, it is much harder to go from non-profit to biglaw than vice versa. one of my law school classmates wanted to start her career doing human rights work, and the people in the non-profits told her to get the good experience of a large law firm and bring that experience later on to the human rights world. That is exactly what she did (while doing her non-profit work as pro bono for the firm), and she has more value to the non-profit where she is now than she would as a first year lawyer with no real legal experience.

I'm surprised from all of the BIGLAW responses. This guy says he wants the most charitable result.

If you are a somewhat talented person, the answer will always be donate your time versus money, unless you are donating megabucks ($10+ mil).

HTH

The "go to Biglaw to get experience" is just a rationalization to avoid public interest work.

60: Agreed. The only reason to go to BIGLAW if you secretly want to do public interest work is for the prestige/money. You will have far more bargaining power if you're taking a huge paycut, so it's worth going to BIGLAW even for a year just to have that leverage. As to the training, BIGLAW teaches you how to second-guess yourself and waste time. That's not really valued in a public interest setting (or any other setting, really).

Going to Biglaw first might estopp you from some of the more competitive non-profit jobs. It's something to consider.

There's this pernicious myth that public interest places are interested, or need, more entry-level attorneys. Anyone who has tried to find a public interest job, even from a top school, will soon realize that he or she is sadly mistaken.

BIGLAW = exact OPPOSITE of public interest

HTH

so "value" can be engineers and corp execs coming up with new products that people don't need that marketers etc. push on everyone year after year?

Of course lawyers add value, they bring tons of revenue to companies and help new companies emerge. If their wasn't money in lawsuits, mergers, etc. then they wouldn't be happening, but they do and its lawyers that facilitate that process.

Also, im a patent attorney so we by definition create and protect value....so you what I'm trying to say is Mr. Economics is a dumbass

There are vernicious knids in public interest.

24 - Oh, I thought global hegemony and the windfall of the fallout of hundreds of years of exploitive colonization practices had something to do with first world wealth.

Guess you're right though, all rich people are hardworking (and vice versa). And all stupid people are poor (and vice versa). And the random circumstances of your birth, be it one of 10 kids in a 3rd world cesspool, or a silver spoon billionaire's son has NOTHING to do with it.

You're entitled-thinking superior-feeling ass would be a dirt farmer in any other part of the world, thank providence you lucked out. Jackass.

Any student attending Harvard who would write an article like this is an unbelievable hypocrite. Why not go to a cheaper law school -- say a state school -- and donate the difference in tuition to charity. If the student is on full scholarship, he could get that same full scholarship at a school where it costs less to live. Donate the difference to charity. Nothing he can say or do would convince me he/she is not a hypocrite. I, for one, do not take hypocrites seriously. Does anyone?

I agree with hypocrites half the time.

68: Surely you jest. Such genius cannot be sullied at a land grant institution or its ilk. Sheesh.

"BIGLAW teaches you how to second-guess yourself and waste time."

Agreed. The more I consider my post-biglaw options, the more I realize how few skills I have. . .

There are two aspects to charitable work:
1. The most efficient use of time/money/resources
2. Developing your own personal character

People making the "go to Biglaw" argument are looking at only that first aspect and ignoring the second. When you spend your own time helping people, it creates a self-perpetuating cycle whereby you want to do more. Simply giving money to others to do the work because its more efficient completely misses the point of doing charitable work. And that's the stronger argument....there's not time to get into the economically flawed argument of "gee, making wealth always leads to more people with jobs".

71: I wrote that comment. Don't worry about it - I went to a very small firm in a different practice area and it didn't take that long to get used to it. I just felt irritated that I'd been schooled in paranoia instead of just moving forward and getting stuff done. BIGLAW did teach me how to be organized, I'll give it that.

Public interest doesn't pay well. Big Law pays very well. Students that are not on full rides and who do not have rich parents are carrying somewhere between $100K and $300K (including undergrad) of debt.

If you don't watch out, *you* could be the one needing pro bono bankruptcy services. If it does any good on your particular combination of debt, that is.

-

It's not quite as simple as "if you want to help people, go do public interest." That assumes that most people who want to go the public interest route are actually willing to dedicate their life to the largely thankless work of helping people. There's a reason many public interest groups screen far more aggressively than BIGLAW ever does. Actually having a calling for that sort of law is the only thing that's going to keep you going.

There are an awful lot of Harvard Law Avenger types who think "helping people" sounds good until they actually try to do it on $40K a year and burn out either from the stress of the horrible situations they field for their clients, or the stress of being in poverty themselves - which you will be unless you can somehow afford a $200K "second mortgage" with no asset behind it on that salary.

On top of that, many of the PIL students, in my experience, can be almost viciously ideological about peers who go into "money" aspects of the profession "selling out," while at the same time bemoaning the financing of their various organizations or their lives.

My advice for PIL students like the above is to whine less and fundraise more, so that their LARP program or org actually gets funded. Network, raise money, set up endowments, do whatever. Denegrating economics - let alone networking with those people who actually have money - is just plain foolish. Why insult, say, a trust fund kid who is going to a V10 firm, when he could probably get you facetime with fellow wealthy people who are feeling guilty and want to help their fellow man?

It's asinine.

Stephen Dubner's response if fucking credited. If you want to help society, being a lawyer is the wrong way to go about it. Lawyers are leaches upon society. We do nothing but consume and destroy resources. If you want to truly help out society, you should go into a job where you actually produce something useful to society. The only thing lawyers produce is paper and they generally do more to damage society than good.

Quite frankly, this is a bunch of bs. PIL firms actually need BigLaw in order to help them function. The Guantanamo Bay inmates would not be getting any help if it were not from partners and associates at BigLaw giving their time and doing all of the research (not to mention arguing) for these cases. You can do both.
Additionally, many people going into PIL work thinking that they are always helping the little man only to find that their clients are just as bad as everyone else. Yes, there are alot of poor people that need their rights vindicated. However many times people find that they are representing people that are just trying to get over on someone else.
On lawyers not adding value, I guess it is just coincidence that mosty of the wealthiest countries in the world have highly developed legal systems and lots of lawyers and the poor countires don't. China and India investing time in upgrading their legal systems and overhauling legal education is just them blowing money on frivilous pursuits. In order for many of those MBAs to go out and create wealth, they have to be able to engage in very sophisticated transactions that require rules and safeguards in order to ensure that they are done corectly. Lawyers are the ones that make sure those rules are followed. Runaway capitalism without strict rules being enacated and followed is what led to the crash of '29 and is partially the cause of the recent economic troubles. Try sending those MBAs to 3rd world, excuse me, undeveloped or developing economy, and see how far they get without and lawyers adding "friction".

I am serious. and stop calling me shirley.

/obligatory

BigLaw doesn't add value. Neither do many (most?) other careers...

- Marketing/Advertising -- getting people to buy crap they don't need with money they don't have
- Sales -- ibid.
- Finance -- taking your pound of flesh thanks to a few court decisions mandating use of an investment bank for even the simplest transactions (1% for follow-on debt offerings... sheeeeeeeit), prices fixed thanks to your cartel-like behavior; see also mortgage-backed securities
- Medicine -- this one's a little more difficult... GPs/Internists/Nurses do great work. But if you're in those high-flying specialties (ortho, anestesia, imaging), you're bankrupting the country by bilking Medicare/caid for mostly unnecessary procedures that add little to no value
- Pharma -- again, a few start-ups actually come up with new drugs that advance the economy and society. But if you're working for the big guys, your operation is sales/marketing/regulatory driven, and the products you really care about are me-too drugs for chronic conditions (more $$ than when people are actually sick). You're not curing cancer with your branded seasonal allergy pill.

Indeed, most "prestigious" professions are largely parasitic. So yeah, we're not saving the world. Are you surprised? And do you think these other people are?

the picture of Mother Theresa was unnecessary. Why not a picture of Muhammed?

Mother Theresa is alive and well with the angels!

I had almost this same conversation with a partner that I was asking some career advice and at the end of the day I think that
1) not everything that Biglaw does is evil, its just a myth, most of it is shades of grey
2) when Biglaw does probono work they have the resources and ability to have a much greater impact than most probono places, ie many of the landmark SCOTUS decisions that have shaped our society were argued by Biglaw attorneys
3) your ability to make an impact when you are broke is limited

I don't know what the answer is, but equating working in Biglaw with "selling out" is overly simplistic and doesn't really help anything

Most non-profits are horrible places for smart people to work. Only the laziest people work at non-profits.

Most non-profits are horrible places for smart people to work. Only the laziest people work at non-profits.