Public Interest

What's Your Public Interest Inspiration?

Newbies are much savvier about how to go about practicing in a world that we dinosaurs could not have even imagined.

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Photo by Abbie Rowe, National Park Service/John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston – John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

California’s primary election is June 5. Here, the governor and the down-ticket races occur in off-presidential election years. This year, the two top voter getters will compete in the November general election, regardless of whether both are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, or whatever.

1968 was a presidential election year, but I couldn’t vote because in those dinosaur days voting age was 21. For those of us old enough to remember the California primary in June, 1968, and regardless of political affiliation and whether we could vote, it was a dreadful night, barely six months into a year not ever to be forgotten.

Fierce fighting raged in Vietnam, a war that more and more of us opposed; in March, LBJ decided not to run for another term as president; Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis in April. The results of the June California primary would help decide who would be the Democratic presidential candidate.

Robert Kennedy (the late President Kennedy’s younger brother and Ted Kennedy’s older brother), the junior senator from New York, vied for votes here in the Golden State with Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. On June 4, 1968, Kennedy won the primary. Acknowledging victory, he said “On to Chicago,” the location of the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Then, walking through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel here in Los Angeles, he too was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet. He died a day later. (The hotel was torn down years ago, after, among other things, an unsuccessful attempt by real estate developer Donald Trump to buy the highly desirable piece of property located in the heart of Los Angeles. It’s now a high school named after the late Senator Kennedy.)

1968 was a watershed year in many ways. So many ATL readers were not even alive in then (and yes, Elie Mystal, that includes you). There was at that time, I think, a different spirit about a lot of things, a sense of idealism, including why law school was not looked at as a way to make money (and you didn’t make a lot in those days), but was considered a calling, a way to serve others, a way to make a difference in a society that needed and craved change. 1968 was a year of upheaval. Looking back, I don’t think we’ve experienced anything quite like it since.

The costs of college and law school were a fraction of what they are now and so, the decision to go into public interest law was much easier then. Biglaw firms (before they were even called that) weren’t paying ginormous money to their lawyers and associates. Conditions in the country, whether political, economic, or social or a combination of all three, shouted out the need for public interest lawyers.

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The need is just as great, if not more today, but unless the Bank of Mom and Dad pays the educational expenses, the student wins Lotto or Powerball, or the student is independently wealthy, we all know that law school graduates are staggering under enormous debt loads.

How many law students today say that they want to go into public interest law, and how many of those are actually able to do that? 

Newbie lawyers who want to serve the underserved/unserved often can’t do that because of their debt load. So, they go into Biglaw or other large firms in order to service that debt. Going into public service law, there has been loan forgiveness, but now, maybe not as much as before. 

And although this post came out some years back, it’s still a good checklist of the pros and cons of public interest practice.

Lots of people disdained or actively disliked Bobby Kennedy. He had a reputation as a single-minded, “ruthless” figure, but that was just one side of him. He had always been a hero of the underdog, and nowhere was that fact more apparent when his funeral train went from New York to D.C., and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, stood in silent tribute as the train passed by.

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Photos of the people paying tribute as the Kennedy funeral train traveled its sad route are like Dorothea Lange or Walker Evans photos (and if you don’t know they were, Google them). They are pictures of an America that had, so far, not been for them. That was what Kennedy wanted to change. To those of us of college age or even older, worried sick about the draft, tired of Vietnam and wanting to make a difference, he symbolized hope for the future after what had been, so far, a very difficult and tumultuous decade. We wanted that hope.

Newbies are much savvier about how to go about practicing in a world that we dinosaurs could not have even imagined. They are also much more willing today, I think, to speak up about what they want and need in their legal careers. Good for them. Maybe they will be able to find a more balanced way to practice than we did.

Dinosaurs need to pay attention here.

It wasn’t until 1975 when the United States Supreme Court held that it was permissible for lawyers to advertise, a cataclysmic change that I remember well. ATL readers of a tender age and even not so tender age, can you imagine practicing without being able to advertise? I thought not. 

But some things have not changed in the last fifty years. Putting aside the daily stories of lawyers making unsavory news (I think you can figure out at least a couple of names) and the desire to shower after reading those stories, I think that most lawyers, the unsung and unappreciated among us (and isn’t that the vast majority?) want to make the world a better place, to effect social change, to make a difference, if only in the life of a single client. The same was true fifty years ago, and that’s why this song is still meaningful. 

old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computerJill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

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