By Fred Messner
We all know the numbers. For decades, survey after survey has shown that while large majorities of incoming law students express interest in public-interest careers, only tiny cohorts of graduating JDs actually follow through on those salutary aspirations. As the narrative goes, students enter as fresh-faced idealists and leave as hired guns. The dropoff is particularly stark at Harvard Law School. In perhaps the most famous account of “public interest drift,” an early 1990s study recorded 70% of incoming HLS students as reporting a preference to work for the common good. By their third year, a scant 2% still planned to take a public-interest job.
Some scholars and commentators attribute the shift to educational norms, intra-class socialization, and of course the crushing debt burden that many students accumulate over the course of their three years of schooling. Others contend that the dramatic empirical data are really the result of a certain degree of social pressure–driven insincerity on the part of the 0Ls reporting such intense enthusiasm for public-interest work. But whatever the exact contours of the problem, one certainly exists: law students want to do morally fulfilling work but are steered, enticed, or dragged away from it sometime between their first 1L torts class and their last 3L exam.
We founded HPLA because we believe that plaintiffs’ law can keep students on the straight path. By offering young lawyers a way to fight for justice without taking a vow of poverty, careers on the plaintiff side can break the corporate firm / public interest binary that leads so many students to conclude that a lifetime representing the marginalized of our society is a luxury they simply cannot afford. And beyond the benefits for any individual, we believe that our polity is made better when graduates of schools like HLS employ their legal training to secure redress for the injured rather than impunity for the powerful. In short, we believe that more HLS students should become plaintiffs’ lawyers, and we exist to help them do that.
Building a durable pipeline of aspiring plaintiffs’ lawyers won’t be easy. While we have been heartened to find a promising kernel of interest in the student body, and to identify a robust cohort of HLS alumni already racking up wins for claimants in the courts, the reality is that we have a formidable task ahead of us. When we launched in the fall of 2019, few structures existed on campus to teach students about plaintiff-side law and to channel them toward attractive professional opportunities. Moreover, despite the pro-little-guy attitude that generally prevails in Cambridge, many students had internalized the image—deliberately cultivated by corporate actors eager to evade accountability—of the plaintiffs’ lawyer as unethical ambulance chaser, the déclassé foil of the boardroom advisor in an expensive suit. In that context, it’s a minor miracle that so many HLS students and graduates have found their way to fantastic plaintiff-side firms around the country.
HPLA is going to change this. Already, we have enabled students to meet with and learn about a wide variety of plaintiffs’ firms and helped a number of them secure jobs and internships. Already, we are seeing meaningful upticks in interest in plaintiff-side careers and perceptible changes in students’ perceptions of plaintiff-side attorneys. Little by little, we are building a community of students, scholars, and practitioners dedicated to strengthening the plaintiffs’ bar.
This blog is a major part of that project. We envision it as a gathering place for current, former, and aspiring plaintiffs’ lawyers to meet, exchange ideas, and share stories. We hope it can become the centerpiece of an energetic pro-plaintiff culture at Harvard Law School. Over the coming months, we will host writing by student and non-student authors on topics ranging from civil procedure to legal education to public policy. We warmly invite your contributions, suggestions, and feedback as we build this community together.
Fred Messner JD ’22 is co-President of HPLA.