By Steven Becker
It wasn’t until I started at HLS that I realized plaintiffs’ law was kind of an unusual path. Granted, I came into law school with a pretty underdeveloped conception of the different legal careers that people pursued—partly because I already knew about the path I wanted to go down, and that was enough for me. But from my near-layperson perspective, it seemed logical to assume that at least, I don’t know, maybe a quarter of students would pursue careers in plaintiff-side civil litigation (“After all,” I thought innocently, “law is, of course, one half criminal and one half civil, of which half is plaintiff and half is defense, right? So, naturally, 50% * 50% = 25%”). It didn’t take long for me to realize how wrong that was. It’s taken longer to accept the bitter reality that, no, not only is plaintiff’s law not a commonly pursued career path, but it’s not even a commonly known career path at a place like HLS.
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