Before coming to law school, I was only vaguely aware of what lawyers did other than become politicians. One tangible example in my mind was private injury law. I had seen billboards for attorneys looking for clients who had gotten into car accidents: \u201cHit by a big rig? Call me\u201d types of ads. I wasn\u2019t particularly drawn to these sorts of ads, but I knew about them.<\/p>\n
In the broader sense, I was also aware of plenty of large-scale litigation in the country. Lawsuits against big pharma, RoundUp, etc. Torts. And never, prior to law school, did I think that I would want to defend<\/em> the companies who were being sued in these types of litigation. Yet this is exactly the path that is presented and slowly normalized to entering law school students. Students who enter with vague interests\u2014say, antitrust\u2014don\u2019t often have those interests because they want to defend<\/em> corporations in those areas. Students probably entered with the vision of breaking up monopolies. Instead, that exact interest leads them to law firms where they defend anticompetitive behavior by monopolist actors.<\/p>\n Students who don\u2019t come to law school with a strong passion for public interest work\u2014the students who respect public defenders and nonprofit workers, but don\u2019t particularly see themselves in those positions\u2014are left on a conveyor belt to \u201cBigLaw.\u201d It is the only option that seems viable if you don\u2019t want to survive off of the bare minimum while paying exorbitant loans for the next 10 years.<\/p>\n I joined HPLA because it seeks to enlighten students about this false choice. You don\u2019t have to represent companies as they merge with every competitor in the market. And you don\u2019t have to survive off of LIPP to be able to sleep at night. I\u2019ve already seen HPLA lead students to the plaintiffs\u2019 side, and I can\u2019t wait to see it do so more. After all, no one watched Erin Brockovich<\/em>\u00a0and thought, \u201cI\u2019d really like to defend the company that poisoned an entire town.\u201d And the point is, you don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before coming to law school, I was only vaguely aware of what lawyers did other than become politicians. One tangible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1937,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-board-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.law.harvard.edu\/hpla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}