Does Private Firm Work Do More Good Than Public Interest Work?
First, some background — this year, Harvard Law re-established their One Day’s Work fellowship program. Students who enter the private sector after their second year of law school volunteer to donate one day’s worth of their summer salary and the money collected goes to one of their classmates entering the public sector upon graduation.
Some students like the program, others don’t like the way it’s funded… But one student thinks it’s “the best possible way to fund an unworthy cause.”
From The Record at Harvard Law:
Kudos to One Day’s Work for being up-front and honest with their request for charity. The only problem is that the purpose of One Day’s Work is highly suspect.
A brief note on the provision of legal services. Imagine a law student named Ames Greenleaf. He works as a summer associate at a private firm and makes quite a hefty haul. He spends his days that summer writing research papers on civil procedure esoterica to help, say, a can manufacturer get out of a suit. His efforts raise the probability that the can manufacturer survives the suit and can continue employing dozens of workers who would otherwise end up indigent.
Now, imagine a law student named Barry Chosenone. He works at a public interest firm that files copyright paperwork for indigent NEA-grant artists. One such artist gets his copyright and airs to the world his passionate magnum opus “Piss Christ.” Barry loves this work, but he is worried because it does not pay well enough to support an uptown New York lifestyle.
Which of those two students has done more to help the community? Who can honestly claim that Barry deserves Ames’s money? Baldly, public interest work is more emotionally rewarding because it involves directly helping people, a fact which leads many good-hearted people to choose public interest vocations. Private firm work does more ultimate good, however. The clients pay more because they ultimately provide more benefit for their communities than individual down-on-their-luck litigants.
Personally, I don’t want to pay an extra couple hundred dollars to incentivize my fellow students to get a legal job at the Department of Health and Human Services that will be paid for with the tax money I already have to pay to the government anyway. . . .
Anddddd, discuss.