Why Georgetown Needs to Revitalize Public Interest
A. Understanding the Problem: The Funnel Effect
Many students arrive at Georgetown motivated to use their legal education in service to others. However, during their time at Georgetown many changes take place. By graduation, few students enter public interest practice. We characterize this phenomenon, whereby the relatively large number of students who are interested in public interest at orientation become the very few that pursue public interest careers upon graduation, as the funnel effect.
There is little dispute as to the accuracy of this description. What has received less scrutiny however, are the causes for this phenomenon. Although some factors are beyond Georgetown's control, such as the structure of the job market, many are within Georgetown's direct control. Such factors include socialization of students away from embracing public interest as a worthy career option, lack of accessibility to the public interest job market, lack of educational and career guidance, lack of visibility and awareness about the nature and benefits of public interest work, lack of support and recognition for student public interest efforts, and the eroding financial feasibility of accepting public interest work after attending Georgetown.
In short, the present environment leaves students without the connections, support, inspiration, motivation, and means to engage in public interest work. Although a small number of students are provided some assistance via the PILS program, this program is not a replacement for the services that all students, including those in PILS, need in order to effectively make their initial dream of service a reality.
B. Why Georgetown Should Respond
1. A Law School's Professional Responsibility to Support Service
The legal profession has long acknowledged a duty to provide legal service to the poor and underrepresented. This duty is a hallmark of its professionalism and an obligation created by virtue of its monopoly over the market for legal services. This duty has long been recognized by legal codes of ethics. The importance of this duty goes to the very legitimacy of our legal system, since the rule of law is unjust if some have unequal access to it.
If there is any fundamental proposition of government on which all would agree, it is that one of the highest goals of society must be to achieve and maintain equality before the law. Yet this ideal remains an empty form of words unless the legal profession is ready to provide adequate representation for those unable to pay the usual fees. —Professional Representation: Report of the Joint Conference, 44 A.B.A. Journal 159, 1216 (1958)
Currently, the legal profession is not satisfying its obligation. Nearly 800,000 lawyers practice in the United States. Yet, it is estimated that less than 20% of the legal needs of the indigent are being met. While law schools alone cannot be blamed for this problem, they bear a special responsibility for inculcating an ethic of public service in their students.
The law school, the institution shaping the future of the legal profession by educating tomorrow's lawyers, is responsible for cultivating lawyers who are dedicated to public service and able to devote their careers to it. Additionally, as a Jesuit institution, committed to educating men and women to serve others, Georgetown is called upon to lead the nation's law schools and the legal profession in fulfilling its responsibility to make justice accessible to all.
2. Renewed Interest in Service
Recently, the American Bar Association has strengthened its rule urging pro bono work, and lawyers nationwide are responding with increasing numbers of pro bono hours. In addition, the current presidential administration strongly favors public service, and has proposed plans for increasing incentives to serve—among them a national service program, student loan reform, and legislation to make LRAP program benefits tax-free.
This trend has borne itself out at Georgetown as much as at any other law school. In the 1980's, Georgetown witnessed the genesis of the Equal Justice Foundation, a half-time public interest career counselor, a loan repayment assistance program, the Public Interest Law Scholars Program, and Georgetown Outreach. But the 90's bring renewed student idealism and greater challenges—challenges which current efforts are not meeting.
Large numbers of students continue to come to Georgetown interested in public interest practice. At a recent EJF/Career Services program entitled "Options in Public Interest Law," approximately fifty students, mostly first-years, came to hear five public interest lawyers speak about their work. They represent about fifteen percent of their class.
3. Georgetown's Promise to Its Students
Law is but the means; Justice is the End. —Georgetown Law Center motto, carved into the north facade of Edward Bennett Williams Law Library
Georgetown affirms its dedication to these words on page one of its admissions brochure. By claiming these words as its own, Georgetown presents itself to the world as an institution dedicated to promoting justice. In the first seven pages of Georgetown's admissions brochure, prospective students will read the words "public service" four times, "public interest" twice, and "public good" once.
These pages are designed to entice aspiring law students to choose Georgetown. They create an image of an institution which is committed to legal education as a tool for serving justice and the public interest. By marketing itself in this light, Georgetown makes a promise to students that it will live up to the lofty ideals which it espouses in its admissions materials.
Keeping this promise means creating an environment which fosters interest in public service and makes public interest law a viable career option. Currently, Georgetown is not keeping that promise.
4. Georgetown's Promise to the Community
As Georgetown's Public Relations office is clearly aware, Georgetown's service to the community is a valuable asset which results in increased prestige, alumni donations, and higher caliber students. People are drawn to the high ideals of service.
The greatest contribution a law school can make to its community is to produce lawyers who will make individual commitments to the pursuit of justice. Currently, many students graduate from Georgetown disillusioned by a perception that competition reigns supreme—among students, among faculty, among law schools. Many graduate feeling that this is a mill for corporate lawyers, an educational institution which is not true to the lofty ideals it claims to stand for.
Developing loyalty requires more than professions of commitment. It requires the legitimacy which comes only from a substantial investment in programs which cultivate in students the high ideals of justice. Unless Georgetown meets the new challenges of the nineties with revitalized public interest programming, the emptiness of its socially responsible image will be exposed, and its investment in cultivating the image will cease to yield a return.
5. Keeping Up With Peer Schools
Quite simply, Georgetown has fallen behind its peer schools in the area of public interest. Georgetown lags behind most of the other top ten law schools in almost every aspect of public interest support—less loan repayment assistance, fewer job-searching resources, fewer summer fellowships, less scholarship aid, and a less supportive community.
Georgetown has placed an abysmal 2% of its graduates in public interest practice over the last several years (not including government or judicial clerkships). That translates to roughly 10 of 600 students.
This trend is not universal. In 1992, a record 66 members of Harvard Law School's 500 graduates went into public interest law: more than 10% of their student body. Harvard's example serves to illustrate that if a law school makes a commitment to support public interest initiatives, placement rates will follow accordingly.
This is particularly disappointing at a law school like Georgetown, which has a number of inherent advantages—a strong clinical program, a location in the heart of the public interest community, a large and diverse alumni. Georgetown has a clear opportunity to move ahead of other schools by using these advantages to renew its commitment to public interest.
C. How Georgetown Should Respond: Reversing the Funnel
The means to address these problems are within Georgetown's reach. However, more than simply improving any single aspect of the institutional setting, what is needed is a vision for a revitalized public interest community at Georgetown. This vision must exist at three levels: at the institutional level, whereby Georgetown can become a supportive environment for public interest lawyering; at the personal level, so that students will be supported, guided and able to use their skills to the best of their ability; and at the community level, of a school and its students working to address injustice.
EJF has such a vision. We believe that this institution must create a strong, vibrant culture that is supportive of public interest, and a community that students can identify and connect with as students and as alumni. We believe that a culture of public service needs to be established for everyone, regardless of whether they plan to engage in full-time public interest work upon graduation. In this way, all students will want to use their training and expertise to contribute to society.