A Letter from our Co-President
One of the more interesting conversations I’ve had over the past two months NPLA has existed was with someone who couldn’t understand why I wanted to increase the number of students going into plaintiff-side work. Already law students interested in this work can feel like they’re competing for a handful of jobs. Why would I want to increase the competition for the limited pool of positions available to law students and first-year attorneys?
There is undoubtedly truth to this—right now, my applications to plaintiff-side firms benefit from the fact that it’s one of the few from my school—but it also fundamentally misunderstands our vision for NPLA. We’re not interested in making plaintiffs’ law more “prestigious.” We’re interested in changing a system that values prestige over all else: justice, well-being, and sense of self.
“We’re not interested in making plaintiffs’ law more ‘prestigious.’ We’re interested in changing a system that values prestige over all else: justice, well-being, and sense of self.”
The system funnels talented young law students into defense side jobs and holds Big Law positions as the ideal to aim for. Most students enter law school with a desire to use their law degree to make the world a better place, but by graduation write off that initial ambition as naivety. This phenomenon—dubbed the “public interest drift”—is well documented and worse at highly ranked schools.
The understanding seems to be if you can get a job at an AmLaw 100 firm, why wouldn’t you? (I can think of a reason or two.) Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of law school rankings, there is something disagreeable about a majority of top law school graduates pursuing a career where their work on behalf of corporations is often directly at odds with the public good.
There is a phenomenon I see play out with each new class of 1Ls: a student is looking at a firm’s website and is excited to see that the firm lists a practice area that they’re interested in—for example, environmental law. The student applies to the firm excited to defend the environment and protect the planet only to realize that their work consists of defending EPA violations and protecting polluters.
For some, this poses no problem; others, faced with enormous loans and financial obligations, reasonably push aside their discomfort. Rationalization is not difficult, nor is it irrational. After all, junior associates have no control over what sort of cases a firm takes. There’s no shortage of people interested in Big Law: if you don’t take the job, someone else will. The money you make can be put towards doing good in your community (for all that Big Law firms work on behalf of corporate interests, their attorneys continue to be major contributors to political candidates who campaign on increased corporate accountability).
Many even openly discuss starting at Big Law firm to pay off their loans and then pivoting to public interest work. Still, this path underestimates the challenge of such a transition: after all, financial obligations do not disappear so much as change form. The associates who work to pay off their loans become partners who work to pay off their mortgages and send their children to the best schools. Some Big Law attorneys may hesitate to transition, fearing social justice organizations will engage in some degree of “virtue/purity testing” and disfavor a candidate with their experience.
This sort of litmus test unfairly disadvantages low-income and first-generation lawyers whose choice to work in Big Law may not have felt like a choice at all. Conversely, it acknowledges a reality that for all Big Law firms tout their superb training, they often fail to prepare attorneys for the realities of public interest lawyering. A third-year associate at a Big Law firm likely does not have experience interacting with clients or taking a deposition.
The dissonance of personal beliefs and professional activity can lead to a cognitive distinction between what is lawful and what is just, even though most of us pursue the law because we believe in justice. Unpleasant cases can be justified by procedural nuance and legal mechanisms. But this rationalization ignores the fact that the parties benefiting from the law are the ones who shaped it.
“Too many students conclude that a lifetime representing the marginalized of our society is a luxury they cannot afford.”
Identifying problems is easy if you’re not required to find a solution: none of this changes the fact that the Skadden Fellowship—one of the most prestigious public interest options available to recent law school grads—pays less than a quarter of what a first-year associate at Skadden LLP makes. With ever-increasing costs of living, even a student whose primary drive is not financial can struggle to make that choice.
NPLA believes that plaintiffs’ law is a path to do exciting and interesting work consistent with progressive values without sacrificing financial comfort. Too many students conclude that a lifetime representing the marginalized of our society is a luxury they cannot afford. Beyond the benefits for any individual, we believe that our legal system and society writ large benefit from more bright, talented young attorneys using their legal education to represent the injured rather than protect the powerful.
The culture of law school convinces students of a false binary where their options are defending corporate misconduct in a Manhattan high-rise or becoming a public defender and struggling to pay their bills. In the past few years, PLAs have emerged on campuses across the country because students want a different option. NPLA was formed because so many of our law schools have failed to provide it.
The National Plaintiffs’ Law Association exists to ensure law students have access to and awareness of plaintiff-side career options; we aim to create a durable pipeline of aspiring plaintiffs’ lawyers. This will be challenging: we know this, and we’re ready for it. Our board members have each worked to grow PLAs on campuses where few structures exist to teach students about plaintiff-side law and to channel them toward attractive professional opportunities.
We’re fighting against the image many of our peers have internalized: the plaintiffs’ lawyer as an unethical ambulance chaser or sleazy opportunist, as well as the refrain from so-called “tort reformers” that frivolous lawsuits overwhelm the civil litigation system. This status quo did not emerge by accident: it was deliberately cultivated by corporate actors eager to evade accountability.
This is by no means to say that the plaintiffs’ bar is beyond reproach: it absolutely is not. One of the reasons fewer law students take this career path is obfuscation about salaries and advancement methods. The plaintiffs’ bar is both less diverse and more male than its counterpart on the other side of the v. Different practices prioritize profit at the expense of the people they’re aimed at helping. NPLA wants to be a part of that reform too.
Many of these problems come from the same root. They can be addressed, in part, by the same solution: a community of students, scholars, and practitioners dedicated to strengthening the plaintiffs’ bar. We need your help to build that community because this is about more than any one person’s job prospects: it’s about a more just justice system.
Laura Shannon is the Co-President of the National Plaintiffs’ Law Association.
She is 3L at the University of Chicago Law School, where she participates in the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic, is the Topic Access and Recruitment Editor of the Law Review, and founded the Chicago Plaintiffs’ Law Association. She received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Northeastern University in 2018.
