Imagine, for a moment, that you are accepted to an elite law school. You cannot wait to learn to use the legal system to bring about change. Perhaps you wish to fight for environmental and climate justice, or maybe you want to help poor people accused of crimes as a public defender. So, you show up to law school, ready for the institution to throw its weight behind you and make your dreams a reality. Every law school wants its graduates to go out and make the world a better place, after all. Okay, so maybe some people go to law school just to work in the corporate world and make money. But the place you’re going is special. The people there won’t want to work in soulless corporate gigs; they’ll want to change the world like you!

When you get there, however, you find yourself confused by the conversations you hear. Sure, most of your friends talk about the need for stronger voting rights, or for eviction defense, or more progressive immigration policies. But many of those same friends are also talking about Sullivan & Cromwell & Akin & Gump & Ropes & Gray & Davis & Polk & Cravath & Wachtell & Dewey & Cheatem & Howe. These are corporate law firms—colloquially known as “BigLaw.”  It’s not what you expected. But these are your friends, and this is what everyone is talking about!  You doubt they could all be wrong.

Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to go to one of these firms for at least a few years. If all your friends will be there, then these firms, by their very composition, must be gathering places for the same great minds that gathered at law school. You decide to talk to some of your friends, to find out what’s driving their decisions. One thing you hear a lot is that everyone needs to first pay off their loans before they move into the public interest world. And that makes sense to you. In the 21st century, the debt that law students take on to pay for their education is enormous. Students graduate with, on average, a whopping $200,000 of debt. It’s easy to see, then, how taking a job that pays $200,000 a year seems like a good way to pay off those loans—in fact, it seems like the only way. The corporate lawyer is not just well-to-do while working as an associate; he has a future full of wealth. The public interest lawyer, on the other hand, is, in various caricatures, dressed in an old, ill-fitting suit, working in a dimly lit basement office, and pinching pennies just to get by. When these are the choices presented, how can anyone not choose corporate law?  Who doesn’t want to be comfortable?

You’re still concerned, though, about the work you would be doing. What if you end up having to represent a corporate client that goes against your values, like Exxon or Nestlé?  Your friends reassure you: sure, there are unethical clients in the corporate world, but there’s no guarantee your clients in the public interest world will be paragons of ethics. (This claim doesn’t make much sense to you, but you keep listening.)  It’s not our job as lawyers to determine who gets representation, and every client deserves a lawyer. Corporate law is not inherently good or bad—it’s just another application of the rule of law. It’s value-neutral. (That part makes more sense to you.)  And besides, almost all of these firms have charitable pro bono practices. Sure, you might have to do some work that feels icky, or that bores you, but there will be plenty of opportunity to do good—more than enough to make up for any harm you might inadvertently cause. And even if that’s an overly optimistic take—and you’re sure it’s not—it’ll be easy enough to make the lateral move into the public interest world once you decide you’re done.

When we step back, we can see that “what is wrong with you?” is the wrong question to ask. Instead, we need to ask about the institutions guiding us along. Are they broken?  Or are they, in fact, intricately and intentionally designed?

So, you’ve made your decision, and after a surprisingly easy interview process, you land a summer associate gig at Suem & Quick. But then, one evening you get into a heated debate at the library with some friends—the friends who, despite all the signs, didn’t end up taking corporate law jobs. How could you have become so morally bankrupt?  Your friends are making you feel awful. You all came to law school to change the world, they say, and you’ve failed. You didn’t think your decision to go to corporate law was so bad, but they certainly do. If only you’d been stronger. The school has both corporate and public interest career offices—why didn’t you prioritize visiting the public interest office?

What, exactly, is wrong with you?

Law school, like any massive societal institution, is steeped in myths. These three narratives—that coercive debt leaves students no choice, that corporate law is value-neutral, and that whether you pursue a public interest career depends on sufficient moral fortitude—dominate the conversation and lead many students to the conclusions above. When we step back, we can see that “what is wrong with you?” is the wrong question to ask. Instead, we need to ask about the institutions guiding us along. Are they broken?  Or are they, in fact, intricately and intentionally designed?

Most law students—especially those at elite law schools—approach money and income in ways that many people outside of the legal world would consider out of touch with reality. 

In 2022, first-year associates at most elite law firms can expect to earn more than $200,000 before tax.  What a payout!  Without considering debt, this salary is at best more than any single person needs, and at worst unethical in light of our extreme income inequality.  With hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, the salary no longer seems extreme; it suddenly seems necessary.

Comparatively, a public interest starting salary—say, $60,000 or $70,000—seems like poverty wages. And while such wages do qualify as “low-income” in certain parts of our unequal America, the majority of Americans would correctly see them as comfortable. One 2010 study determined that after earning $75,000, more money is unlikely to increase happiness. But even if it did, the choice between an “acceptable” $200,000 and a “poor” $60,000 salary is not actually a binary. There are, in fact, plenty of options in between, such as working at a private public interest law firm or a plaintiff’s law firm. These career options still serve the public interest. Earning $120,000 at a private public interest firm will not allow students to pay off their loans as quickly as working at BigLaw might, but it remains a viable option. When these options are brought out of the shadows and into the spotlight, BigLaw suddenly does not seem as necessary or inevitable.

Credit: Sasun Bughdaryan via Unsplash. Legal education and massive student loan debt: it’s rare to find one without the other.

Still, is law school so expensive today that pursuing a career in legal aid with a $50,000 starting salary is untenable?  It depends. At some law schools, without scholarship money or loan repayment assistance, students have limited options if they want to escape their debt. There is a public service loan forgiveness program sponsored by the federal government, but it is not without bureaucratic problems or uncertainties. That may change in the future, but students could be forgiven for their distrust of the program. At many elite law schools, however, students have access to loan repayment assistance programs (often abbreviated as LRAPs). Harvard Law School, for example, offers students access to a “Low Income Protection Plan” (LIPP). The plan pays, over a period of 10 years, a sizeable chunk of students’ loan payments so long as their salary falls below a certain threshold. The program is not without faults of significant magnitude—students have, for example, decided to postpone getting married for fear of their spouse’s greater salary bringing about a decrease in their LIPP award—but it exists, and if you’re willing to cut through the red tape, you can access it.

Moving from an elite law school into a corporate gig “doesn’t require ingenuity, guts, or creativity.”

That red tape is not insignificant, though. It feels especially taxing in contrast to the corporate job search, which might be best described as a moving walkway. As Yale Law Professor and author of The Meritocracy Trap Daniel Markovits puts it, “these jobs are structured to be distributed in a rationalized way.”  Moving from an elite law school into a corporate gig “doesn’t require ingenuity, guts, or creativity.”  David B. Wilkins, Harvard Law Professor and Director of Harvard Law’s Center on the Legal Profession, agrees. “The greatest influence on career choice is not brainwashing,” says Wilkins, “but the creation of an external market in which somebody can hit send on their computer, their resume goes out to the top 150-200 law firms, and they end up with 25 offers in the next day.”  Michael Shammas, Harvard Law J.D. ’16, describes the culture around Harvard Law’s premier corporate recruiting program, the Early Interview Program (EIP), as one of “ignorance and inertia.” “The defaults are set up in a way that you slide into working at these firms without much thought,” recalls Shammas. 

In days past, this moving walkway operated to allow the heirs of the American aristocracy (rich, white people) access to elite law firms. These days, the walkway has widened. As Markovits notes, “the composition of the workforce at these firm has changed to become relatively more diverse.”  In a vacuum, this development is a positive one. As one example of diversity-correlated inequality, the Black-White wealth gap is enormous, and has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. “Career development offices are designed to help people make [the necessary] contacts” to make it into BigLaw, says Markovits.

As career offices encourage these careers, though, they implicitly approve of the obscene $200,000 starting BigLaw salary. Can’t intergenerational wealth be built with less?  And what does it mean to build wealth when that wealth is built through serving corporate clients, many of which directly harm marginalized communities through their work?  It is unfair to force any one student to bear the burden of this moral labyrinth. But it is also disingenuous and incomplete to delete it from the discussion. Money is not apolitical; in a capitalist society, it is always obtained at some moral cost. Complicating the calculus further is the pressure exerted by cultural expectations. Some students may feel pressured by their parents or communities to pursue a corporate law career—that doing anything else would be a waste of everything for which their family has worked. A detailed discussion of those expectations is beyond the scope of this piece, but the central role they can play in students’ decisions should not be discounted. 

These pressures aside, Markovits does not believe that, at elite law schools, there has been any “sea change in financial need to take a BigLaw job after graduating, as opposed to 25 years ago.”  Perhaps the debt issue is not a question of need, but of ease and limits to how much, understandably, any of us want to struggle. When corporate law sets the standard for a top-notch salary in exchange for relatively low job search effort, public interest supporters have to push back by expanding their own moving walkway. Campaigns to raise summer public interest funding, and campaigns to increase loan repayment assistance, are a natural outgrowth of this framing.

There will always be a subset of people that have the financial need to do BigLaw, but there’s a much, much bigger proportion of people who get crushed by debt and are sold on this fallacy that the best way to pay it off is to go do BigLaw for a few years.  And then they never move on.

One first-year student at HLS, who chose to remain anonymous for this piece, is frustrated that these efforts fall to students. “This school sells us on the idea that Harvard is opening every door for us, and then shoves us through the BigLaw door,” she says. “Really, it’s about the debt. Harvard should be creating mechanisms to ease the debt load. There will always be a subset of people who came here to build generational wealth or who have the financial need to do BigLaw, but there’s a much, much bigger proportion of people who get crushed by debt and are sold on this fallacy that the only way to pay it off is to go do BigLaw for a few years. And then they never move on.”

It’s sometimes tough to remember that money is only one part of a person’s career. “People underestimate how important it is that they like the atmosphere in which they are working and the tasks that they do, rather than the money they make and the ends that they serve,” says Markovits. “Jobs are financial ends, and moral ends, but also ends in themselves.”

One aspect of corporate law jobs that is relatively uncontested: they’re miserable. People hate working at corporate law firms. Alec Karakatsanis, Harvard Law J.D. ’08 and found of Civil Rights Corps, sums it up as follows: “Very, very, very few people would choose to spend their precious time on earth as a corporate lawyer if they weren’t being paid a lot of money.”  Michael Shammas spent two years in corporate law and confirms the same. “If any job is paying you $200,000, it’s making up for something,” says Shammas. “A lot of my friends in BigLaw firms—their health declined. People who did not set boundaries fared especially poorly,” he adds.

This factor seems minimized; otherwise, wouldn’t people think twice about flocking to BigLaw?  Shammas is “not sure if anyone lied,” but does “think that people omitted what the culture is like at these law firms.”  Shammas also notes that “it’s very hard to find out what the culture is like as a summer associate.”

“The amount of pro bono you do is so minuscule that it’s laughable.”

Furthermore, students with aspirations to do justice may not think that going to corporate law firms necessarily requires compromising their values. Most firms, after all, do lots of pro bono work. Or so you might think. “The amount of pro bono you do is so miniscule that it’s laughable,” explains Shammas.  “We were told that these firms have great pro bono; the reality is that the pro bono is just there to make the firms seem shinier.”  As Pete Davis, Harvard Law J.D. ’18, wrote in Our Bicentennial Crisis, “the reality does not match the rhetoric.”  Davis reports that “at the Top 100 wealthiest law firms, only about eight minutes per day per attorney is given to pro bono work.”  ABA survey data, meanwhile, Davis notes, shows that “only 36 percent of attorneys surveyed do 50 hours or more of pro bono work per year.”

The content of that pro bono work, even if one gets to participate in it, is not guaranteed to align with one’s values. “When pro bono work is done at corporate interest law firms, it is not necessarily performed in service of the poor,” writes Davis. Karakatsanis recalls an extreme example: a conversation with a partner of Davis Polk about the named partner John W. Davis’s (no relation to Pete) work arguing for the government (i.e., pro-segregation) in the companion case to Brown v. Board of Education. “The partner who talked to me about it expressed no concern or remorse, and called him her hero,” relates Karakatsanis. And the kicker?  John W. Davis took on the case pro bono.

Not everyone buys into the pro bono myth; many others recognize that corporate law is drudgery but accept that as part of an inevitable and necessary bargain. Many jobs, after all, have tasks that people don’t like to do; many public interest careers also have long hours and stressful deadlines.

But at BigLaw firms, what exactly are those annoying tasks that people will end up having to do?  Looking to the firms’ websites isn’t necessarily instructive. Davis Polk describes its offerings as “exceptional service, sophisticated advice, and creative and practical solutions.”  Ropes & Gray provides “ready access to leading corporate, litigation, transactional and regulatory lawyers whose knowledge and experience span industries and geographies.”  Sullivan & Cromwell’s “client base is exceptionally diverse.”  Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz handles “some of the largest, most complex and demanding transactions” as well as “sensitive investigation and litigation matters,” to ultimately “achieve excellent results for our clients in complex and critical matters.”  Or, more concisely: “We are thought leaders.”

Okay, but what does any of that really mean, on a day-to-day basis?

In conversations about firm work, this topic almost never comes up in detail. Often, the biggest question is whether a student is interested in “transactional” work or “litigation.”  These two legal terms, divorced from any meaningful context of client goals, are essentially meaningless. A student planning to become a public defender would never describe her aspirations as “litigation;” a student planning on providing legal aid to tenants under threat of eviction for breaking their lease would never describe his work as “transactional.”  These, and other public interest-minded students, would be quick to tell you at least some of the details of their work.

By comparison, students who work at firms seem reticent to describe their work, even when they have a platform. When discussion of HLS’s summer contribution policy and debate over the ways in which it harms low-income and first-generation students went viral, the person who started the conversation did not mention the content of her work at all. That she might have been engaged in supporting immortal corporate goals of course does not mean that she does not deserve enough money for her and her family to live comfortably. But if the typical way of obtaining that money is less than moral—and as Ralph Nader points out, it often is—why isn’t that aspect part of the conversation?  Is the real story only that HLS takes money out of students’ summer earnings?  Or is the story that students feel forced into taking a boring, immoral summer job just to get a chance at making ends meet?

Is the real story only that HLS takes money out of students’ summer earnings?  Or is the story that students feel forced into taking a boring, immoral summer job just to get a chance at making ends meet?

In an interview, Nader (who graduated from Harvard Law in 1958) confirms that narrative framing is hugely important to corporate firms’ legitimacy. First, he says, the media is deflective when asked to focus on the corporate client. Second, the firms often wield attorney-client privilege as a barrier to giving away any details of their work. Third, the firms deploy faux intellectualism. “They try to come across like pragmatic professors,” says Nader. “That’s part of the drapery that keeps them from being subjected to reporter scrutiny. ‘By the way, everyone deserves an attorney, and by the way, these are extremely complex issues—we live in a complex world with many tradeoffs, my friend,’” he parrots. 

The people working at these law firms sit in “the shadows of power,” says Nader. “And law students have more leverage on these people than they think. They are the source—the reservoir for future activities of great wealth.”

“You represent the pipeline,” he remarks.

That pipeline, or moving walkway, or whatever you want to call it, is strong. And often, it appears immune from student criticism. Nader recalls that during his time at HLS, one institution was completely off limits—the law firms. “It was considered taboo to talk about these firms,” he says. “The ethics weren’t questioned, and the clients weren’t questioned.”

Today, the scene on campus is not too different. Rachel Casper, a graduating member of the Harvard Law class of 2022, notes that in most settings, we’re forced to acknowledge the good or bad morality of our choices. Going into BigLaw, somehow, is a choice exempt from that scrutiny. “We pretend there’s no moral dimension to it,” she says.  She also finds that when she criticizes the institutional push towards BigLaw, people sometimes interpret the criticism as a personal attack instead of a systemic attack. “People feel like they need to internally justify their choice to do BigLaw,” she observes. This conflation of personal and systemic issues chills the conversation. “Even if you have anti-BigLaw views, you don’t want to say it too strongly,” she notes. “People call it ‘BigLaw shaming,’ which is just ridiculous when 80% of our class goes into BigLaw.”

Meanwhile, the anonymous 1L mentioned above has found the omnipresence of EIP at Harvard to be overwhelming. “The baseline perception is that EIP is a really special opportunity,” she says. “I’ve heard phrases like ‘once in a lifetime’ used in terms of what opportunity it presents.”  At the time of the interview, in mid-April, she estimates she gets about 10 emails a day that mention EIP.

“I have felt crazy for not doing it,” she says. “I came in so public interest-oriented and even I have had moments where I was like, ‘why am I not doing this?’”

“I worry that we have a culture here where anyone who says they are not doing EIP is viewed as either uber-rich or uber-judgmental, which I don’t think is the case.”

Like Casper, she has felt the strange chilling effect on criticism of the pipeline. “I worry that we have a culture here where anyone who says they are not doing EIP is viewed as either uber-rich or uber-judgmental, which I don’t think is the case,” she says. Ultimately, she is most frustrated with Harvard as an institution. “I’m mad at the school for charging us such high tuition and creating circumstances in which people feel like they have to do EIP and don’t have alternatives, and for normalizing BigLaw and making it seem like it’s nothing more than a great way to pay off loans.”

Credit: Priscilla du Preez via Unsplash. Conversations about BigLaw on elite law school campuses are not as frank and open as some would like.

Karakatsanis, for his part, remembers his experience as a student as “one of profound disappointment.”  As with others, the normalization of BigLaw played a major part of that disappointment. “Cultural norms normalize the incredibly violent and unjust corporate law firm profession as not only something that’s perfectly fine but something that’s actually prestigious and highly valued as a marker or some kind of grotesque notion of success. Virtually every element of the law school experience is signaling not only that it’s okay, but that it’s expected and that you won’t be seen as successful if you don’t participate.”

Even if institutional design pushes some students into a BigLaw career they might not otherwise take, Casper does not think that should give anyone in a less precarious financial position a free moral pass. “We talk about going to BigLaw as a neutral choice, but I don’t believe it is a neutral choice. It would be different if it was discussed that you were going to make the world a worse place, but you want the money.”  

That sort of frankness is rare. Instead, many stock answers abound as common responses to the question of why one pursues a BigLaw job. The anonymous 1L finds the “training” narrative particularly prevalent. “I think that a lot of people think, genuinely, that this is amazing training with a massive paycheck and don’t think about what they’re going to have to do and how harmful it is,” she notes.

According to Karakatsanis, these responses have not changed much over the years. When he was at school in the mid-2000s, “there was a wide range of common responses, including economic justifications, expecting really good training (which is largely untrue compared to other jobs), and thinking the people there are really nice.”

The money justification is particularly troubling for Karakatsanis. “Every single aspect of our society where powerful people are extracting wealth and destroying the lives of ordinary people is done by corporate lawyers. Everyone concedes that but says that they need the money.”  At the same time, notes Karakatsanis, those people would never agree to kill a person for a BigLaw salary. Yet, they’re okay working for corporate law firms that will support projects that lead to death, such as destroying a local water supply.

“Every single aspect of our society where powerful people are extracting wealth and destroying the lives of ordinary people is done by corporate lawyers.  Everyone concedes that but says that they need the money.” 

But perhaps the most frustrating response to the moral question is what seems to be a defense of law generally: the maxim that “every client deserves a lawyer.”  Casper has a quick retort: they do, and what we know is that they aren’t!  “If that’s your reasoning,” says Casper, “you should be going into legal aid. There’s a lot of places you can be—what you’re actually doing is helping terrible companies. I don’t believe that you’re doing that because everyone needs a lawyer.”  Casper concludes: “I don’t think you have to reject the idea that everyone needs a lawyer to reject the idea that it’s okay to go into BigLaw.”  Nader agrees. “The corporation can get another lawyer, easily,” he says. “They don’t have to have you.”

“I don’t think you have to reject the idea that everyone needs a lawyer to reject the idea that it’s okay to go into BigLaw.”

There’s a final counterargument that often crops up here. They don’t have to have you, but they will have someone—and why shouldn’t that be someone with a moral compass?  Won’t corporate law firms only change when the corporate lawyers do?  That solution is tempting; it seems to solve every problem at once. Nader doesn’t think it’s so simple. For lawyers to act conscientiously inside BigLaw firms, they have to be “regularly exposed to sunlight,” he says. “Right now, the dominant lawyers (‘the rainmakers,’ as they are called) drive out the good guys in many subtle and not so subtle ways.”  Without positive feedback for positive acts, trying to change things from the inside is fighting a losing battle.

So, when the corporation gets another lawyer, what are you going to do instead?  The answer isn’t always clear. A BigLaw job can be appealing because it represents another rung on the achievement ladder. Wilkins notes that while such rungs in the corporate law world are many, their counterparts in the public interest world are few. People want to work at a “wonderful organization” such as the ACLU or the NAACP, says Wilkins, but those jobs are relatively scarce.

What law students may not realize is that so many other public interest jobs exist. One example Wilkins gives, often not thought of as a public interest job, is being a solo practitioner in a neighborhood law office.  Karakatsanis agrees. “It’s seen at other law schools as a perfectly viable outcome to start your own practice,” he says. “Only at elite law schools is there so much stigma.”

Part of the aversion to starting your own practice is likely related to the training that BigLaw jobs purport to offer. Wilkins notes that corporate law jobs can be “training grounds for students feeling insecure.”  The impression is that taking one of those is the “natural progression” towards keeping your options open. “Students could use help from the school in saying: ‘You don’t need that. You’ve now gone to Harvard Law School; you are going to have a great career.’”

One thing that law schools could be better at, suggests Wilkins, is providing guidance not only on how to get your first job out of law school, but how to get subsequent jobs as well, and how to build a career.  “We don’t talk about careers,” says Wilkins, “we talk about jobs. And that, I think, does students a disservice.”

Even in that conversation about jobs, there is plenty that we don’t talk about.  “How many people have ever met a plaintiff’s lawyer?” Wilkins rhetorically asks.  “They’re not visible.  The primary teaching tool is appellate cases, but who are the lawyers?  How are the cases brought?  We don’t talk about the lawyers at all.  Their names don’t even appear in the casebook.”

The primary teaching tool is appellate cases, but who are the lawyers?  How are the cases brought?  We don’t talk about the lawyers at all.  Their names don’t even appear in the casebook.”

Markovits agrees.  “People don’t know how to find out about a whole host of jobs that are not high profile or obvious.”  As examples, he lists jobs that aren’t on the east and west coasts, jobs in lower profile parts of the government, and jobs at firms that are less well-known at elite law schools but can provide just as rewarding experiences as those at prominent firms.

Credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm via Unsplash. Our experiences at law school will affect our career choices, which will ultimately affect the greater legal world—for better or worse.

For students to open their minds to any possibilities outside of BigLaw, however, they must open up the campus conversations.  Currently, unproductive banter abounds.  As the anonymous 1L puts it, “these conversations rapidly devolve into students judging each other or being pitted against each other, and that’s frankly not what it’s about.”

Casper, meanwhile, recalls protesting at a Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison reception her 1L year, as part of efforts to encourage the firm to drop Exxon as a client.  At the time, she remembers hearing that a friend had said something along the lines of, “you know, I actually agree and think they’re right, but how rude that they would go about it that way and cut the speaker off.”  The criticism of Paul Weiss was clearly systemic, notes Casper, but people still got upset.

“I thought that, if nothing else, would make people not want to go to Paul Weiss,” she comments, “but I still know lots of ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ students going there.”

There is no single best way to change hearts and minds.  Shammas, during his time at HLS, saw both successful and unsuccessful activism.  Unsuccessful activism, he feels, is activism that has a conclusion but doesn’t tell people why they should reach it, or activism that is pompous or holier-than-thou.  “That will always be ineffective,” he says.  “To work, activism must not be conclusory, must be informed by experience, and has to be visible and in a forum in which students are able to really air their opinions, even if they disagree, without the administration suppressing their speech.”

So where do we end up?  “If you want to take the 65-75% of Harvard Law students who go to BigLaw to say, 25%, that’s not going to happen by some internal change at Harvard Law School emphasizing public interest more,” thinks Wilkins.  Encouragement would help, but the issue is more than any one student’s feelings about it.  “The wrong way to make things better,” continues Wilkins, “is to paint the world as if only good people do public interest and only money-grubbing people go into corporate law.”

Karakatsanis, likewise, acknowledges that to ask, “am I willing to be complicit in these harms for money?” is an unfair position in which to put someone—particularly if that someone does not have generational wealth.  The fundamental problem, as he sees it, does not involve “a critique or shaming of any individual’s choices, but the political economy of the law school experience and the inequality of our society.”  He continues.  “The solutions that are needed are much more systemic,”  Karakatsanis suggests that maybe, law schools shouldn’t be charging tuition.  If they’re willing to repay loans via LRAPs, why even charge that tuition for students upfront?  “There are all kinds of questions you could ask,” he concludes.

Karakatsanis suggests that maybe, law schools shouldn’t be charging tuition.  If they’re willing to repay loans via LRAPs, why even charge that tuition for students upfront? 

For now, we keep asking questions, we keep pressuring powerful institutions, and we keep seeking out regular exposure to sunlight.