“When we are oriented to Harvard Law Schools, we are oriented to the professional culture – the personality, worldview, priorities, and enforcement mechanisms – of the corporate interest legal field. Through looking only at the law and not its stakeholder impact, not permitting discussions about life experiences, and expecting first-year students to work with no breaks, Harvard Law is preparing students to go into corporate law.”

~Lani Guinier

Deep Capture through Law School Curriculum

Harvard Law School’s first-year (1L) curriculum both pedagogically and substantively orients students to big law. In their first semester, 1Ls are required to take four intensive black letter law classes, in addition to a Legal Research and Writing class to hone their legal writing skills. 

Black letter classes teach students legal doctrine by training them to look at the law “objectively.” Students are generally discouraged from thinking intentionally about the impact of the law, the various stakeholders involved, and how to make the systems-level change. Such pedagogy discourages a public interest mindset by encouraging students to ignore the real-world implications of the law, and rather to think about doctrine in a purely robotic way.

Harvard Law’s very own, Professor Duncan Kennedy, stated in Our Bicentennial Crisis that the law school’s focus on legal reasoning is an explanation for “the dominance of corporate interest firm employment at schools like Harvard Law.” Through the sole focus on legal reasoning, students become comfortable with the lack of critical thinking present in big law firms. Kennedy says that law firms may even prefer “that their incoming associates do not think critically about the impact of their decisions in practical terms.

The Socratic method, a style of teaching in which professors call on students to answer specific, pointed questions about a case without prior notice, further cements the intellectual pacification of law students. It encourages repeating fact patterns and working within the confines of the status quo, a status quo that functions to uphold whiteness and corporate-driven thinking. Professors Todd Rakoff and Martha Minow emphasize in Our Bicentennial Crisis that while students may learn how to answer their professors’ narrow Socratic questions, they rarely learn how to “ask the right, critical questions, nor develop the confidence to reform or re-imagine the legal system.” 

While the first year at Harvard Law trains all students to think like big law lawyers, it has a particularly intense effect on students of color. It strips students of color of their own identity in association with the law. Many professors explicitly tell students to leave their lived experiences with the law at the classroom door. This is difficult for students who have suffered at the hands of this legal system, and are in law school to work on issues that have directly impacted them.

Marginalized students are being taught that their lived experiences are not relevant to their core legal education, and that to excel in their first year of school, they must remove their identity from their learning process. It takes what they know about the law, devalues it, and encourages purely technical thinking. It is no surprise that with this approach, students feel less inclined to enter a public interest career. 

“Harvard is . . . a surreal place,” says Ayo. “None of the issues that are happening in the world are being discussed. We had a whole election, nobody talked about it really in class…Professors do not bring up these issues in class because they have to ‘get through the material.’”

Ayo Aruleba, a current student at Harvard Law School, stated that in his class on how state uses violence, his professor was adamant about not having students bring in their personal experiences. Ayo felt it was strange to not be able to talk about his own lived experience as a black man when discussing an issue that directly and disproportionally affects people who look like him. He said his peers often experienced similar issues with their professors. 

“Harvard is…a surreal place,” says Ayo. “None of the issues that are happening in the world are being discussed. We had a whole election, nobody talked about it really in class…Professors do not bring up these issues in class because they have to ‘get through the material.’”

Azucena has had a similar experience. She says that her biggest frustration with law school is that everything has to be an academic argument. “People tend to think that is how lawyers should be because that is how Harvard Law trains you to be a lawyer.” In the recent Dobbs discussion, her conversations with professors have not touched upon the most basic impact of the decision and who it will affect, which is people of color, poor people of color. “Everything is about precedent, stare decisis, and what this will do to the court,” says Azucena.  

Deep Capture through Expedited Law Firm Recruiting Timelines 

From the minute they step on campus, law students are taught to think like a big law lawyer. Further, they do not even get the opportunity to think intentionally about what they wish to do with their career before being asked to recruit for law firms through the Early Interview Program (EIP)

Most law firm hiring is conducted through the Early Interview Program (EIP) EIP is a program in which law firms interview and hire students for 2L summer associate positions (after their second year of school). Students depend on the summer associate position that they find through EIP to secure a full-time big law offer upon graduation. There are few advertised opportunities for employment in big law after EIP. Thus, if students wish to secure a big law job, they must apply to do so immediately after their first year. This is particularly concerning because students do not begin their self-exploration into their career interests until they start their second year of school, where students finally have the opportunity to choose their own classes, join clinics, and eventually take a class on legal professions. 

The early law firm internship application timeline is even more expedited for students who come from marginalized or underrepresented backgrounds. Underrepresented students may apply to spend their 1L summer at a law firm through a diversity fellowship. The deadline to apply to diversity fellowships are typical during 1L winter break. Thus, students of color start law school, take five incredibly intensive law school courses from September to December, and while they are studying for their finals, must decide their fate.

Because of the expedited 1L diversity fellowship timeline, marginalized students have to make the choice about what career option they wish to explore before their peers even have to think about it. Additionally, while most 1Ls spend their first-year summers at a public interest organization (using it as an opportunity to explore their interests), 1Ls who come from marginalized, low-income backgrounds do not enjoy the same benefit.  

Many students of color opt into applying to diversity programs because they are not given the opportunity to think intentionally about their career options and because the money the programs provide is very enticing.  A current 2L from Harvard Law School’s South Asian Law Student Association stated that she decided to work for Skadden over the summer because it was one of the “very few, very well-funded 1L summer opportunities.”  She said that “…no 1L job compares to the kind of funding that diversity scholar programs in a particular offer.” If the law school were to provide more money for public interest summer funding, she would not have needed a big law summer job. 

The big law diversity fellowship is financially enticing beyond the 1L summer. If students return to the same firm during their 2L summer, they receive another diversity stipend. Law firms also provide bonuses to students who commit to the firm full-time upon graduation. The summer internship also provides an unrealistic picture of what it looks like to work in big law, which further captures marginalized students into the corporate world. Contrary to the grueling hours most big law associates experience, summer interns enjoy a work-life balance, happy hours, and projects they find interesting.  

Students who are participating in their first-year internship are impressionable. Exposure to big law at such an early stage of one’s legal education can have significant ramifications on where marginalized students see themselves working. One current 2L at Harvard Law states that after spending a summer in big law, she got a “sense, perhaps skewed” of her ability to do corporate law work. “For any work, especially for law students, what your sense is of what is possible is constrained by what you have done, and what you need to see as possible is definitely affected by what you know yourself as capable of doing. Working at a law firm as a 1L and having that be my first legal job affected what I saw myself doing in the future, so I can definitely see myself doing this type of work in the future.” 

Deep Capture through Pre-Law School Programming 

Students of color do not just experience an intense current in big law during law school. Before marginalized students even step foot on campus, they are told a story that working at big law firms is the best way to be prepared for the legal field. 

Many students from underrepresented backgrounds who get into law schools like Harvard are encouraged to apply to the SEO Law Fellowship Program, an elite, competitive pre-law school program. The SEO Law Fellowship Program is funded by law firms and prepares underrepresented students for law school and the legal field by placing them in a big law summer internship.  

The SEO Fellowship is the first instance (of many) in which students of color are being trained to work in big law. Rather than providing a menu of options from which to choose, the SEO Fellowship indicates to incoming law students that working at a big law firm is a fundamental part of being a member of the elite legal field. 

While Ayo, an SEO graduate, knew he needed to work in big law to support his family, his exposure to a law firm through SEO certainly did not motivate him to think about how to make a public interest career work when he graduated, which is ultimately what he wishes to end up doing.

Deep Capture through Harvard Identity-Based Affinity Groups

Law firms also influence marginalized students’ career decisions through increased exposure to big law in the very organizations that are designed to be spaces for students of color to explore and feel safe in their identity: affinity groups. 

Identity-based affinity groups are student-run, on-campus organizations for students to spend time with and receive support from peers who share a similar background to them. Many affinity groups are self-identifying race-based organizations, such as the Black Law Student Association (BLSA), La Alianza, the South Asian Law Student Association (SALSA), the Asian-Pacific American Law Student Association (APALSA), and the Middle Eastern Law Student Association (MELSA). 

Law firms, the very institutions that uphold the marginalization of people of color, fund affinity groups. This past year, for example, the South Asian affinity group (SALSA) received 98% of its funding from various law firms. In return for their funding, affinity groups have an obligation to organize law firm events and advertise law firm names in their newsletters and flyers. This obligation distracts from the mission of affinity groups. 

It is not coincidental that law firms sponsor affinity groups, rather than Harvard Law School, which has over $1.5 billion in its endowment. When law firms fund affinity groups, it provides them with yet another opportunity to increase their exposure to students of color. Harvard’s previous SALSA board member shared that the funding process was frustrating because if Harvard had simply provided affinity groups with money, the organization could have more free reign to think about how they wanted to spend their funding to improve community events, rather than just focusing on law firm events. 

Further, she shared that public interest events fell by the wayside because there was not enough capacity to meet both the promises SALSA had made to law firms to host a firm meet and greets and host events that exposed students to the multitude of public interest opportunities out there.  This is a common issue for affinity groups, which are run by students who must balance all the obligations of law school with their work to make Harvard more inclusive for their community. Affinity group leaders do not get paid for their work. 

A board member from La Alianza similarly shared that while the organization is grateful for law firm funding, it certainly impacts student decisions to work in big law. “[Through affinity group funding, big law] becomes the path that often you feel like you have to follow.” The board member expressed that law firm funding increases exposure and the desire to go into big law. 

“The path to big law is so clear, so clear and laid out for you very well.”

Ayo Aruleba, a member of BLSA, stated that his affinity group has robust career advising and programming around big law because of all the resources law firms provide to the organization, while public interest opportunities do not get the same exposure. “The path to big law is so clear, so clear and laid out for you very well.”

Affinity group funding is part of the law firms’ profit-maximization model. Under the guise of caring about stakeholder interests, law firms are benefitting from the public perception that they are altruistic for their sponsorships. Law firms often ask affinity groups for pictures of their events, so that the firm can showcase the diversity they are supporting on their social media and website. Ultimately, these pictures only serve the firm’s image.  

Shareholder primacy is the dominant notion in corporate law that agents of a corporation should owe their loyalty primarily to shareholders over all other stakeholders. Shareholders are owners of shares in a corporate law firm. The stakeholders here are marginalized Harvard Law students, who are particularly vulnerable to the prevalent HLS culture of working in big law. They must reckon with the dissonance of the need to build wealth in a system that has not traditionally allowed for them to do so, at companies that have historically perpetuated the very inequities they face. They are the low-income folks and people of color who do not have access to legal services, and who would benefit greatly from the services of Harvard Law students, especially those who come from similar backgrounds to them. They are the general public, who inevitably suffer from the most privileged legal minds of America engaging in work that enhances corporate interests at the cost of the general welfare. 

Shareholder primacy emphasizes profit maximization over the impact it has on its stakeholders. Hiring more students of color from Harvard Law School contributes to law firm profit, because law firms’ clients care about diversity, and expect the attorneys working on their cases to have the most elite credentials. 

Big corporate law firms are facing continuous pressure to increase the diversity of their attorneys. Consumers are becoming more aware of systemic injustices and are using their consumer power to shape corporate conduct by purchasing only from places they feel are “socially good.”  As a result, corporate investors generally have a profit motive to be socially responsible and increase the diversity of their hires.  

Shareholder primacy emphasizes profit maximization over the impact it has on its stakeholders. Hiring more students of color from Harvard Law School contributes to law firm profit, because law firms’ clients care about diversity, and expect the attorneys working on their cases to have the most elite credentials. 

Law firms are especially in need of a profit-maximization model that accounts for diversity. In fact, the lack of diversity at law firms is considered among the new largest threats to law firm’s profitability. Many law firms’ client companies have diversity requirements, where they either refuse to partner with or threaten to decrease fees for law firms that do not have a certain percentage of diverse hires. 

For example, Facebook, HP, and Novartis are all major global companies that have threatened to find different attorneys or to cut fees if the diversity in the law firms they service does not increase. Facebook requires that half the lawyers on its external U.S. legal team are diverse—boosting the mandate from 33% earlier. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG threatened to withhold 15% of its fees if firms did not meet its diverse staffing requirement. BT Group Plc promised an advisory panel seat to the law firm with the best representation.  

“There are enough clients who are focused on this—passionate about it and see it as their responsibility to improve diversity across the legal sector—that it will definitely have an impact on balance sheets,” said Georgia Dawson, senior partner of big law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (as quoted in Bloomberg).  

The business model of big law firms is also largely contingent on their ability to attract the biggest, most high-paying clients, who by virtue are also the most demanding. Such clients want to know their work is being handled by the best and brightest students. As such, law firms adopt “school lists” and “quotas” to ensure students from the most elite law schools are placed at corporate law firms. Additionally, according to a Harvard Business School study, students from “prestigious” schools were seen to have richer networks that could be useful for generating new business for law firms. 

Thus, law firms are particularly incentivized to look for people of color from elite institutions such as Harvard Law. However, by recruiting marginalized students specifically from elite institutions, law firms are not actually addressing systemic injustice in the ways they advertise. Those who bear the biggest burden from this system likely had fewer opportunities to attend a school like Harvard, and would benefit most from an opportunity to work in big law – yet, we hardly see students of color from lower-tiered law schools in big law associate seats. 

“The problem with the legal hiring model is that it is very credential-driven,” he said. “Firms tend to hire from the same top-25 law schools so when they say they love diversity, yet their diverse talent all comes from the same school or background, is that real diversity? It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that benefits nobody,” says Florida State University (FSU) College of Law career advisor Tommy Latino in a business school diversity study.  

Additionally, once those students of color arrive at big law firms, they have a difficult time making partners and often leave feeling dissatisfied. According to a diversity survey by the National Association of Law Placement, 25% of associates in the participating law firms were people of color, but less than 8% were equity partners. Even more disturbingly, black attorneys accounted for less than 2% of partners among the firms surveyed, and black women accounted for less than 1% of partners. While law firms may be making progress on their efforts to recruit junior talent, such efforts are meaningless when law firm culture is still such that attorneys of color are not given adequate opportunities to take leadership roles. 

It is an unfortunate reality that despite all of the effort students of color put into their education and career to end up at a place like Harvard Law School, a place of immense power and privilege, they still must operate within a system controlled by corporate power.

It is an unfortunate reality that despite all of the effort students of color put into their education and career to end up at a place like Harvard Law School, a place of immense power and privilege, they still must operate within a system controlled by corporate power. Corporate influence has captured all processes within Harvard Law to push students into big law. A huge, systemic issue like this, often feels difficult to overcome. However, the first step is acknowledgment. The more conversations there are about the impact of corporate power at Harvard Law, the closer we will be to rectifying the issue at hand.  

From The [F]law:

• Lisa Fanning, The Corporate Roots of Conservative Legal Thought
• Jack Lubin, Movement Capitalism: The Rise of the “Woke” Corporation

 

From The Systemic Justice Journal:

• Micaiah Barley, One Dollar, One Vote: Corporate Capture of Electoral Redistricting
• Facundo Jose Nazur, Corporate Influence: Exploring the Relationship Between Lobbying and Corporate Power
• Harvard Law Student, Beyond Buckley: Corporate Political Spending on the Governors Associations as a Function of Corporate Law and Power