Crucially, this belief that Big Law offers the only light at the end of the tunnel for a viable financial future is not simply a product of large Big Law salaries, but rather a misunderstanding of public interest careers. Too often those persuading students to pursue the public interest path fall into the trap of analyzing salaries comparatively. However, Pete Davis, HLS graduate and author of Our Bicentennial Crisis, explains that this is simply unproductive, as in the last 40 years, the ratio of corporate to public interest salaries has more than doubled. For the HLS Class of 2022, those working for law firms made on average $207,000, more than triple the $68,000 average salary for public interest graduates. While this paints a bleak comparative picture, when investigated independently, the trajectory of a public interest career is perfectly viable. 

Analyzing the income and debt forgiveness opportunities of public interest careers supports the hypothesis that the strength of the financial pull towards Big Law is exaggerated, or at the very least misguided. The federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program offers a pathway to federal loan forgiveness after 10 years of qualifying public service work and repayments, as well as various state programs providing similar benefits. Likewise, many law schools offer Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs) which provide forgivable loans to pay off debt. While these programs have a litany of problems and are certainly in need of reform, when they work, they provide a remarkable boon to a public interest career. 

In simulations of law school debt and career choice, StudentLoanPlanner.com found that utilizing PSLF could allow a student to pay out of pocket just $35,000 total for law school, making the public service route the cheapest option to pay back law school student debt in the long term. Perhaps it is then unsurprising that in surveys of lawyers seven years after graduating law school, those working in public interest were equally likely as Big Law attorneys to have paid off their debt, and median graduate debt levels remained relatively consistent across sectors of law. 

As Professor John Bliss concludes, “the literature suggests that debt is more often used by students as a post-hoc rationalization.” Ultimately, it is not so much the fact that Big Law’s financial promises are the determinative pulling force, but that students are pushed away by their misconstruction of the viability of public interest.

Furthermore, actual statistical analysis of student career choice does not support the claim that the Big Law promise of resolving debt is decisive for students. Sociologist Christa McGill finds that when controlling for other variables, debt burdens account for just a small proportion of public interest drift. Studies that quantify the influence of debt burdens likewise only find small impacts. For example, a student in California with a $125,000 loan debt is only 10 percentage points more likely to drift away from public interest than a student with $0 in debt, who still has a 39% chance of drifting. Clearly, the financial pull of a corporate salary cannot explain the whole picture of public interest drift. As Professor John Bliss concludes, “the literature suggests that debt is more often used by students as a post-hoc rationalization.”

Ultimately, it is not so much the fact that Big Law’s financial promises are the determinative pulling force, but that students are pushed away by their misconstruction of the viability of public interest. While the average HLS public interest graduate’s salary of $68,000 feels like pittance when compared to Big Law wages, it is still well over $10,000 more than the median salary for 25-35 year-olds in the United States. Yet, law students have internalized that such a wage is effectively unlivable, and thereby are pushed away from public interest. Accordingly, Professor Erica Field finds that debt burdens might mainly have a psycho-social impact on students’ decisions. It is the fear of not being able to repay one’s loans, or loan forgiveness programs not working, that pushes students away from public interest, not the actual finances pulling students to Big Law. 

3. The Unpaid Internship

Despite the genuine viability of public interest work after graduation, students are nonetheless dissuaded by internalized financial apprehension. Scrutinizing the internship process sheds light on where students begin to feel pushed away. While for students interested in Big Law, summer internships offer a clear, stable, and financially advantageous path to a future job, the public interest internship is plagued by uncertainty, disorganization, and financial sacrifice. The various structural factors that maintain this problematic status quo gatekeep public interest internships and perpetuate the myth of a financially infeasible career in the field.  

While not being compensated for one’s labor is virtually unheard of in Big Law, it is regrettably the norm in public interest work. Of the 219 employers hiring through HLS’ Virtual Public Interest Interview Program (V-PIIP), 131 or 60% of the internship postings were for unpaid positions. For example, legal non-profits like Equal Justice Under the Law and state and federal government organizations like the U.S. Department of Labor offer unpaid summer internships (ironically, the unpaid summer internship job posting for the Department of Labor explains that they are, “committed to the mission of the Department of Labor, to safeguard the rights of workers”). Likewise, it is hard not to read the San Diego County Office of the Public Defender’s job posting as tongue in cheek when they proclaim, “internships are, for the most part, un-paid positions; however, the experience volunteers receive is priceless.”

But priceless experiences obviously do not pay the bills. Fortunately, in recent years, a select few law schools have started programs that help fund students’ summer employment in public interest work. Over 25 years ago, HLS started the Summer Public Interest Funding (SPIF) program under the tenure of Alexis Shabecoff, then Assistant Dean for Public Service. In an interview, Shabecoff explained that with guaranteed funding under SPIF, HLS students are significantly less burdened when pursuing summer internships compared to other law students. This past summer, 56% of first year HLS students relied on SPIF to help fund a summer public interest internship. Various law schools have too since attempted to duplicate the SPIF model to fund public interest students’ summer work.

Nevertheless, even for those receiving at least $20,500 in financial aid, SPIF’s funding is capped at $9,000 for twelve weeks of summer work, and the grant maxes out at $4,200 for students not receiving aid, like the 30% of those that participated in the program in 2023. Notably, many internships require relocation, travel, and other expenses, meaning school summer funding frequently fails to allow students to fully make ends meet while pursuing public interest work. 54% of respondents in an informal survey reported that financial stipends were insufficient and they had to rely on other sources for financial assistance.

As students fight for the chance to toil away at a summer internship while not being compensated by their employer, they quickly internalize that public interest work is not a financially viable career path.  

Unpaid and insufficiently funded internships perpetuate inequalities and privilege by gatekeeping seemingly necessary career experiences. Shabecoff acknowledges that even the proliferation of programs like SPIF disincentivizes public interest employers from paying students, instead relying on law schools to pick up the tab. However, this disadvantages students at non-elite law schools that do not have the ability to fund summer employment, closing off many opportunities for public interest minded students. Shabecoff describes, “So now there are [students at] fancy schools that can afford to volunteer and [students at] unfancy [schools] that can’t because they don’t have guaranteed summer funding.”

As students fight for the chance to toil away at a summer internship while not being compensated by their employer, they quickly internalize that public interest work is not a financially viable career path. While the empirics and data on the finances of an actual postgraduate public interest job prove that this is simply not true, the push away from public interest begins in law school where this message is propagated through the cold indifference of unpaid internships. Whether by virtue of not attending an elite law school that can partially fund a summer job, or simply because they cannot stretch limited funding to cover an expensive summer of volunteering, many students face a reality where unpaid summer internships are the first impassable obstacle on their way to a career in public service.  

4. The True Price of Service

In addition to the finances, another factor that pushes law students away from public interest is the chronic perception that finding a public interest job is time consuming, rife with uncertainty, and arduous. Alas, this insight is not entirely unfounded. Even if a student who is interested in public interest law is able to get past the difficulties of the unpaid internship, little is guaranteed in terms of future job prospects. For example, while nearly 75% of college students who completed paid internships in the private sector got job offers before graduation, less than 45% of their unpaid counterparts secured employment. Many students at even elite law schools believe that the path to public interest is a competitive and unreliable one, with some comparing it to wanting to become a professional sports player. 

Whereas on campus recruiting for Big Law firms at law schools across the country offers students a centralized, streamlined, and exceedingly early path to a summer internship and future career in corporate law, no such experience in public interest compares. Big Law recruiting typically consists of students interviewing with numerous firms in a single week, emerging from the university organized programing with job offers in hand. For HLS’ recruiting week, the Early Interview Program (EIP), students do not even need to submit cover letters and firms will not see their grades before interviews.

HLS Early Interview Program firm sponsors poster. Source: Harvard Law School Office of Career Services Facebook.

On the other hand, public interest students are told to expect months of waiting, numerous rejections, and a general disorganization in their pursuit of a career. Even the valiant attempt of HLS to recreate Big Law on-campus recruiting with V-PIIP has faced struggles. For example, I first sent in my application materials to public interest employers through V-PIIP in August. Presently, over four months later, after multiple ghostings and countless pushed back timelines, I am still waiting to hear back from potential employers I interviewed with and to accept a job offer. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the culture and rhetoric around the public interest job search matches this difficulty with an unwelcoming and unnecessarily exclusionary ethos. Public interest students are repeatedly told that their “commitment” is paramount and will be frequently tested throughout their application process. Students are warned that taking internships at large firms can damage their resumes and that employers are weeding students out in search of “true believers.” As a student interested in public defense, I have been told on multiple occasions that even past work experience in a prosecutor’s office could lead me to being “black-listed” from potential employers. Students interested in public interest careers can expect to go through multiple rounds of interviews and are warned of the regularly combative nature of questioning, often labeled “hostile interviews,” where allegedly the wheat is separated from the chaff. Through this messaging, students adopt the belief that public interest work is indeed only for the select few. 

One major driver of this public interest culture comes from the “eliticization” of various public interest careers. As the public interest employment space has struggled to replicate the efficient Big Law recruitment model, it has unfortunately begun to mimic Big Law’s toxic culture of exclusion and prestige. In conjunction with the financial privilege that is maximized through unpaid internships, multiple public interest organizations have started marketing themselves as hyper-elite institutions reserved for the select few. 

For example, prestigious public interest organizations ask applicants interested in their unpaid internship to submit a resume, cover letter, transcript, references, legal writing sample, and show relevant past experience that demonstrates their commitment. Some employers even leverage prestige to force students into difficult decisions, like choosing between a paid internship, or having a say in assigned office location in exchange for an unpaid position.

Unpaid summer internship job posting for a prestigious public defender’s office. Source: Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia website.

Of course, there are certainly various public interest jobs available to students, perhaps not all at “prestigious” organizations or in geographic markets that elite students prioritize. Mere comparisons to other law schools show that HLS’ flagging public interest numbers are not indicative of a job supply problem. 37% of non-clerking Class of 2015 Northeastern graduates took up public interest employment and a whopping 75% of CUNY graduates pursued those careers. Davis summarized in an interview, “they always say, there’s the scarcity of public interest jobs…but like there’s a scarcity of elite, prestigious public interest and elite prestige is a mirage. It’s a lie.”

Nonetheless, at places like HLS, the public interest legal field has fallen into the same exclusionary prestige trap that Big Law firms represent, but all without the pull incentives a private career can compensate for. Centering public interest hiring around the reputation of an employer or the law school standing of its applicants not only cuts out many who might otherwise make dedicated public servants, but also clearly distorts the motivations of the work in the first place. 

Of course, it is worth noting that public interest work is undeniably taxing and difficult work. Public interest attorneys are often overworked, experience vicarious trauma through the emotionally taxing client work they perform, and seem to be disproportionately affected by burnout. Given these facts, it is understandable that a potential public interest employer would want to interrogate potential lawyers as to their level of commitment and ability to stay the course. 

At places like HLS, the public interest legal field has fallen into the same exclusionary prestige trap that Big Law firms represent, but all without the pull incentives a private career can compensate for. Centering public interest hiring around the reputation of an employer or the law school standing of its applicants not only cuts out many who might otherwise make dedicated public servants, but also clearly distorts the motivations of the work in the first place. 

Yet, is an extended application process or even a tough grilling during an interview the best way to test for commitment to the cause? Perhaps a student slogging through an arduous application process or even their willingness to accept an unpaid internship in the first place is the best and only evidence of dedication that an employer should need. For students who have never experienced such work before, an internship might be their only opportunity to interact with vulnerable clients, an opportunity that might be invaluable regardless of their future career path.

Davis argues that public interest jobs could benefit from doing more “moral formation.” Instead of attempting to divine the students with bonafide commitments to the work, organizations could be honest with applicants about the difficulties of the career path, but still meet them halfway and assist interested students in transforming themselves into the type of passionate lawyers they so desire to be. “The most important thing is…your commitment to the future work, not your past.” Davis concludes that the single worst line during his time at HLS came during the first week of law school when students were told that it was the “saints” of the class that did public interest. But this message that “morally radical people are the only people that do public interest” is simply not true. Requiring such unflinching dedication from inexperienced students is not only an unrealistic charade, but also generates an unhelpful stigma around the work.

The public interest field must recognize its own complicit part in pushing law students away. Admittedly, securing multiple paid internships from one week of centralized interviewing and then having a job offer over a year in advance from a Big Law firm is luxurious. But for the large proportion of students who enter law school passionate about public interest, this might not be all they care about or are influenced by. Far more of a turn-off comes from months of unanswered emails and unrealistic commitment expectations that push students away from their aspirations of service. After a point, regardless of the allure of the Big Law recruitment process, an onerous public interest hiring system becomes prohibitive for all but the most passionate and privileged. 

This does not have to be the case, as Shabecoff explains that public interest jobs could do better about managing the recruitment process. While for many public interest employers anticipating hiring needs is difficult, others have well documented lawyer attrition rates and could accordingly hire on a more stable timeline.   Furthermore, unpaid internships are definitionally budget independent and hiring could be organized into a more reliable system. Other features like responsiveness and recruitment culture might also be less a product of budgetary constraints than victims of deprioritization. 

Even once students begin working in a summer internship or postgraduate job, it is essential for employers to continue their dedication to respecting and nurturing those passionately interested in the work they do. Shabecoff points out that yet another deterrent for students who make it this far in their public interest search is poor supervision, feedback, and training. Shabecoff remarks, “even if you’re really really really busy, and a lot of public interest lawyers are really really really busy…it is incumbent upon you to mentor and care for the next generation so that they are good lawyers, so they’re not deterred.”

Giving students the benefit of the doubt when they say they are committed to public interest and then providing them with an enriching and meaningful summer internship may be the best way to foster their commitments and grow them into dedicated and passionate public servants. The impact of the summer internship cannot be understated as McGill finds that students who work in government and public interest jobs after their second year of law school are five times more likely to take a similar job after graduation. Similarly, for students in California, participating in a public interest internship reduced their likelihood of public interest drift by 34 percentage points, the biggest single variable mitigating drift. Such momentous career experiences should be made more accessible, not less. 

5. The Institutional Thumb on the Scale

Of course, various structural factors beyond the mere culture and configuration of hiring contribute to the push away from public interest. Beginning the minute 1L students enter the classroom at law schools, they are taught to distance their normative values and passions for justice from the “black letter” of the law. At HLS, a stifling starting course load of 18 credits (the maximum allowable credit load for successive semesters is 16), enforced competition through curves, and a curriculum that focuses on appellate work leave students little time for reflection on why the law is the way it is, and how they can work to make it more just. Law school quickly turns into far more of a game of parroting the right answers and climbing the academic hierarchy than an education in critical and moral reasoning. 

Giving students the benefit of the doubt when they say they are committed to public interest and then providing them with an enriching and meaningful summer internship may be the best way to foster their commitments and grow them into dedicated and passionate public servants.

Immediately after this repressive experience of 1L, and crucially before students have any opportunity to explore their actual interest in the law, Big Law recruiting tears through campus. The vast majority of HLS students participate in EIP before their 2L year, where they interview with dozens of corporate employers whose work is discussed in genericized and abstract terms. The pressure to participate in the program is immense as students who do not register have been contacted personally to reconsider. Even HLS’ website on EIP encourages students to, “consider the larger opportunity cost incurred by not participating in EIP.” 76% of students receive at least one summer job offer from the first wave of EIP alone, with many more waking up from the dizzying fog of Big Law recruiting with an internship opportunity that often turns into a return offer after graduation. 

Perhaps predictably, no such equal preferential treatment is given for public interest career recruitment. At HLS, public interest advising has had to fight for its place at the table, and constantly faces an uphill institutional battle. While students pursuing Big Law go to the universal “Office of Career Services” (OCS), those wanting a career in public service must seek help from the “Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising” (OPIA). I myself, once a naïve 1L, wanted resume help for summer job applications and made an appointment with the confusingly named OCS, who once they found out I was interested in public interest, would not answer my questions, and recommended I instead seek the aid of OPIA. In fact, when using the HLS online recruitment platform CSM, when students select from the drop-down menu of interview programs, EIP is literally the default option, while students must scroll to the bottom to access the public interest counterpart V-PIIP.

This structural perversion against public interest also blatantly stands in opposition to the stated mission of elite institutions like HLS. HLS claims to stand to, “advance the cause of justice all over the world.” Given the discord between stated institutional goals and facts on the ground of where HLS students actually end up working, claims like these begin to seem like downright hypocrisy. 

Professor Daniel Coquillette, a scholar of the history of legal education, explained in an interview that historically, the institution of HLS was never legitimately focused on public interest as we would define it today. In 1946, when reforming the curriculum and structure of the school to the way it exists presently, HLS Dean Douglas Griswold prioritized the creation of “leaders” from the school. Coquillette points out however, that at the time, this mission did not necessarily mean placing graduates in public interest. In fact, it was rather alumni that became partners at Big Law firms or the higher-ups in businesses who more accurately fulfilled Griswold’s articulated goal, and the school was thus organized around achieving this outcome. In fact, in 1989, HLS Dean Robert Clark eliminated all public interest career advising positions, claiming that they were for “symbolic, guilt-alleviating purposes.”

Even today, the relationship between Big Law and institutions like HLS cannot be overlooked. On the one hand, Big Law firms benefit from the prestige conferred from a steady stream of elite law school graduates joining their ranks, with the pedigree of their new attorneys frequently included in law firm ranking calculations. Extraordinarily, some firms literally advertise themselves based off of the number of HLS graduates they have working for them.

There exists a ratcheting effect between high Big Law salaries and skyrocketing tuition. If the majority of HLS students go on to make $200,000+ at a Big Law firm in their first year out of school, HLS can justify its exorbitant tuition on the grounds that their students can quickly pay off that debt.

Likewise, in many ways, institutions such as HLS are dependent on large corporate law firms. Schools like HLS can advertise themselves as desirable given the number of students it can place at top law firms. For example, in the methodology for the coveted U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Law School Rankings,” employment outcomes for graduates are the most weighted factor, making up fully 33% of a school’s ranking, dwarfing other factors like student-faculty ratio which only comprises 5% of a school’s score. 

Furthermore, there exists a ratcheting effect between high Big Law salaries and skyrocketing tuition. If the majority of HLS students go on to make $200,000+ at a Big Law firm in their first year out of school, HLS can justify its exorbitant tuition on the grounds that their students can quickly pay off that debt. In fact, since 2018, HLS’ tuition has increased by 15.4%, nearly identical to the 14.6% increase in 1st year Big Law salaries during that same time period. 

Perhaps no better evidence exists for the symbiotic relationship between elite law schools like HLS and Big Law firms than the $500 fee that HLS charges Big Law firms per interview schedule during EIP. As part of the push that students experience away from public interest, a fair proportion of that force originates from institutions like HLS themselves. 

6. The Hope of Cultivating Interest

Given these various push factors away from public interest work that make law students perceive it as an impossibility, or at the very least unappealing, it is Big Law that steps up to become the remaining viable career choice. But with long hours, soul-sucking work, and general dissatisfaction with Big Law employment, we should believe students’ claim that they do not actually want to work at these firms. Thus, it is unsurprising that only 35% of newly admitted students plan to work for law firms or businesses. The fact that this number doubles by the end of law school is as much a failure of the public interest field pushing students away as it is the success of Big Law attracting them. Even if students truly do not want to pursue a career in Big Law, in their minds, what else are they actually supposed to do? 

Importantly, when Bliss investigated initial law student interest in public interest work further, he revealed that students’ commitments are indeed often vague and awaiting further information. In analyzing the public interest drift of black students at HLS, Renée Desmond-Harris found similarly that many students enter law school with a “passive” or general interest in social change, with these students the ones most likely to find themselves in Big Law upon graduation.

Without knowing much about what a legal career in public interest would entail, students are initially open to exploration and hope law school will provide them with a pathway to pursuing their aspirations. Unfortunately, instead of cultivating these hopes and directing students to viable career paths, the public interest experience at law school impresses upon students that a career in public interest will be unpleasant, convoluted, ripe with uncertainty, and financially untenable. By perpetuating the message of service requiring sacrifice and ironclad commitment, the public interest space pushes students right into the open arms of Big Law. Desmond-Harris summarizes:

“However, it is still important to note that the more undefined, passive interest in social change that many black students bring to HLS seems to go un-nurtured and slowly wither over the course of legal education. In other words, there seems to be a contingent of black students who may not be committed to pursuing a social change agenda upon admission to HLS, but are at least open to doing so. Results suggest that these students may ultimately choose large law firm employment because their interest in and openness to social change careers are not harnessed during law school.”

Whereas public interest work is marketed as an all-or-nothing career path, Big Law recruiting rhetoric encourages uncertainty and tells students that dabbling in the work is a recommended way to learn more about your preferences. In contrast to the public interest requirement of staunch zealousness, HLS’ materials encouraging students to participate in EIP explain, “at worst, you may end up with an offer you do not wish to accept. At best, you may receive a wonderful job that propels you into a truly fulfilling career.” The field of public interest law might benefit from a similar attitude towards student uncertainty.

Nevertheless, this story of public interest drift is actually an optimistic one. Instead of reform requiring a complete overhaul of structural incentives like the impossibility of matching Big Law salaries or recruitment strategies, this understanding of students’ faltering commitment towards public interest careers allows real change to be affected from mere reform in our culture of public interest law. By according public interest work the dignity it deserves and fostering students’ initial commitment to service, law schools can become places where public interest careers are seen as the default, or even an aspirational path, not burdensome impossibilities. 

Davis describes one such model of this aspirational future, “there are amazing lives that can be lived by people just honorably stewarding their role as a lawyer within professional life, outside of serving the corporate interest. In fact, the majority of lawyers work outside of the corporate interest…and like to be honorable and aware and active in 10% of [their] life, or with like 10% more of a public interest spirit. You can do that. And that’s what we need.”

By according public interest work the dignity it deserves and fostering students’ initial commitment to service, law schools can become places where public interest careers are seen as the default, or even an aspirational path, not burdensome impossibilities. 

Early on in the initial fight for public interest advising at HLS, those passionate about their mission hung a sign up with a quote from the Field of Dreams movie: “If You Build It, They Will Come.” And indeed they did. In 1989, only 6% of HLS students pursued public interest work, a number that doubled in ten years under the proliferation of public interest programs. Today, the fight continues with the dedicated effort of many to reform the culture of public interest law into a viable and desirable path. Though much work remains to be done, perhaps a future is not far away where students are no longer pushed away from public interest legal work, and maybe even pulled towards it.